Andrea Andiloro is a Ph.D. candidate at the Centre for Transformative Media Technologies at Swinburne University of Technology, Melbourne, Australia. His research interests revolve around the phenomenology of videogame atmosphere in its affective and spatial dimension. Other interests include videogame ontology and discussions about ideological processes involved in play. He teaches media studies, science & technology studies, and user-centred design.
Jay S. Arns is a doctoral student in rhetoric and composition at the University of Cincinnati. He holds an Hon. A.B. (classics/philosophy) and an M.A. (English) from Xavier University in Cincinnati, OH, and an M.A. (classics) from the University of Florida in Gainesville, FL. His current research focuses on theories of subjectivity, new materialism, neurorhetoric, and disability studies.
Michael Bielawa is the Barnum Museum’s Special Lecturer and Consultant. An award-winning author and journalist, Bielawa is well-versed with New England’s paranormal history, and his explorations have taken him to Northeast America’s most mysterious places. Bielawa’s numerous articles and books include, Wicked Bridgeport (which received the first-ever ‘New England Paranormal Literary Award’) and Wicked New Haven. His article, ‘Submarine Down!’, about the ill-fated boat, S-48, was awarded first place by the Society of Professional Journalists for ‘In-Depth Magazine Reporting’ in 2021. His essays on the supernatural have appeared in the Edgar Allan Poe Review, Fortean Times, FATE Magazine, Lovecraft Proceedings, and Connecticut Magazine. The Bridgeport Public Library History Center’s webpage hosts Bielawa’s essays on such diverse subjects as Jack the Ripper in Connecticut and early encounters with Men in Black. Since 2012, Michael has invited the curious to enter Bridgeport’s occult past through his various ‘Wicked Walk’ tours.
Vicky Brewster completed their Ph.D. in English at Swansea University in 2024, researching hauntings in 21st-century fiction. Their publications include ‘“You Can’t Stop Picturing that Beautiful Handset”: The Found Phone Trope in Twenty-First-Century Media’ in LIT Journal (2023) and ‘“I wish, please, to live”: Religion and Rewilding in Michel Faber’s Ecohorror’ in Future Folk Horror: Contemporary Anxieties and Possible Futures (Lexington Books, 2023), and ‘“Oh No! Not Again!”: Toxic Nostalgia and British Antisemitism in Ghost Stories by Andy Nyman and Jeremy Dyson’ in Gothic Nostalgia: The Uses of Toxic Memory in 21st Century Popular Culture (Routledge, expected 2024). They are part of the British Association for American Studies’ targeted research fund team for 2023, for which they are co-editing a journal special issue on queer medical Gothic. They also work as an editor of longform fiction, and organise the Gothic writing retreat, The Writing Haunt.
Aoife Mary Dempsey is an independent scholar and former Adjunct Lecturer at the School of English, Trinity College Dublin (TCD). She received her doctorate from TCD in 2018 for the study of J. S. Le Fanu and Irish settler writing. Her monograph, Gothic Authors, Critical Revisions: Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu, was published by University of Wales Press in 2022. Her work focuses on Irish, Gothic, and Victorian fiction and material culture, as well as postcolonial literature and culture. Having emigrated from Ireland, she currently resides in the Greater Boston area.
Mark DiMauro is a professor of MMDC at the University of Pittsburgh (Johnstown regional campus). He applies mathematical algorithms and custom-written code to classic literary texts, developing new and interesting ways to read the “big picture.” He studies everything from video games to dystopia to the Gothic. His dissertation defined a new genre, the Digital Gothic, which likens dystopic and apocalyptic literature to the magical of the classic Gothic, replacing the means of terror as supernatural to technological.
Anuja Dutta: Haunting implies a history unresolved. As an independent researcher based in Calcutta and interested in the subgenres of Bengali supernatural fiction within colonial and post-colonial cultures of horror, a preoccupation with haunting has led me towards the interiorities and vagaries of geographical space. I graduated in the social sciences from Calcutta’s Presidency University, later completing my M. Phil degree from Jadavpur University. My work studied the intermingling of horror and humour as narrative strategies, and the ways in which fear and laughter co-constituted a decisive spectral ‘turn’ in traditions of Bengali literature. My interest in spectres has led me to approach them and their theoretical terrains primarily through an intersection of economy and ecology.
Since 2017, Sarah Edwards has been working as a research assistant in British literary and cultural studies at TU Dortmund University, where she teaches seminars on topics such as “British Urban Fantasy,” “Dual Urban Settings in Postmodern Fantastic Literature,” and “The Polyphonic City.” Her research interests include literary geography, the cultural geography of the city, urban fantasy and the new weird. She holds a master’s degree in British and American literary and cultural studies.
Gustavo Alberto Garcia Vaca is an interdisciplinary visual artist/writer. His artwork is in the Collections of MoMA New York, LACMA and the Bibliotheque Nationale de France. His writing has been published in literary journals and his artwork is featured on various book and record covers. Gustavo’s website is: http://www.chamanvision.com
Alison Habens: I am Course Leader for Creative Writing, and Academic Lead for Communication, in the School of Film, Media and Communication, Faculty of Creative and Cultural Industries, at the University of Portsmouth. I’m co-investigator in the Supernatural Cities research project, collaborating with an interdisciplinary group of academics, historians, artists and psychogeographers in the development of our Portsmyth story. I run ‘Ink:Well’ life-writing for wellbeing courses internationally, and work with local environmental writers ‘Pens of the Earth’. My published novels include Dreamhouse, Lifestory, Pencilwood and The True Picture. For other outputs and spoken word performances see www.alisonhabens.com and www.youtube.com/@alisonhabens
Koby Bryan Hansen is a PhD candidate in Hispanic Studies at the University of California, Riverside. He holds a bachelor’s degree with honors in Spanish with a minor in LGBTQ Studies from the University of California, Los Angeles and a master’s degree in Spanish from the University of California, Riverside. His research focuses on contemporary queer cultural production in Mexico, with an emphasis on occupations of space and representations of pleasure in film and literature. He is also a huge horror fan and loves every opportunity to incorporative Gothic/Horror studies into his work.
A. Rose Johnson is a PhD student at Falmouth University with a research focus on horror, occulture, and metal fandom. She received her Master’s and Bachelor’s degrees, both in Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, from the University at Albany. She is an instructional designer at Antioch University and adjunct faculty at The College of Saint Rose. Her persistent garbage habit shows signs of payoff.
Linda Kopitz has studied at the University of Leipzig, Germany, and the University of Miami, USA, and holds a Research Masters in Media Studies from the University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands. Her PhD research – situated between urban studies and media studies – explores the entanglement between real and virtual environments in architectural media. Connecting her professional experience as a Creative Director with her interdisciplinary academic work, she is currently working as a Lecturer in Cross-Media Culture at the University of Amsterdam and Erasmus University of Rotterdam, where her main research interests are architectural media, gender and the intersection between technology and imaginations of the everyday.
Haley Laurila completed her PhD in Slavic Languages and Literatures at the University of Michigan where she wrote her dissertation on Chornobyl. Her research focuses on the Soviet nuclear legacy and memories of environmental disaster. She is currently a graduate student at Wayne State University and is working in the digital humanities.
Amy LEE has a background in comparative literature and cultural studies. She has published substantially in contemporary feminist fiction, autobiographical writing, and popular fiction. Some of her areas of interest include witchcraft and magic, detective fiction, and film adaptation of masterpieces. Besides academic articles, she has also published creative non-fiction, and using literature for creative learning experiences. A core research and pedagogical interest of hers is deploying narratives in educational settings to enhance personal understanding and well-being. In recent years she is exploring personal narratives in the Buddhist context, to see whether/how they are subverting traditional literary narratives. Currently she is conducting a research project using Playback Theatre to build creativity and self-understanding in inclusive communities. She is a Professor at the School of Arts and Social Sciences at the Hong Kong Metropolitan University.
Simon McFadden is a doctoral researcher at Oxford Brookes University, winner of a full scholarship to conduct research on dark tourism and screen tourism. With an academic background in Criminology and Criminal Justice, Simon graduated from Ulster University in 2018. He has since accomplished a Masters by Research Degree at Edinburgh Napier University through completion of an interdisciplinary research project “Exploring the History and Cultural Representations of Capital Punishment in Scotland”. His research interests include dark tourism, crime and media and cultural criminology.
Emily Naser-Hall is an Assistant Professor of Film and Media Studies and coordinator of the Film Program at Western Carolina University. Her research focuses on cultural and legal narratives of sexuality, femininity, and privacy in post-1945 American literature and film. She has published on the works of Shirley Jackson, Gothic domesticity, sexuality, and gendered labor, with a forthcoming project on the Gothic frontier in American folk horror.
Diganta Roy is an Assistant Professor in the Department of English in Falakata College in West Bengal. He has completed his post-graduation in English from Jadavpur University Kolkata. His areas of academic interest include horror literature, popular fiction and Gothic Romanticism. He is currently pursuing his PhD from Jadavpur University, Kolkata, on the cultural adaptations of Dracula in literature and media. His recent publication includes a chapter titled ‘Floating Fears: Understanding Childhood Trauma in Stephen King’s IT’ published in an edited anthology on Stephen King’s IT by The University Press of Mississippi. His upcoming publication includes a chapter in an edited anthology titled ‘Retelling the Holocaust with Children: A Pedagogic Study of Stephen King’s Apt Pupil and Jane Yolen’s The Devil’s Arithmetic’ to be published as part of Routledge’s Popular Culture and World Politics series.
Debarun Sarkar is a doctoral candidate at the Department of Sociology, University of Mumbai, a research associate at the Vidyashilp Research Centre, Vidyashilp University, Bengaluru and a member of Karkhana. His dissertation is situated within the disciplines of sociology and geography while being theoretically concerned with the scalar debate. His first collection of poetry, titled <blank> (Kolkata: Writers Workshop) was recently published.
David S. Smith is a psychology lecturer at Robert Gordon University with an interest in social identities and movements. He is also an author and podcast host for the UK-based movie website HorrorCultFilms.
Hannah Stewart is a PhD Candidate at the Institute for Dark Tourism Research (iDTR) based at the University of Central Lancashire (UCLan), UK. Her current research interest focusses on fundamental interrelationships of ‘dark event tourism’ within contemporary society. Hannah is also a festival manager and creative content developer with over a decade of industry experience. She has designed, produced, and managed festivals across Canada, the UK as well as the Middle East. Hannah has been also involved in numerous multidisciplinary research projects, including festival and event accessibility for people living with dementia, and long-term implications of COVID-19 on Edinburgh’s festivals.
Dr Philip R. Stone is Executive Director of the Institute for Dark Tourism Research at the University of Central Lancashire (UK). He is an internationally recognized scholar in the field of ‘dark tourism’ and ‘difficult heritage’ and has published extensively about the subject. Philip is also a media consultant on dark tourism, with clients including the BBC, CNN, The New York Times, The Guardian, and The Washington Post. His latest book, the first-ever tourist guidebook dedicated to dark tourism – 111 Dark Tourism Places in England You Shouldn’t Miss (Emons, 2021) – brings dark tourism scholarship to the public market. His new academic books will focus on Dark Tourism and Childhood Encounters (Routledge, 2022), and the Future of Dark Tourism: Enlightening New Horizons (Channel View, Forthcoming).
James Thurgill is Associate Professor by Special Appointment at The University of Tokyo, Japan, where he teaches cultural and literary geography. His research examines spatial experiences and geographic imaginings of absence, haunting, and folklore. James is Principal Investigator of the four-year JSPS-funded project ‘Literary Geographies of Folklore’ (2020-2024), co-author of A Todai Philosophical Walk (2021), and co-editor of the University of Wales Press’ newly established Literary Geography: Theory and Practice book series.
Natalie Wall is an English Literature PhD student at University of Liverpool having previously completed her MSc in Literature and Modernity at University of Edinburgh and undergraduate in English Literature at Durham University. Her PhD research focuses on contemporary trauma literature and theory, particularly representations of the traumatised body and the public reception of trauma fiction. Currently her research is focusing on the engagement with trauma fiction in online spaces and the limits of traditional academic criticism for understanding and addressing these emotional responses, using post-critical theory. However, she is also interested in topics such as literature and science, posthumanism, affect theory, and medical humanities. She is also a freelance writer and has had previous work published in The Sundae, Digital Fix, Bindweed Magazine, Lumpen Journal, The Independent, Horrified, Refinery29, and VICE UK.