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Specfic 2021 takes place on December 1–3 at ¹û¶³´«Ã½. The conference features keynotes by Professor Edward James (University College Dublin), Dr. Merja Polvinen (University of Helsinki), and Professor Jonas Linderoth (University of Gothenburg). See the program and a presentation of the keynote speakers below. For an updated and more detailed program, see the PDF attached to this page (right-hand column on desktop, bottom of the page on mobile).

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Wedneday, December 1

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Thursday, December 2

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Friday, December 3

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Keynote Speakers

Edward James, Emeritus Professor of Medieval History at University College Dublin.

Edward James read History at Oxford, and his Oxford DPhil was in early medieval archaeology. He taught early medieval history (and some archaeology) at various universities, including York and Reading, for 43 years, before ending up as Professor of Medieval History at University College Dublin. He retired in 2012, although he continues to teach occasionally, in Cambridge. He chose to specialise in early medieval history because he was bowled over by his reading of The Lord of the Rings, before going to university. In 1986 he became editor of Foundation: The International Review of Science Fiction, which he continued until 2000. In 1994 he published Science Fiction in the Twentieth Century (Oxford). He edited various books, notably with Farah Mendlesohn, on Babylon 5, on Terry Pratchett, and, eventually The Cambridge Companion to Science Fiction (which won a Hugo in 2005) and The Cambridge Companion to Fantasy Literature. With Farah Mendlesohn he wrote A Short History of Fantasy (2009). The last book on science fiction he published was Lois McMaster Bujold (Illinois University Press, 2015). He was won the Eaton Award, the Pilgrim Award, and the IAFA’s Distinguished Scholar Award. In 2015 he won the British Science Fiction Association’s Non-Fiction Award for his website on science fiction and fantasy writers in the Great War (1914-1918), which is an ongoing project which he will never finish.

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Merja Polvinen, Senior Lecturer in English and Docent in Comparative Literature at the University of Helsinki.

Merja Polvinen is a former board member of The Finnish Society for Science Fiction and Fantasy Research, and currently Chair of the Advisory Board of the journal Fafnir, as well as a PI in the research consortium Instrumental Narratives (2018–2022; https://instrumentalnarratives.wordpress.com/), where her team focuses on speculative fiction at the limits of narrative. Her current research focuses on cognitive literary studies, and recent publications on e.g. China Miéville, Christopher Priest and Catherynne Valente have appeared in The Cognitive Humanities (Palgrave), Cognitive Literary Science (Oxford UP) and The Edinburgh Companion to Contemporary Narrative Theories. For 2019–2020 she was a visiting fellow at the Swedish Collegium for Advanced Study in Uppsala, working on a monograph on self-reflection and contemporary speculative fiction.

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Jonas Linderoth, Professor at the Department of Education, Communication and Learning, University of Gothenburg

Jonas Linderoth is a professor in education as well as a professor in the subject Media, aesthetics and narration. He has a background as an artist and art teacher.ÌýMost of his research concerns games and gaming as cultural practices.ÌýJonas isÌýthe author of several articles for journals such asÌýJournal of gaming andÌývirtual worlds, Simulation and gamingÌýandÌýTransactions of theÌýDigital Games ResearchÌýAssociation.

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