Organised in association with the Royal Irish Academy, will discuss the place of crime fiction in literary and academic culture. Should it still be considered as popular culture? Under what circumstances can some examples be selected into the canon? Why and how has it become the thriving academic discipline it is today? Does this benefit all subgenres equally and does it not create forms of scholastic bias which can be detrimental to the genre? What is the role of the critic, and the extant critical institutions in this field? What are the theories applied to the genre and what are the most distinctive current areas of research?

The programme and further details for this event can be found on the conference blog at here