Duanju taught at university

The format is moving from mobile apps to classrooms.

Roy Hanney, a researcher and lecturer at Southampton Solent University, a UK-based institution renowned for its creative and media education, is taking a close look at the duanju phenomenon. In a study published in August 2025, he traces the format's rise in China, which has become a multi-billion-yuan industry, and its international expansion, analyzing its aesthetic codes (vertical video, close-ups, fast pace), its narrative formulas (cliffhangers, melodramatic archetypes), and its business models.

He cites in particular the success of Escape from the British Museum , which accumulated more than 300 million views in one week and generated massive sales of derivative products, or the short adaptation of Pride and Prejudice filmed in the United Kingdom in 2024, condensed into 16 vertical episodes of less than two minutes each.

Starting this fall, its students will be taking a new module: developing and pitching their own micro-drama concepts, in conjunction with industrial realities and local businesses in the creative industries. The goal: to transform the classroom into a true project incubator, where theory and practice feed off each other.

This approach reflects Roy Hanney's conviction that duanju is not just an object of study, but a field of experimentation and training for the talents of tomorrow, at the crossroads of research, creation and local economic development.

• Zenodo , August 11, 2025