Showing: 46 - 53 of 53 RESULTS
2025Friday 26th September 2025OnlinePanel 3Fulgrim vs Ferrus Manus (c) Games Workshop

Mythbusters, icebergs, and why you learn more from Warhammer than you realise

The TV show MythBusters (2003 – 2016) took popular myths – can a car engine run on Coca Cola? – and put them to the test. I will swap MythBusters’ engineering for social science to put a myth about learning and Warhammer under a metaphorical microscope: “Doing Warhammer is a waste of time because you …

2025Friday 26th September 2025OnlinePanel 3Fulgrim vs Ferrus Manus (c) Games Workshop

Skulls, Gothic Futures, and the Weight of Iron: Visual Aesthetics and Design in Warhammer 40,000

The Warhammer 40’000 universe is immediately recognisable through its distinct visualgrammar: gothic arches, excessive skulls, layered plate armour, cathedral starships, andbaroque insignia.  This presentation examines the design and visual aesthetics ofWarhammer 40’000, exploring how these elements construct its oppressive “grimdark”identity and sustain immersion across miniatures, artwork, and digital adaptations.Using visual culture theory (Mirzoeff, 1999) and …

2025Friday 26th September 2025In personPanel 2Fulgrim vs Ferrus Manus (c) Games Workshop

Da red wunz go fasta! Depictions of Ork Technology in Warhammer 40,000: between colonial tropes, techno-spiritualism and the technological anti-sublime

This talk addresses Ork technology in Warhammer 40,000, focusing on the intersection of science, colonial tropes and mysticism. Ork machinery is often cobbled together from scrap and seemingly nonsensical parts but nevertheless functions with surprising efficacy (or catastrophic failure). Two different explanations are given in game materials: Fan discussions lean towards a hybrid model: Ork …

2025Friday 26th September 2025In personPanel 2Fulgrim vs Ferrus Manus (c) Games Workshop

Da WAAAGH! Through Time: Temporal Paradoxes in the Saga of Warlord Grizgutz

The story of Ork Warlord Grizgutz—who inadvertently travels back in time via the Warp, kills his earlier self, and steals his favorite gun—offers a uniquely absurd case study in temporal paradoxes. This presentation examines the plausibility of such an event through the lens of real-world physics, focusing on time travel, causality, and the nature of …

2025Friday 26th September 2025In personPanel 2Fulgrim vs Ferrus Manus (c) Games Workshop

Gifts of the Grandfather: Warhammer’s Plague Narratives from the Perspective of an Epidemiologist

Plague narratives, from Thucydides’ account of the Plague of Athens to Poe’s The Masque of the Red Death, pervade literature and represent a compelling theme and narrative device into the modern age. The Warhammer universe is rife with plague narratives, often the work of the Chaos God Nurgle, or his followers, human, transhuman or demonic. …

2025Friday 26th September 2025In personPanel 1Fulgrim vs Ferrus Manus (c) Games Workshop

In the grim dankness of the far future, there is only memes

Internet memes have become ubiquitous tools of digital communication and a fundamental component of everyday communicative practices (Johann & Bülow, 2018, 1). Far from being merely humorous images, memes function as multimodal artifacts, so called Language-Image-Texts (Osterroth 2015, 2019, 2020), through which users can perform speech acts in the sense of Austin (1962) and Searle …

2025Friday 26th September 2025In personPanel 1Fulgrim vs Ferrus Manus (c) Games Workshop

The Gaze of the Gods: Chaos, Symbolism, and Humanity’s Reflections

The Chaos Gods of Warhammer 40K are more than mere antagonists; they are manifestations of mythological archetypes, shaped by religious iconography, esoteric symbols, and historical depictions of divinity and damnation. Their presence is both active and passive—they gaze upon mortals, shaping their fate, while mortals gaze back, becoming reflections of the gods themselves. This paper …

2025Friday 26th September 2025In personPanel 1Fulgrim vs Ferrus Manus (c) Games Workshop

Ctrl+Alt+Deus: The Ridiculous Rise of Data in the 41st Millennium

Humanity currently finds itself awash in data, generating over 300 exabytes daily through a mesh of connected devices, digital platforms, and increasingly autonomous systems. While this may seem extraordinary, it is but a prelude to the data-saturated absurdity imagined in the Warhammer 40,000 universe – a setting where information is sacred, dangerous, and often utterly …