What is the Meme Studies Research Network?

The Meme Studies Research Network is an international and interdisciplinary research network for scholars who study memes. It aims to bring people together and foster discussion about memes from various academic fields, methodological practices and theoretical standpoints. The main goal of the network is to collaboratively establish a meme studies canon, and offer researchers an index of resources that center memes as their main object of interest.

How did the network come about?

I became interested in studying memes and started collecting resources, like journal articles, around 2014-2015. I had looked all over for a “meme studies” reading list and couldn’t find one. I didn’t have high hopes either as meme studies wasn’t a ‘recognised’ cohesive academic field then (and I’m almost certain that it still isn’t today, although this may be up for debate!).

Having access to such a list would have been so helpful for me at the time, so as I was rearranging my Zotero libraries (a deranged hobby of mine), I thought I would make one myself. So I gathered as many of my resources as I could into a list and send out a tweet looking for co-editors to help expand it further. This garnered a great amount of interest and I had the idea of setting up a “meme studies research network”.

I was very much inspired by Zoe Glatt, who is a digital ethnographer and PhD researcher at LSE, and her work with the digital ethnography collective and their digital ethnography reading list. I’ve found their workshops and reading lists to be very helpful and recommend checking them out.

You can access the list at this link on Google docs.

What is your role in the network?

I run our website, blog, social media accounts (YouTube, Twitter and Instagram) and our discord server. I also do all of MSRN graphics and posters. Although this is a community effort, and many other people contribute to our projects, blogs and meetings.

For instance, Danielle Rudnicka-Lavoie and Madeleine Hunter run the network’s monthly Critical Media Studies reading group, which is open to public.

You can visit our blog to see a variety of fantastic pieces about internet memes, all written by our network members.