Leeds Beckett University to host international conference on inclusion in the media at Leeds School of Arts

Leeds Beckett University will host the 11th annual conference of the European Society for Periodicals Research (ESPRit) at Leeds School of Arts on 27-29 June 2023. 

Researchers from around the world will come to Leeds next month for an international conference looking at how magazines, newspapers, zines and other periodicals make readers feel included or excluded. 

Approximately 100 academics from universities in the UK, Europe, North America and Asia will come together for the ‘Periodicals and Belonging’ themed conference, focusing on the unique power of magazines and newspapers to bring people together and make them feel part of a community of readers – or feel rejected as outsiders. 

Dr Mary Ikoniadou, Senior Lecturer at Leeds School of Arts, said:

“We are grateful to Leeds Beckett University, and to the University of Central Lancashire, for their support in putting on what promises to be an important conference. 

“In an age when many are growing concerned about the role of a “partisan” media in creating opposing camps, we wanted to look at how print periodicals, in the past and the present, can make people feel like insiders and outsiders. we look forward to welcoming so many guests from around the world to Leeds School of Arts later this month.” 

Conference delegates include experts on football and punk fanzines, teenage girls’ magazines, reader communities, why so many 19th-century newspapers failed after a few issues, French Resistance newspapers, digital research techniques, regional newspapers and local identity. 

Keynote speakers include Cambridge professor Clare Pettitt, who will talk about how nineteenth-century ship passengers created their own shipboard newspapers, and Professor Samuel Etienne of the Ėcole Pratique des Hautes Ėtudes, Paris, who will show how digital research techniques can reveal networks connecting punk fanzines. 

The event begins with a training day for PhD students, followed by two days of presentations by academics from 22 difference countries. 

To book your place, visit the Leeds Beckett University website.