Hi, I'm Mike

[Mike]

Hi everyone, and welcome to the Warhammer Conference forum. My name is Mike, and you will know me as one of the co-founders of the conference, and the person responsible for pretty much all of the techy side of things: the website, the YouTube channel etc. I also do a fair bit of the general admin relating to the conference and making sure that everything works.

For those of you who don't know much about my background, I'm an academic based at Lancaster University, UK. I work in the academic marketing department where I an Programme Director of our MSc Digital and Social Media Marketing, and where I do research into all sorts of different things, from prosumption and consumer culture to work-based learning reflective practice. I actually started off as a literature scholar, with a specialism in science fiction, but have moved into marketing as basically, that's where the work is. Of course, it helps that I was a professional marketer before I moved into academia in my 30s.

For those of you who are interested, you can check out some of my links:

• Mike Ryder staff profile

• My personal website and portfolio

I also have two books coming out later this year:

• Advertising: A Practitioner Perspective (Bloomsbury) -- textbook coming out November 2026

• Science Fiction and the Future of War (Routledge) -- monograph coming out September 2026.

[Markus]

I am looking forward to "Science Fiction and the Future of War" and I think if time permits it this year, it would be great to have a talk by you regarding the topics of the book.

I know that as you said, you have been too busy to have a talk yourself in the last 2 years, but I can not imagine that I am the only one who wants our High Inquisitor Ryder to have his time in the spotlight.

Thank you for your work for this endeavour and let us find out where this all takes us next!

[Alexander W. Hofing]

Also very eager to see Science Fiction and the Future of War, that's right up my proverbial academic alley.

And yes, also, thank you for your tireless efforts in making this conference what it is!

[Mike]

I will have to let you both know when the book is out. It's a bit too expensive to expect non academics to buy it but I will see if I can do something to help you out. I do get sent a few free copies so I will see if I have any spares left to send you

In terms of the conference, yes indeed, I will try and get something together to give a talk. I actually have a lot of different material I could talk on. I have my original 'super soldiers' talk from about 2019, but I also then have the chapter I wrote for Science Fiction and the Future of War; plus a chapter about war and soldiery that I'm currently working on. So many choices I don't know which one to pick!

[Mike]

I'm also hoping this forum might help us come together to form some more academic collaborations. It's a much better place to have 'slow' conversations