Finally, some good news: The world's only Warhammer academic conference is returning in September to present more talks like 'The ethical implications of the Imperium’s war with chaos and the inverted meaning of order'

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In the grim darkness of the 21st century, there is only scholarly analysis of the grim darkness of the 41st millennium.

An illustration of a squad of Space Marine terminators firing storm bolters.
(Image credit: Games Workshop)

Last year, I had the pleasure of covering the existence of the Warhammer Conference, the world's first academic conference devoted to philosophical, theoretical, and otherwise scholarly appraisal of everything involving Space Marines, Chaos demons, and grim darkness both futuristic and fantastical. Today, I'm pleased to report that the Warhammer Conference is returning this September to Heidelberg, Germany for the second of what we can only hope is a long-lived annual tradition.

As with last year's academic gathering, Warhammer Conference: 2nd Edition can be attended both in person and—if you're not in the Heidelberg neighborhood—online via livestream.

(Image credit: Games Workshop)

"We believe that this conference can be appealing not only to a classic academic audience, but also to Warhammer fans at large," said organizer Joachim Besson in a press release. "By live-streaming and sharing all talks online, we aim to reach a wide audience of Warhammer enthusiasts."

If you aren't sure whether you're the right brand of sicko to enjoy academic Warhammer theory, you're in luck. All of last year's talks are freely available on the Warhammer Conference YouTube channel, covering philosophy, literature, games studies, and more.

Markus Ressel's "Are We the Baddies? The Ethical Implications of the Imperium's War with Chaos" might be a good opener. Or for the entomologically-minded, there's Elena Polyakova's "Tyranid xenobiology compared to real-life eusocial insects." Or if you really want to make your brain hurt, you could watch Tom Reichert's "The Concept of Warp Space from a Physical Perspective."

(Image credit: Games Workshop)

As for what might be discussed at the second Warhammer Conference, we can only guess until the program is announced in August. Talks about sociological mimesis and Genestealer Cults, maybe? Considering the walking, hulking tomb of the Astartes Dreadnought through a transhumanist lens? The gestalt psychology of the Greenskin species? We can only dream.

If you're an academic yourself and you'd like to submit your own scholarly contributions for consideration, the conference is accepting abstracts until June 30. For details on attendance, abstract submissions, and the conference's academic archive, check out the Warhammer Conference website.

Lincoln Carpenter
Lincoln Carpenter
News Writer

Lincoln has been writing about games for 12 years—unless you include the essays about procedural storytelling in Dwarf Fortress he convinced his college professors to accept. Leveraging the brainworms from a youth spent in World of Warcraft to write for sites like Waypoint, Polygon, and Fanbyte, Lincoln spent three years freelancing for PC Gamer before joining on as a full-time News Writer in 2024, bringing an expertise in Caves of Qud bird diplomacy, getting sons killed in Crusader Kings, and hitting dinosaurs with hammers in Monster Hunter.

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