Richie Snowden-Leak's AHRC-funded PhD specifically concentrates on the benefits that New Weird fiction has on mental health, both in the creation of this fiction and the reading thereof in groups, especially in online forums. He argues that the Weird uses 'confrontational escapism', a narrative technique that incorporates the paradox of reading horror to escape horrific times, while exploring how the writer and the reader is commodified and ‘contentified’ in this era of what he calls ‘Always-Late Capitalism’. He has been part of several research teams dedicated to the importance of medical humanities, such as SHARED and LivCare, which collect data from across Liverpool and the international community on how charities and arts-and-health-based practices have come to help the ailing mental health of those in marginalised spaces. As well as co-organising MADS2025, an AHRC-funded symposium for research in digital spaces, he is also part of the CRSF team at University of Liverpool. He is the associate editor of Haven Spec, the co-editor of the SOTA Anthology, and a reviewer for Fantasy Hive. His own weird fiction can be read under the name RSL, published in Nightmare, Vastarien, CHM, HOWLS From the Scene of the Crime, San Press, Apparition Lit, and Bag of the Bones's Patterns.
