Slow Online Conference
6-17 July 2026

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Last Year’s Conference

Keynote Announcement:

Wunpini Fatimata Mohammed, Cornell University, will provide the keynote for the conference on Ghanese television in crisis.

Wunpini is assistant professor at the Department of Communication and has published on television’s transformation in Ghana and beyond. Her recent book tells the history of Ghanese Television. She also works on diasporic communities and gender.

This Years Theme

This year’s theme pays particular attention to the feeling of crisis that envelops us and television in a myriad of ways. Television, in the UK at least, was shut down during one large crisis of the last century – namely during the Second World War, and television black outs were sometimes used strategically elsewhere at other moments of crisis. But television is also there to witness in moments of crisis, perhaps most iconically during the terrorist attacks on the Twin Towers in New York on 11 September 2001. And, crucially, television provides us with the opportunities to work through the ‘structure of feeling’ (Williams, 1973) of crisis that we may experience at any time – and perhaps particularly pertinently at the moment. Interestingly, this is also a moment of crisis for television itself: as television is re-imagined for online delivery, we are moving away from PSB to PSM, funding structures are questioned and re-conceptualised, institutions are directly under attack by politicians and self-censorship is widespread. And of course we should not forget to mention the downturn in production, affecting confidence in the industries, and the continued loss of (national) mass audiences for all but exceptional television or television events.

Provisional Programme Overview

Day/TimeMonday, 6 JulyTuesday, 7 JulyWednesday, 8 JulyThursday, 9 JulyFriday, 10 July
Morning BST Institutional Crisis Yuki Watanabe, Dr Mhairi Brennan, and Elizabeth Evans  Crisis beyond the Individual Sarah Lahm, Janet Atinuke Onuh, Lauren Dyll and Sarah Gibson, and Sofia Bull
Lunchtime (12-2pm BST)Opening Workshop Gender and Leadership Anja Louis and Felicity Mendoza, Anne Marit Risum Waade and Paola De Rosa, and Theresa TrimmelCrises and Gender in Spanish Streaming Television Fiona Noble, Joanne Britland and Abigail LoxhamReal World Crisis and TV Melissa Beattie, Shahriar Khonsari, and Ipsita Sahu
AfternoonTelevision, Technology and Change Subin Paul, Benjamin Burroughs, and Victoria PistivsekPolitical Crisis and TV Greg Cotton, Shahriar Khonsari, and Elke Weissmann Television and Gender Dr Jolene Mairs Dyer, Ben Keightley, Rebecca Pearce, and Helle Kannik Haastrup 
Day/TimeMonday, 13 JulyTuesday, 14 JulyWednesday, 15 JulyThursday, 16 JulyFriday, 17 July
Morning BSTGenre, TV and Crisis Alex Symons, Mesut Bostan, and Jelena Krivosic   Platformisation as Crisis Pauliina Tuomi, Sofie Vermoesen, and Robert Boucaut  
Lunchtime (12-2pm BST) Violence and Death on TV Jonas Lindkvist, and Dr. Andi Schwartz      Closing workshop
AfternoonChanging Societies and TV Min Xu, Olivia Helmholz-Vero, and Sahar SaadatStreaming and Seriality Guillermo Echauri, Aris Mousoutzanis, and Valentina ReTechnological Change and Crisis Augusto Ramos Bozzetti, and Sergio Minniti  Industry, Change and Society Christina Wilkins, Landry Digeon, and Jennifer Lynn Jones