Conference organisation
SF/F Now, University of Warwick, 22-23 August 2014
Co-organiser of Irradiating the Object: M. John Harrison, University of Warwick, 21 August 2014
Member of the organising committee for Global Sf: the 2011 J. Lloyd Eaton Conference, University of California, Riverside, 11–13 February 2011
Co-organiser of HistoryFantasy, BCUC, 23 March 2002
Organiser of ANTI:BODIES: a multidisciplinary conference exploring the relationships between power and the body, BCUC, 13 March 1999
Member of the organising committee for The Time Machine: Past, Present and Future centennial symposium, Imperial College, London, 26–29 July 1995
Organiser of Strange Attractors: Kicking the Reality Fix, University of Reading, 3 December 1994
Co-organiser of Re-reading the Fantastic, University College London, 9 December 1993
Keynote addresses
‘This is the Worst of All Possible Worlds’, Dystopia Now, Birkbeck, 26 May 2017
‘Staying with Wahala: Making Time in the Anthropocene’, Africa of the Past, Africa of the Future: The Dynamics of Time in Africanist Scholarship and Art, SOAS, University of London, 5–6 May 2017
‘Things Above, and Beyond: the Anthropocene Unconscious of Miéville’s ‘Polynia’ and Llansó’s Crumbs‘, Fantastic Material(s): Things and the Workings of the Non-Real, Institute of English Cultures and Literatures, Uniwersytet Śląski w Katowicach, Poland 7–8 July 2016
‘Afrofuturism Archive Anthropocene’, Global Fantastika, University of Lancaster, 4–5 July 2016
‘Robots on the Streets, Icebergs in the Skies: London, Austerity, Anthropocene’, Fantasies of Contemporary Culture, Cardiff University/Prifysgol Caerdydd, 23 May 2016
‘Disability, Monsters, Utopia: Some Lessons from Guillermo del Toro’, Disability Studies/Science Fiction, Universität zu Köln, 28–9 November 2014
‘“It Ain’t No Jive, Stayin’ Alive”: Insurgency and Epidermality in Blaxploitation Sf’, Current Research in Speculative Fiction, University of Liverpool, 20 June 2014
‘Eat Drink Man Robot: Ordinary Science Fiction’, The Science Fiction Studies Symposium@Science Fiction Media: The 2013 J. Lloyd Eaton Conference/The 2013 SFRA Conference, University of California, Riverside, 11–14 April 2013
‘Slipstream Cinema: Dick without the Dick’, Worlds Out of Joint: Re-Imagining Philip K. Dick, Technische Universität Dortmund, 15–18 November 2012
‘Spectres Are Haunting Europe: Contemporary Cinemas of the Fantastic’, New Directions of the European Fantastic after the Cold War: The Second Annual Conference of the Gesellschaft für Fantastikforschung, Universität Salzburg, 29 September–1 October 2011
‘Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Matrix: Imagineering the World Market’, The Future Ain’t What it Used to Be: Interactions of Past, Present and Future in Literature and Visual Media, University of Dundee, 17 June 2009
‘Writing/Genre/History: Everyone Else Is Wrong (and so am I)’, State of the Art: Science Fiction Histories, Curtin University of Technology/University of Western Australia, 22–23 March 2008
Invited research presentations
‘Making Habitable Worlds in the Late Anthropocene’, The University of Warwick, 20 November 2017
‘The Anthropocene Unconscious of African Second Contact Narratives: District 9, Rosewater, Lagoon’, Inventions of the Text seminar series, University of Durham, 10 May 2017
‘Figuring History in Robots of Brixton and Crumbs’, The Distorted Mirror: Reflections of Time and Space in Speculative Media, Bayreuth International Graduate School of African Studies/Universität Bayreuth, Germany 29–30 April 2017
‘Afrofuturism Archive Anthropocene’, Cornell University, 17 April 2017
‘Making Afrofuturism, Salvaging History’, University of California, Riverside, 10 April 2017
‘Afrofuturism Archive Accrue Artefact’, King’s Fantastic Talks series, King’s College, London, 27 February 2016
‘The Afrocyberpunk City’, The City of the Future symposium, Universität Hamburg, Germany 29–30 January 2016
‘The Fragmented Social and the Episodicity of Everyday Life in Kontroll’ Research seminar at Technical University of Liberec, the Czech Republic, 28 October 2014.
‘Sf and New Hollywood’, live video lecture for Universität Hamburg, 12 June 2012, available as part of The Virtual Introduction to Science Fiction project at http://virtual-sf.com/?page_id=339
‘What Does Our Future Look Like? Visualising Science Fiction’, Out of this World exhibition’s Science Fiction Study Day, British Library, 16 September 2011
‘The Cinema of John Sayles: From Billy Zane to Brecht and Bakhtin, and Back Again’, Marxism and Culture seminar series, Institute of Advanced Legal Studies, University of London, 15 May 2009, and the University of Reading’s Department of Film, Theatre and Television’s research seminar series, 18 March 2009
‘Proliferation, Peristalsis and Ejaculation: Narrative and Spectacle in Digital Sf Cinema’, Narratives in Transition: Literary and Cultural Change since 1989, Institute of English Studies, University of London, 25–26 April 2008
‘Tortured Torsos: Anorexic Subjectivity in Fight Club and The Machinist’, Postgraduate Masterclass Series, Institute of Advanced Studies, University of Western Australia, 19 March 2008, and the Postgraduate Research Seminar Series, Bristol Business School, 18 January 2008
‘The Sublime Objects of Virtuality: Computer-Generated Imagery and the Erasure of Labour in Contemporary Sf Films’, From the Technological Sublime to the Urban Pastoral: Rethinking Urban and Industrial Landscapes Seminar Series, Seminar 2 – The Cinematic Sublime, University College London, 12 April 2007
Plenaries and panels
‘Art/Science at the Edge’ closing plenary discussion with Susanne Winterling, chaired by Bodhisatva Chattopadhyay, Synchronizing the World: Historic Times, Globalized Times, Anthropogenic Times, Universitetet i Oslo, Norway, 12–14 June 2017
‘The Monstrous-Fantastic: In Conversation with China Miéville’, 33rd International Conference on the Fantastic in the Arts, Orlando, 21–25 March, 2012
‘Sf and the Short Film’ plenary panel member, 33rd International Conference on the Fantastic in the Arts, Orlando, 21–25 March, 2012
‘Editors Panel’ member, 31st International Conference on the Fantastic in the Arts, Orlando, 17–21 March 2010
‘Editors Panel’ member, Film & History Biennial: Film and Science: Fictions, Documentaries, and Beyond, University of Chicago, 30 October–2 November 2008
‘Reading Science Fiction’ plenary panel member, Science Fiction Research Association 2008, Lawrence, Kansas, 10–13 July 2008
‘SF Histories’, plenary panel member, State of the Art: Science Fiction Histories, Curtin University of Technology/University of Western Australia, Perth, 22–23 March 2008
‘Science Fiction and Remediation’ plenary panel member, 27th International Conference on the Fantastic in the Arts, Fort Lauderdale, 15–19 March 2006
Closing Plenary Chair, A Commonwealth of Science Fiction, University of Liverpool, 5–8 August 2004
‘Media Science Fiction’ plenary panel member, 2001: A Celebration of British Science Fiction, University of Liverpool, 28–30 July 2001
Conference papers
‘“Don’t Give Him No Sass or He’ll Kick Yo’ Ass”: Anti-Imperialism and Race in US Countercultural Sf Cinema’, 33rd International Conference on the Fantastic in the Arts, Orlando, March 21–25, 2012
‘Globalised Labour and World Sf Cinema’, The Eighth Annual Historical Materialism Conference, SOAS, 10–13 November 2011
‘Border Crossings: Labour in Contemporary World Sf Cinema’, Global Sf: the 2011 J. Lloyd Eaton Conference, University of California, Riverside, 11–13 February 2011
‘Apes and Alcoholics, Duplicates and Dreams: Enrolling Film Noir’, The Noir Sensorium, Trent University, Canada, 7–9 October 2010
‘“If it had a grave I’d spit on it”: Flash Gordon and the Fidelity Fallacy’, 31st International Conference on the Fantastic in the Arts, Orlando, 17–21 March 2010
‘Science Fiction, Globalisation and the Logic of Capital’, The Sixth Annual Historical Materialism Conference, SOAS/Birkbeck, 27–29 November 2009
‘Insects and Intentions: Imamura’s Women’, Imamura Shohei Symposium, UWE/Arnolfini, 17 October 2009
‘Serial Infidelities and Extraordinary Renditions: The Many Lives of Flash Gordon’, Science Fiction across Media: Adaptation/Novelisation, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, 28–30 May 2009
‘The Parapraxes of Globalisation: Jules Verne and the Unconscious of Science Fiction’, Extraordinary Voyages: Jules Verne and Beyond – the 2009 J. Lloyd Eaton Conference, University of California Riverside, 1–3 May 2009
‘The Thin Men: Anorexic Subjectivity in Fight Club and The Machinist’, The Fifth Annual Historical Materialism Conference, University College London, 7–9 November 2008
‘Staging the Limits to Knowledge: Cognition, Estrangement and Spectacle in 2001: A Space Odyssey’, Film & History Biennial: Film and Science: Fictions, Documentaries, and Beyond, University of Chicago, 30 October–2 November 2008
‘Peristalsis, Proliferation and Ejaculation: Narrative and Spectacle in Digital Sf Cinema’, Science Fiction Research Association 2008, Lawrence, Kansas, 10–13 July 2008
‘Screening Mars: Desire and Denial in Aelita and Just Imagine’, Chronicling Mars: The 2008 J. Lloyd Eaton Conference, University of California, Riverside, 16–18 May 2008
‘The Bald and the Beautiful: The Performativity of Billy Zane’, Cine-Excess II: The 2nd International Conference on Global Cult Film Traditions, Institute of Contemporary Arts, London, 1–3 May 2008
‘But Machines Did It: CGI, the Erasure of Labour and the Commodification of Social Knowledge in Contemporary Blockbuster Cinema’, The Fourth Annual Historical Materialism Conference, University College London, 9–11 November 2007
‘In Space No One Can Hear You Cream: The Second Wave, the Backlash and the Sf Films of Norman J. Warren’, Cine-Excess: An International Conference on Global Cult Film Traditions, Brunel University Cult Film Archive/Sci-Fi London Film Festival, 3–5 May, 2007
‘Zeta One, Queen Kong, The Sexplorer and Inseminoid: Negotiating Second-Wave Feminism in 1970s British Sex-Comedy and Sexploitation Sf Films’, 28th International Conference on the Fantastic in the Arts, Fort Lauderdale, 14–18 March 2007
‘“Wanking Away and Pretending It’s Sex”: Metaphor and Commodity in the Criticism and Fiction of M John Harrison’, Science Fiction Research Association 2005, Las Vegas, 23–26 June 2005
‘Fucking Machines: Sex, Technology, Capital and Intersubjectivity in the Sf Films of Tsukamoto Shinya’, 26th annual International Conference on the Fantastic in the Arts, Fort Lauderdale, 17–19 March 2005
‘Cube: The Canadian Matrix’, A Commonwealth of Science Fiction, University of Liverpool, 5–8 August 2004
‘Economic Expansion and the Green Lung of the City of Science: The Pastoral Science Fiction and Fantasy of Gwyneth Jones/Ann Halam’, 2001: A Celebration of British Science Fiction, University of Liverpool, 28–30 July 2001
‘From the Mountains of the Mexican South-East: Creating Spaces of/for Revolution’, Radical Tradition 2: Radical Spaces and Places, Birkbeck, 3 March 2001
‘The Sound of Science: Cultural Value and the Crap Sf Movie’, Defining Cult Movies, University of Nottingham, 17–19 November 2000
‘Cyborg Cinema and Spectatorship’, Screen Studies Conference, University of Glasgow, 30 June–2 July 2000
‘Menaces, Phantom and Otherwise: the Star Wars trilogy, American National Identity, and the Culture of Nostalgia’, Science Fiction and Organisation, University of Leicester, 14–15 September, 1999
‘Cyborgs Unite!: Adorno, Chaos and the Borg’, Gothic Spirit Gothic Flesh, Mount Saint Vincent’s University, Nova Scotia, 14–17 August, 1999
‘Oh My God, This Film’s Really Turning Me On: Sf Cinema and the Unqueering of Camp’, Incense and Insensibility: Science Fiction, Psychedelia, and the 1960s and 1970s, University of Liverpool, 12 June 1999
‘Advanced Tool Use and Cyberotica: The Ecstasy of Catastrophe in Tobe Hooper’s The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and JG Ballard’s Crash’, Looking at the Future, University of Sussex, May 1994
‘The Dream of a Million Years: Rediscovering Mars, 1983–93’, Re-Reading the Fantastic, University College London, 9 December 1993
Mark Bould 