Robert and Lisa Sainsbury Fellow 2016 - 2017
PhD, Birkbeck College, University of London, 2016
Simon Turner is a Cultural Studies scholar with an interest in Japanese Studies, particularly transcultural flows of Japanese popular culture. His primary research interest is global Boys’ Love manga fandom as well as online communities, popular culture and fandom studies, gender, sexuality, and queer theory.
He completed his PhD at Birkbeck College at the University of London in Cultural Studies with his thesis that utilized a digital ethnographic approach to a Boys’ Love manga fan site. His thesis received The John Crump Studentship award from The British Association for Japanese Studies.
He has published his research on transcultural Boys’ Love manga fandom in Manga-Vision (Monash University Press) and will contribute to the forthcoming Asian Cultural Flows: Industries, Policies, and Media Consumers (Springer). He is also exploring East-Asian reception of Western popular media texts including reception of The Twilight Saga, to be featured in the upcoming Fan Phenomena (Intellect), and The Hunger Games in Thailand.
He is also the News Review Editor of Comics Forum, an online portal that aims to increase the visibility and accessibility of comics scholarship.