Photo of Nicolle Lamerichs

Nicolle Lamerichs

Teacher Creative Business
Dr. Nicolle Lamerichs is senior lecturer (HHD) and team lead at Creative Business. She coordinates the honours programme of Creative Business. As a researcher, she studies media, fandom and consumer culture. She is also programme coordinator of the master's programme Sustainable Business Transition.

Biography

Nicolle Lamerichs holds a PhD in media studies from Maastricht University (2014). She has worked for Utrecht University as a lecturer, and started at International Communication & Media at HU in 2015. Creative audiences and consumers are her field of expertise. She has published ample books and articles on the creative industries, media, and fan cultures. As a lecturer at Creative Business, she has co-designed and taught in AI & Creativity, Participatory Cultures, Technology, and Media Culture, among others.

Fields of expertise

  • AI and Creativity
  • Participatory Cultures
  • Technology
  • Advanced Creative Business

Research themes

Current research of Lamerichs includes participatory cultures on different platforms, connected to identity, affect, narratives and play. How do different users perform their identity online and what new subcultures flourish on platforms such as Twitch? As an ethnographer, Lamerichs always keeps the human aspect of online cultures in mind, whether she studies gamers, influencers or cosplayers on TikTok. As a corporate ethnographer, Lamerichs has also done applied research for different companies, such as The Lego Group.

Project title Productive Fandom
Keywords Fandom, fan practices, creativity, subcultures, narratives
Years of completion 2018
General project description Productive Fandom offers a media ethnography of the digital culture, conventions, and urban spaces associated with fandoms, arguing that fandom is an area of productive, creative, and subversive value. By examining the fandoms of Sherlock, Glee, Firefly, and other popular franchises, Lamerichs appeals to fans and scholars alike in her empirically grounded methodology and insightful analysis of production hierarchies, gender, sexuality, play, and affect. Her research on fans is still ongoing. Read more publications.
Your Role in project Researcher NWO fund Narrative Fan Practices
Downloads Download the full open-access book Productive Fandom

Other recent projects

Project title Sustainable Costume Design
Keywords Sustainability, cosplay, costumes, fashion, fandom, games, play
Years of completion 2022
General project description

This ongoing project focuses on costume cultures and their connections to sustainability. How can costume design be done in circular ways? How do cosplayers and amateur fashion designer create awareness around sustainability in their craft? The project explores different online and offline costume cultures, among others on Twitch and TikTok. The human-centred aspects of sustainability, such as inclusivity, community and performance, are also taken into account.

Have a look at one of the first open-access publications of this project in Paratextualizing Games (p. 181-211) below.
Your Role in project Researcher

Project title Algorithms and Data-Driven User Cultures
Keywords Algorithm, data-driven, platforms, Tumblr, YouTube
Years of completion 2020-2022
General project description

Users increasingly navigate complex platforms. Their content is part of a business model where they often make little profit. This study explores different data-driven cultures. How do users deal with algorithms? How are new platforms leading to new business models and ways of communication? Who is excluded or included by these algorithmic communities? This also requires new methods which include the algorithm as an actor in these systems, for instance.

Lamerichs argues that the participation, data, and content by artists and fans becomes a resource and commodity in the platform economy, thereby changing participatory culture fundamentally. An open-access study of this project is linked below, which critically examines the business models and content on WebtoonI. It explains data-driven participatory cultures in detail and how they gravitate towards the monetization of data by third-parties, attention and liveness, replacing older concepts of user-generated content.
Your Role in project Researcher

Project title The Creative Impact and Representation of AI
Keywords Artificial intelligence, AI, algorithms, platforms, games
General project description

The role of labour in our post-industrial society is changing due to automation. This cultural turn is perhaps best compared to a second industrial revolution. Popular culture offers us a lens through which we can view the present and critically reflect on innovation and machine learning. For decades, science fiction has represented A.I. in novels, film, and television. By now, robots, cyborgs, and androids have also been included in video games as playable characters (“avatars”), companions, and even as narrators. New forms of content and creativity flourish with the help of AI as well, from the interactive AI Dungeon to procedural writing tools.

This project focuses on the social and creative impact of AI. What are the cultural discourses and representations of AI? How do they represent our hopes and fears of this new technology? Games in particular offer rich sites to analyse AI, because AI is not only read or viewed, but interacted with or simulated. Two studies are linked below. Characters of the Future addresses how designers add personality to AI, and how these new forms of technology can be studied. Robots, Androids and Deities addresses the various representation of AI in videogaming, and how they embody the different functions and personalities that we assign to AI, such as robots. It also addresses questions of automation, AI labour and how we add personality to AI.
Your Role in project Researcher
Downloads

Download Characters of the Future 

Key publications

Professional publications

  • 2021 – Antorini, Y.M. & Lamerichs, N. High Affinity LEGO Fan Typology 2021 (Internal whitepaper and research for The LEGO Group)
  • 2019 – Affect and Materiality in Fan Cultures. An interview with Nicolle Lamerichs by Henry Jenkins. Confessions of an Aca-Fan. Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4
  • 2018 – The State of Fandom Studies: Lincoln Geraghty & Nicolle Lamerichs. Confessions of an Aca-Fan. URL

Scholarly publications 

Books

  • 2018 – Productive Fandom: Intermediality and Affective Reception in Fan Cultures. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press. Open-access
  • 2014 – Fan Studies: Researching Popular Audiences. (With Chauvel, A., Seymour, A.) Oxford: Inter-disciplinary.net. Open-access

Peer-reviewed publications & book chapters

  • 2021 – ‘Material Culture on Twitch: Live-Streaming Cosplay, Gender and Beauty’. In: Beil, B., Freyermuth, G. & Schmidt, C. Paratextualizating Games. New York: Columbia University Press, pp. 181-211.
  • 2021 – ‘Braces, Culottes and Coloured Stripes: Constructing and Characterizing Doctor Who’s Thirteen in Fashion Design and Cosplay’. In: Hills, M., Cherry, B. & Day, A. Doctor Who: New Dawn. Manchester: Manchester University Press, pp. 159-174. Order here
  • 2021 – ‘Agency in Fan Studies. Materialities, Algorithms, and Tiny Ontologies’. In: Jung, B., Sachs-Hombach, K. & Wilde, L. Agency Postdigital. Halem Verlag. Preview chapter
  • 2021 – ‘Robots, Androids, and Deities: Simulating Artificial Intelligence in Digital Games’. Popular Culture Journal, 9:1 (Special issue on Robots and Labor edited by Faber, L.) Open-Access
  • 2020 – ‘Scrolling, Swiping, Selling: Understanding Webtoons and the Data-driven Participatory Culture around Comics’. Participations, 15:2 (Special issue by Einwächter, Ossa, Sina & Stollfuß)
  • 2020 – ‘The Promise of Cake: Food Fandom, Tourism, and Baking Practices Inspired by Portal’. In:  Reinhard, C., Largent, J. & Chin, B. Eating Fandom: Intersections Between Fans and Food Cultures. Order
  • 2020 – ‘User Tactics and Algorithms: A Digital Humanities Approach to YouTube and Tumblr’. In: Nyugen, D., Dekker, I. & Tasmedir, S. Understanding Media and Society in the Age of Digitalisation, pp. 35-54. Order
  • 2019 – ‘Characters of the Future: Machine Learning, Data and Personality. Image, 29. (Special issue: Recontextualizing Characters).
  • 2018 – ‘Cosplay and Conventions: Exporting the Digital’. In Banks: J. (2018). Avatars Assembled. New York: Peter Lang Publishing. PDF
  • 2018 – ‘Fan Fashion: Re-enacting Hunger Games through Clothing and Design’. In Booth, P. (2018). Companion to Media Fandom and Fan Studies. New York, Oxford: Wiley Blackwell, pp. 150-172. PDF
  • 2018 – ‘The Next Wave in Participatory Culture: Mixing Human and Nonhuman entities in Creative Practices and Fandom’. Transformative Works and Cultures, 28. Open-access
  • 2018 – ‘When Production Is Over: Creating Narrative Closure in Fan Edits’. In Williams, R. (2018). Everybody Hurts: Transitions, Endings, and Resurrections in Fandom. Iowa: University of Iowa Press, pp. 139-150. Pre-print | Order
  • 2018 – ‘Hunters, Climbers, Flaneurs: How Video Games Create and Design Tourism’. In Lundberg, C. & Ziakas, V. (2018). Handbook on Pop-Culture and Tourism. London, New York: Routledge. Pre-print
  • 2018 – Lamerichs, N., Lange-Böhmer, A. Nguyen, D., Puerta Melguizo, M. & Radojevic, R. ‘Elite Male Bodies: The Circulation of Alt-Right Memes and Framing of Politicians on Social Media. Participations, 15 (1), pp. 180-206.
  • 2017 – Ritteco, A., Klein, L. & Lamerichs, N. ‘Honours and Design of the Curriculum: How to bridge the Gap between Honours and Bachelor Programmes’. Journal of the European Honours Council, 1 (1).

See the full publication list

Qualifications

Grants

  • 2021 - AHRC Research Networking Grant (Project leaders Dr. J. Coates. & Dr. I.Kavedzija)
  • 2019 – RMeS Seminar Grant (UvA) for Research Day on Fan Studies at HU Utrecht
  • 2018 - NWO open-access. Publication Productive Fandom, Amsterdam University Press
  • 2010 - NWO Cultural Dynamics. PhD position in project Narrative Fan Practices

Organization and memberships

  • 2021 Organizer Eurovision Research Meeting (Erasmus University, Rotterdam)
  • 2019 Main Organizer Research Seminar (funded by RMeS) on Fan Studies with Keynote by Lori Morimoto
  • 2015 Conference organizer European Fan Cultures, 12-13 November (Erasmus University, Rotterdam)
  • 2013 – 2014 Member of task team for Maastricht Centre for Arts, Conservation and Cultural Heritage (MACH)
  • 2012 – 2013 Conference organizer MASH: Making and Sharing, 5-6 July, (Lumiere, Maastricht)
  • 2011 – 2013 Expert panel Tropenmuseum exhibition Cool Japan
  • 2010 – 2014 Member of research networks TWC and DiGRA
  • 2010 – 2014 Member of research schools RMeS and NOG