Youth and Horror Research Network

The relationship between childhood and horror has persisted throughout the history of youth culture, from fairy tales and nursery rhymes to the ongoing popularity of Halloween and recent worldwide phenomena like Goosebumps and Stranger Things. For youth today, who are growing up in an age characterised by anxiety and instability, horror has the potential to help them understand the world around them, other people, and themselves. However, the meeting of children and horror consistently attracts controversy due to unsupported perceptions that the genre is a harmful influence upon children and young people. This international network aims to significantly impact upon understandings of the role of horror in children and young people's lives. By bringing together scholars, teachers at all educational levels, and cultural managers from across disciplines and sectors through a series of events, the network addresses vital questions about this frequently misrepresented relationship through the following themes:

Archives: How have societal concerns about children, young people and horror been debated and represented in the media and public sphere in the past?

Memory: How and what do adults remember about engaging with horror in their childhoods and what can this tell us about the complex relations between children and horror?

Regulation: How is the relationship between youth and horror perceived today by adults who work with children and young people and/or who are involved in the regulation of their culture?

Education: How, if at all, is horror used in education, and what resources and information are needed to support the integration of horror into educational contexts?

More information is available on the UKRI website.

While this list represents our founding membership, we consider anyone who has contributed to one of our activities to be an honorary Network member. If you are interested in collaborating with us, please reach out to C.Lester@bham.ac.uk

• Dr Catherine Lester (Principal Investigator, University of Birmingham)
• Dr Kate Egan (Co-Investigator, Northumbria University)
• Dr Filipa Antunes (Steering member, UEA)
• Professor Matt Hills (Steering member)
• Dr Pete Turner (Steering member, Oxford Brookes University)
• Professor Helen Wheatley (Steering member, University of Warwick)
• Dr Marc Andersen (Aarhus University)
• Dr Mathias Clasen (Aarhus University)
• Sam Groves (Flatpack Festival)
• Amy Smart (Flatpack Festival)
• Michael Prescott (Into Film)
• Steven Ryder (Into Film)
• Professor Stacey Abbott (Northumbria University)
• Dr Noel Brown (Liverpool Hope University)
• Dr Simon Brown
• Dr Sarah Cleary
• Dr Sheldon Hall
• Dr Ewan Kirkland (UCA)
• Xanthe Pajarillo (University of Birmingham)
• Dr Lindsey Scott (University of Suffolk)
• Dr Sam Summers (Middlesex University)

The Network officially began in November 2023 with a workshop at Northumbria University on the roles of archival and memory research in relation to the study of youth and horror. The day included a presentation by Sergio Angelini (representing Learning on Screen) on how the Box of Broadcasts and TRILT archives can be utilised for researching horror-related programming for and about youth in the UK. Talks also covered topics including: memories of underage viewing of horror (Pete Turner) and of viewing Ghostwatch, specifically (Kate Egan); death on television (Helen Wheatley); the British Horror Boom and the Press, 1957-1962 (Mervyn Marshall); and the broadcasting of horror on British television (Sheldon Hall).

In May 2024, with our partners Into Film and Flatpack Festival, we held a public screening and discussion of Gremlins at Midlands Arts Centre to acknowledge the 40th anniversary of this controversial children’s horror film and its classification history in the UK. 

• Read more about how it went, including how children and parents responded to the film.

In August 2024 we joined forces with the Recreational Fear Lab at Aarhus University, Denmark, for an academic workshop exploring youth and horror through the themes of education and play. The keynote by Dr Ellen Sandseter (Queen Maud University College for Early Childhood Education, Trondheim, Norway) presented her work on children’s ‘risky play’.

• View full programme

We collaborated again with Flatpack Festival in May 2025 to present the immersive installation Fear in the Bedroom: Youthful Experiences of Horror. Drawing on an archive of films, television, books, magazines, music, video games and other forms of everyday, horror-related culture and media from 1970-2000, the exhibition took the form of young horror-enthusiast's bedroom. It examined how horror shapes young people's understanding of the world, while challenging the notion of its harmful influence. The exhibition was hosted by ADM Exhibitions at Birmingham City University, and co-curated with Simon Brown, Sam Groves and Yilu Zhu. Materials were donated by Youth & Horror network members, and audio-visual footage provided by Media Archive for Central England (MACE) and Kaleidoscope.

• Exhibition photo album

The Youth & Horror international conference took place on 1-2 July 2025 at the University of Birmingham, with a keynote address by Dr Jessica Balanzategui (RMIT, Australia). 

Conference information

A collaboration between the University of Birmingham and Northumbria University, the Youth and Horror Research Network is an AHRC-funded, interdisciplinary, international network of scholars, educators and cultural partners, which aims to investigate and impact scholarly and public understandings of the relationship between children, youth and the horror genre. The relationship between children and horror has persisted throughout the history of youth culture, from fairy tales and nursery rhymes to the ongoing popularity of Halloween and transmedia franchises like Doctor Who, Goosebumps and Stranger Things. For today’s youth, who are growing up in an age characterised by anxiety and instability, horror has the potential to help them understand the world around them, other people, and themselves. However, the meeting of young people and horror consistently attracts controversy due to unsupported perceptions that the genre is a harmful influence upon children and young people, echoed by an emphasis in scholarly research on ‘negative’ media effects.

The Youth and Horror Research Network therefore aims to encourage renewed scholarly consideration of the benefits, pleasures and risks of youthful interactions with horror, building on foundational work in this area (e.g. Martin Barker, David Buckingham, Kate Egan) and recent contributions to the field (e.g. Filipa Antunes, Sarah Cleary, Catherine Lester).

This conference is partially funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council and the Society for Animation Studies.

Programme

DAY 1: Tuesday 1 July

08.30-9.00 - Registration and coffee

9.00-9.20: Welcome and Reflection on the Youth & Horror Research Network

Cat Lester (University of Birmingham) & Kate Egan (Northumbria University)

9.20-10.30: Keynote - Jessica Balanzategui (RMIT, Australia) - 'What is children's horror now?: From the children's horror film to the horrors of children's cultures in the transgenerational media industries

10.30-10.50: Coffee break

10.50-12.10: Panel 1 - Folklore Legends and Cautionary Tales

Chisom Mary Adigwe (CLMCE) - African Cosmology and Spirituality: Reimaging Horror in Indigenous African Children /Young Adult Oral Literatures

Filipa Antunes (University of East Anglia) - “Don’t Let Your Parents Watch It Alone!”: Cautionary Tales and Family Horror in R. L. Stine’s The Haunting Hour

Magdalena Kempna-Pieniążek (University of Silesia in Katowice) - Between children's literature and horror films: The phenomenon of The Merry Devil's Friend series in Polish popular cinema

12.10-13.10: Lunch

13.10-14.30: Panel 2 - Adolescence and Coming-of-Age

Michael Brodski (University of Mainz) - Childhood and Youth Horror Tropes in Films of the Late Stagnation Period and Perestroika in the Soviet Union

Brogan Ord-Staunton (Northumbria University) - Menstruation, Monstrosity, and Adolescence: Exploring the Emotional Aesthetics of Horror in Turning Red

Lindsey Scott (University of Suffolk) - Becoming a Nightshade: Healing Horror in Netflix’s Wednesday

14.30-15.00: Coffee break

15.00-16.20: Panel 3 - Interactive and Immersive Storytelling

Clara de Moreas (CLMCE) - "The Shadows Took Over Everything": How ‘The Dark’ Constructs Fear for Young Readers

Dea Rezki Gerastri (CLMCE) - Swipe to Fear: the role of hidden gutters in adapting horror for young audiences in #tahilalattruestory on Instagram

Katariina Henttonen (University of Jyväskylä) - Finnish Adolescents’ Experiences of Scary Music

16.20-16.30: Comfort break

16.30-17.50: Panel 4 - The Social Benefits of Horror

Marcella Rees-Gray (independent) - Growing Up Wild: Interpreting children’s horror and its ability to unmask the neurodivergent childhood experience

Vaishnavi Saritha (independent) - Horror as Power in Children: The Subversive Transformation of Identity and Inclusivity in Kerala's Aitihyamala or The Garland of Legends

Suzanne van der Beek (Tilburg University) – Children's Ecohorror and the Literary Unconscious

19.30: Dinner (Indian Streatery, 21a Bennetts Hill, Birmingham B2 5QP)

DAY 2: Wednesday 2 July

8.30-9.00 Coffee

9.00-10.20: Panel 5 - Regulation

Mark McKenna (Staffordshire University) - Feckless Families and Feral Kids: Class, Culture and Distinction in Thatcher’s Britain

Pete Turner (Oxford Brookes University) - A Taxonomy of 1980s Youth Terror: Categorising Memories of Horror Through Retrospective Accounts of Age-Inappropriate Film Viewing

Ewan Kirkland (University for the Creative Arts) - Lock, Shock and Barrel on the cutting room floor: exorcising the trick or treaters of Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas

10.20-10.40: Coffee break

10.40-12.00: Panel 6 - Creative Methodologies

Bethany Rose Lamont (Bath Spa University) - Making Monsters: How can creative research methods help us understand audience engagements with children's media cultures?

Nadia Di Leo (University of Foggia) - Fear frames: catharsis through horror manga and anime

12.00-13.00: Lunch

13.00-14.20: Panel 7 - Gender and Sexuality

Mars Nicoli (Sheffield Hallam University) - “I’ve always wanted a little girl”: a thematic network analysis of transgender children in horror cinema

Abby Hilton (Northumbria University) - ‘Remember the Dead’: South Korean Horror, Girlhood, and Queerness in Memento Mori (1999)

Sietse Hagen (University of Liverpool) - Trauma Ghosts in Indian Children’s Literature – Faces in the Water and City of Ghosts

14.20-14.40: Coffee break

14.40-16.00: Panel 8 - Gore and Aesthetics

Merinda Staubli (independent) - Frightening Fun: Horror as Children’s Culture

Reece Goodall (University of Warwick) - We interrupt this programme to bring you… uncanny animation and horror intertexts in Courage the Cowardly Dog

Shellie McMurdo (University of Hertfordshire) - Go(re) Go(re) Girls: Reassessing the presumed readership of Fangoria magazine within the 1980s

16.00-16.10: Comfort break

16.10-17.30: Panel 9 - Disney’s ‘Dark Ages’

Simon Brown (independent) - Disney Goes to Hell: Dark Matter in The Black Hole (1979)

Stacey Abbott (Northumbria University) - The Dark Art of Disney: A Deep Dive into The Black Cauldron

Karolina Kostyra (University of Silesia in Katowice) - Who's afraid of children's horror? On the reception of Return to Oz

17.30-17.40: Closing remarks

17.40: Conference ends