Monsters are often figured as objects of fear, disgust, and threat. Yet monsters can also be playful, pleasurable, cute, and comforting. Join us and explore how the monstrous becomes playful across games, media, and everyday culture, and what happens where horror, games, toys, and
play meet!
Thursday 24 and Friday 25 September 2026
British Summer Time (BST, UTC+1)
Winchester School of Art, Harvard Lecture Theatre (63A / East Building, Level 3) and MS Teams. Full programme below.
Thursday 24 September — Harvard Lecture Theatre (WSA 63A / East Building, Level 3) and Online
09:30–10:00 Welcome and opening
10:00–11:00 Keynote Address
Ewan Kirkland
Monstrosity and Modernity: Contained, Categorised and Captured Monsters in Video Games
10:00–10:40 Presentation | 10:40–11:00 Audience Q&A
11:00–11:30 Tea break
11:30–12:45 Horror Icons, Nostalgia and Monstrous Attachment
11:30–11:45 David Edwards — How Mother’s Boy Jason Reinvented Himself to Be the Horror Genre’s Cosy Companion
11:45–12:00 Gabi Garcia — How You Never Outgrow Vampires: Childhood Media, Nostalgia, and the Affective Afterlife of the Vampiric Figure
12:00–12:15 Jordi Martín Pons — Why We Keep Monsters Close: Bes, Grogu, and the Affective Life of Grotesque Bodies
12:15–12:45 Panel discussion and audience Q&A
13:00–14:00 Lunch
14:00–15:15 Monstrous Play, Performance and Desire
14:00–14:15 Ruikang Wu — Ludic Zombie: The Playful Monster
14:15–14:30 Anna Mangnus — Collaborative Fear: Horror, Performance, and the Pleasures of Terror in Tabletop Role-Playing Games
14:30–14:45 Klemens Franz — Beyond Monster Combat: Ludic Structures of Monstrosity in Analogue Games
14:45–15:15 Panel discussion and audience Q&A
15:30–16:00 Tea break
16:00–16:50 Locating Monsters: Code and Liminal Space
16:00–16:15 Samuel Pegg — “It’s There! But Where?” The Monster Under the Code and the Hunt for AI
16:15–16:30 Amonie Song — The Relief of Being Hunted: Monsters as Locators in Liminal-Space Horror
16:30–16:50 Panel discussion and audience Q&A
Friday 25 September — Online
09:30–11:00 Monstrous Bodies, Childhood and Material Culture
09:30–09:45 Jacinta Dietrich and Tess Ezzy — Monstrous Children: The Monster as Neuronormative Transgression
09:45–10:00 Tianni Xu — Topophilia, Topophobia, and Monstrous Embodiment: The Kowloon Walled City in Paranormal HK
10:00–10:15 Ece Arıhan and Balım İslamoğlu — Cute Has Teeth: Fugglers and the Semiotics of Kimo-Kawaii
10:15–10:30 Dalia Mostafa Abdulrahman — Playable Death: Mummies, Safe Corpses, and Children’s Literature
10:30–11:00 Panel discussion and audience Q&A
11:00–11:15 Tea break
11:15–12:30 Game Systems, Miniatures and Playable Monstrosity
11:15–11:30 Wenqing Nan (Selina) — Growing Decay in Your Palm: Playing with Nurgle Monsters from Warhammer 40,000
11:30–11:45 Yaraslau I. Kot — Interactive Exorcism: The Grotesque Transformation of Aggressors into Playful Monsters and Monster Metaphors as Trauma Processing in Ukrainian Wartime Games
11:45–12:00 Thomas Apperley, Will Hill, Ville Kankainen, Jukka Särkijärvi and Ian Sturrock — The Art of the Monstrous: The Divided Visual Cultures of Early Tabletop Role-Playing Games
12:00–12:30 Panel discussion and audience Q&A
12:30–13:30 Lunch
13:30–15:00 Digital Horror, Intimacy and the Uncanny
13:30–13:45 Jiang Luyin — Why We Need the Monster at Arm’s Length: Playful Intimacy and the Afterlife of Horror
13:45–14:00 Christina Fawcett — Cozy Horror and Playing the Uncanny
14:00–14:15 Gregory Blomquist — Confronting the Unknowable: The Reapers and Sublime Monstrosity in Mass Effect
14:15–14:30 Elena Martín-Gil — Enemies to Lovers: Evolution of Vampire Tropes and Emergence of the Charismatic Vampire
14:30–15:00 Panel discussion and audience Q&A
15:00–15:15 Tea break
15:15–16:45 Domestic Monsters: Family, Desire and Affect
15:15–15:30 Kristine Ask and collaborators — Fear, Thirst, and Fan Culture: The Erotic Appeal of Game Monsters
15:30–15:45 Scott Ennis — From Closure to Play: The Emergence of the Playful Monster in Modern Children’s Literature
15:45–16:00 Noah Borgen — Playing Angry Dad: Dysregulated Fatherhood, Safe Fear, and the Family Practice of Declawed Reactivity
16:00–16:15 Phoebe Santillan — When Monsters Become Desirable: Erotic Attraction and the Pleasures of the Monstrous
16:15–16:45 Panel discussion and audience Q&A
Please contact conference organiser Ruikang Wu with any questions: rw1m22@soton.ac.uk