The University of Manchester is assisting a police inquiry into whether a controversial research paper by one of its PhD students broke laws prohibiting the possession of child pornography, a parliamentary committee has heard.
Speaking at a House of Commons Education Committee hearing, Nalin Thakkar, the institution’s vice-president for social responsibility, confirmed that Manchester was working with the police as it investigated the actions of Karl Andersson, a Swedish first-year PhD student, whose recent paper in the Sage journal Qualitative Research described how he spent three months masturbating to images in Japanese comics depicting the sexual encounters of young boys.
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.
