Bianca Bea Simone Decker

Simone Decker is a PhD candidate at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München (LMU Munich), specializing in independent bookshops and the self-publishing world in relation to social movements. Her research interests focus primarily on communicative spaces and new communities in uncertain times.

The project explores dokuritsu-shoten, a wave of newly founded bookshops since the late 2010s, under the concept of third places. Investigating the emergence (past), functionality (present), and potential (future) of independent bookshops, the thesis raises the question of how non-virtual communities arise through book-centered projects in post-corona times. The research is structured around the intensification of involvement: from social meeting spaces (I) to community building (II) to social movements (III). The latter focuses especially on the fourth wave of feminism, whose activists have been especially active in self-publishing zines and books, after the mini-komi boom of past days.

The main objective during her stay at the DIJ is to conduct field research in independent bookshops and at self-publishing literature festivals, to interview book project initiators and self-publishers, and to engage in intensive exchange with researchers and experts in Japan.