Only a few of the papers are heretical.
The second annual Warhammer Conference took place in September—two whole days of academic talks about Warhammer 40,000 as a model of social power relations in Western societies since the 19th century and the terror of androgyny with particular reference to xenos species at the University of Heidelberg in Germany.
I’m still working my way through the presentations uploaded to YouTube this year and being delighted by all the playful seriousness and serious playfulness is on display. There’s nothing quite like people with impressive degrees getting into the minutiae of fictional universes created to help sell toy soldiers.
The Warhammer Conference is an independent event organized by a group of academics who were sick of having their abstracts rejected by more general conferences, and decided to create a place where Warhammer was the only topic. When I asked Dr Nikolas Matovinovic about it (he presented The Fault in Our Star Children: Genestealer Cults and the Interdependence of Lore, Hobby, and Gameplay in Warhammer 40,000 remotely this year), he said, “This is one of the more diverse and interdisciplinary conferences I have ever attended.
