About The Centre
The Centre for Fantasy and the Fantastic at the University of Glasgow brings together a portfolio of research, knowledge exchange and educational activities. We boast the world's first ever MLitt in Fantasy Literature, established in 2015, and our academics lead a large cohort of doctoral students and postdoctoral researchers, including scholars funded by LKAS, the AHRC, the Leverhulme Trust and the British Academy.
We organise a popular annual conference (GIFCon) and we host large-scale international meetings , including Once and Future Fantasies (2022; in collaboration with the International Association for the Fantastic in the Arts) and Fantasy's Present Pasts (2026; the inaugural European Conference on the Fantastic).
The Centre’s aims are:
- To consolidate a world-leading centre for conducting and disseminating research in Fantasy and the Fantastic
- To attract and educate a diverse cohort of scholars at MLitt, PhD, DFA and postdoctoral level
- To conduct pioneering research projects with external funders and partners
- To bring together academia and the wider fantasy community (including creators and performers) in order to understand Fantasy’s transformative intellectual, cultural and social potential
We understand Fantasy and the Fantastic as broad categories. Areas that members of the Centre work on include:
- The Diverse Histories of Fantasy
- Myth, Legend, Folklore and Fairy Tales
- Theorizing the Fantastic
- Imaginary Languages
- Children’s Fantasy
- Energy Imaginaries, Past, Present and Future
- Fantasy in the Anthropocene
- Evaporated Genres (Speculative Fiction, Science Fiction, the Weird)
- Fantasy Across Media (Film, Comics, Games, Fan Cultures, Illustration)
- Science Fiction and Medical Humanities
- Gothic and Supernatural Fiction
- Fantasy and Science
- Fantasy, Gender, and Sexuality
- World-building and Speculative World-making