It’s true! There will soon be an entire conference dedicated to BTS.

In January 2020, Kingston University will hold the first international interdisciplinary BTS conference in London. Previously, a global forum was held in Seoul, but this will be the first event of its kind outside of BTS’s home country.

The conference aims to bring together academics, researchers, and fans from various disciplines to present a wide range of topics about BTS, their success, and their art. A program should be released shortly (and more info can be found here).

I’m very honored that my abstract was accepted, and I’m really looking forward to seeing what everyone comes up with! I lost some very valuable research time due to some medical issues recently, so I’m going to be very occupied in the coming weeks while trying to catch up. I hope that I can continue to build this website while I work on my paper, and I really hope that my paper comes out well. I’ll be posting a research survey soon on my Twitter for fans to participate in.

I anticipate that there will be similar events happening in the future—at least, that’s definitely what I hope for. There’s a lot to study related to BTS, and there’s also plenty to study related to K-Pop and K-Pop fandoms in general. Researchers and fans from areas such as fan studies, media studies, music, sociology, and many, many more can learn so much from studying the mechanisms of BTS, K-Pop, and Fandom, so this is a really exciting time. Never in a million years did 16-year-old me think that this would be possible. If I could go back in time and tell her that just around a decade later the entire landscape would change, I think she’d laugh at me.

Will you be attending the BTS conference? What types of presentations would you like to see?