Wednesday 7 September 2022 07:26 PM PhD student who published paper about masturbating over extreme comics ... trends now

A police investigation has been launched to establish if a University of Manchester student broke child pornography laws by publishing a research paper about hiw he masturbated to extreme comics featuring young boys.

A parliamentary committee also heard a representative of the university reveal that that no checks were carried out before they accepted PHD student Karl Andersson.

Mr Andersson was researching subcultural Japanese comics that depict the sexual encounters of young boys, he claims to have masturbated to the same subject matter for three months and made notes on each session.

Karl's own thesis describes the material - known as shota - as a genre of self-published erotic comics that feature 'young boy characters in a cute or, most often, sexually explicit way'.

Speaking at a House of Commons Education Committee hearing, Nalin Thakkar, the University of Manchester's vice-president for social responsibility, confirmed the university was working with the police as it investigated the Swedish first-year PhD student.

Under UK laws, it is illegal to possess indecent images of children under the age of 18, including cartoon images as featured in the manga comics. 

Professor Thakkar told MPs today that the incident highlighted a 'blind spot' in terms of certain types of controversial research.

He admitted the university was unaware of Mr Andersson's history of publishing sexually suggestive pictures of young boys in gay publications in Sweden and said lessons about vetting students had been learned.

The university's own investigation into the now suspended student could not establish where the research for the paper, subtitled 'Using masturbation as an ethnographic method in research on shota subculture in Japan', was carried out.

One account suggests that some of Mr Andersson's research was done after he was funded for his PhD by Manchester, while another claims it occurred entirely in Germany.

 Professor Thakkar said he had informed Manchester police of both accounts.

The University of Manchester is also conducting its own investigation into Mr Andersson and his PhD supervisor, Dr Sharon Kinsella - who herself specialises in 'Lolita complex subcultures'. 

Professor Thakkar said the supervisor, who was thanked in the paper 'for always encouraging me to go where my research takes me', claimed to only have been made aware of the paper in February after it was approved for publication.

 He also stressed that the shocking research had not been conducted under the guidance or with the support of the university.