Online Conferences: A New Paradigm for Periodical Studies?

In spring 2020, during the cataclysmic first wave of COVID-19, academic conferences across the world were postponed or cancelled. A rare exception was in the field of periodical studies: an asynchronous online conference, Future States: Modernity and National Identity in Popular Magazines, 1890–1945, co-directed by Andrew Thacker (NTU) and Tim Satterthwaite, which opened on schedule and ran for three weeks (30 March–17 April 2020). A selection of five papers from the conference forms the body of this special issue of the Journal of European Periodical Studies, and these are introduced below. Given the spate of online academic events that have followed, this introduction first offers some general thoughts on the Future States conference model, in the hope that its pioneering approach may be of interest.