Schedule: Saturday 27th September 2025

Please note, all times are German-time, (UTC+1) / UK +1. All online sessions will run using Microsoft Teams. Links for each panel will be added before the conference takes place.

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9–10.30am – Panel Session

Panel 10	Panel 11	Panel 12 (online)
The Dead God, The Golden Throne, and A Hope Messianic: An Examination on the Organizing (Dead) Power of the Master Signifier and The Abandonment of Messiah  – Tobin Johnston	In Life, War. In Death, Peace. In Life, Shame. In Death, Atonement: The Death Korps of Krieg and the Cultural Memory of Total War – Michal Cáp	Litany of Sacrifice: Suffering Violence in the Name of Christian Nationalism – LJ DeGraffenreid
Grimdark Metaphysics: Is there an Ultimate Reality in WH40K? – Thomas Arnold	Enhanced or Enslaved? Autonomy, Fairness and Morality in the Empire of Man – Maximilian A. Friehs & Martin Dechant	“Victory, as the galaxy burns”: Narrative State Transitions and the Commercial Context of Warhammer 40k – James Shelton
	Millennialism and the Coming Tyranid Invasion: The Doomsday Beliefs of the Genestealer Cults – Gary R Maixner III	The Unforgiven and the Fallen – Challenging Shame as a Social Identity through the Risen and the Black Sheep Effect – Christopher A Porter

10.30–10.45am – Break

10.45–12.15pm – Panel session

Panel 13	Panel 14	Panel 15 (online)
Grimdark Xenofeminity – Margaret J. Naylor	The linguistic landscape in the early Imperium of Man – Low Gothic at the time of the Great Crusade and theoretical accounts of language change – Gunnar Jacob & Britta Schulte	On Terrain Kits and Speculative Urbanism – Tonguc Sezen
Konrad Curze and the obstacles of crime prevention – Julia Reichenbacher	Faith alone can overturn the universe: A Corpus-Based Critical Discourse Analysis of the Horus Heresy as Warhammer 40,000’s Discursive Justification – Mathilde Guernut & Anna Baleige	The Lives of Objects:  Warhammer miniatures as artefacts of craft, gameplay and narrative – Dimitrios Darzentas & Hanne Wagner
The not-quite-so-dark future: colour coding in Warhammer 40K – Joachim Besson	Missile-Launcher vs Holo-Werfer: The Problem of the German Translation of Space Crusade – Karl Sommer	A People’s History of the Imperium of Man: Warhammer 40,000’s Unreliable Narrator, Canonicity, and Historiography – Michele Lewis

12.15–1pm – Lunch

1–2.30pm – Panel session

Panel 16	Panel 17 (online)	Panel 18 (online)
If oppressed communities had superpowers: Warhammer 40,000 as a model of social power relations in Western societies since the 19th century – Anna Baleige & Mathilde Guernut	New Dark Age – Synthesizing Historical Understanding through Warhammer – Alexander William Hofing	Mechanicus as Mirror: Expressions of developments in ontology, cyberfeminism, and scientific philosophy – Sarah Keenan & Alexander Krieg
Post-relativistic economics: The distribution of resources beyond Einstein’s causality in Warhammer 40,000’s universe – Simone Chiesi	The Immaterium Within: Daemons and the Warp as Psycho-Cosmological Topography in Warhammer 40,000 – Vlad Manciu	Reluctant Gods: Divine Interveners Resisting Deification – Jacob Buckman & Rob Byer
Of Tracery and Heresy – How Gothic is Imperial Architecture? – Emily Darda	The Mechanical Reproduction of Totalitarian Truths in the Imperium of Mankind – A Zizekian Reading of the Imperial Creed and Its Application – Jacob Thomas	Masse und Macht und Waaagh: Orks through Canetti’s Crowds and Power – Richard Aubrey Slaughter

2.30–2.45 – Break

2.45–4pm – Panel discussion: Where next for academic Warhammer?

4pm – Close