Police have launched an investigation into a UK-based Swedish PhD candidate who has published a “research” paper centring around him masturbating to child porn, Breitbart News can reveal.

Greater Manchester Police (GMP) has said that an investigation has been launched after University of Manchester student Karl Andersson published a research paper on his personal experiences of masturbating to the “Shotacon” subgenre of Japanese manga comic books that focus on often highly sexualised portrayals of prepubescent or pubescent boys.

Andersson claimed that in order to “understand how [people] experience sexual pleasure when reading shota” he conducted a three-month “experiment” of masturbating to paedophilic comic books, taking notes during every “session”.

“I would not be allowed to have any other sexual relief during this ‘fieldwork’ in my own sexuality: no regular porn, no sex with another person, no fantasies or memories — it had to be shota every time.”

In his paper, published by the peer-reviewed academic journal Qualitative Research, Andersson admitted that “the age of the characters and the explicitness of the sex, as well as in the readers’ views on whether or how sexual desire for fictional boys is connected to sexual attraction to actual children.”

Yet despite acknowledging the illicit nature of the material, he said that he found interviewing others inadequate for his study, writing: “I realized that my body was equipped with a research tool of its own that could give me, quite literally, a first-hand understanding of shota.”

Describing one such masturbation “session”, Andersson wrote in his notebook in September of last year: “Started reading on the toilet: Boy who is staying with relatives happens to see his same-age friend masturbate… The boy who has admitted to everything has nothing to lose, so he throws himself over Tokio-kun and starts sniffing his cock and licking his smooth balls, and while waiting for the shot I came!”

Possession of drawn child pornography is a crime in the United Kingdom, and it seems likely the materials indulged in by Andersson would meet this definition, given the paper’s own description of “very young boy characters [who] would greedily jump over the first cock that presented itself” in the material — content of which Andersson wrote: “That worked for me”.

Speaking to Breitbart London, a spokesman for the Greater Manchester Police revealed that the force has launched an investigation to determine if the “research” project had violated any laws.

“GMP received a report in relation to this matter in August 2022 and have since launched an investigation. We are working closely with the University of Manchester who are assisting us with our enquiries to establish what, if any offences have been committed.”

The spokesman told Breitbart London that as of the time of this publication: “No arrests have been made”.

In his essay, The PhD candidate blamed Christianity for “stigmatising” masturbation and cited leftist French philosopher Michel Foucault — who has been accused of raping young boys in Tunisian cemeteries — whom he quoted as lambasting the “crusade against masturbation” as an outgrowth of the nuclear family.

Andersson claimed that he hoped through his “research” he would be able to untangle the “knot of desires for fictional boy characters will give us a better understanding of human sexuality and provide a more solid basis for policymaking.”

Actual policymakers were not so impressed, however, with Conservative MP Neil O’Brien retorting: “Why should hard-working taxpayers in my constituency have to pay for an academic to write about his experiences masturbating to Japanese porn?

“The non-STEM side of higher education is just much too big, producing too much that is not socially useful.”

According to a report from The Telegraph, the University of Manchester — which receives hundreds of millions per year from the British taxpayer — funded the masturbation paper through its School of Arts, Languages and Cultures.

A University of Manchester spokesperson said: “The recent publication in Qualitative Research of the work of a student, now registered for a PhD, has raised significant concerns and complaints which we are taking very seriously.

“We are currently undertaking a detailed investigation into all aspects of their work, the processes around it and other questions raised. It is very important that we look at the issues in-depth.”

Follow Kurt Zindulka on Twitter here @KurtZindulka