U. Melissa Anyiwo
(Ph.D.) is an Associate Professor of History and Director of Black Studies at the University of Scranton, PA, and Co-Chair of the Vampire Studies Area of the National Popular Cultures Association. A transplanted Nigerian-British citizen with a background in race, gender, diversity, and visual archetypes, she writes and presents on vampires and their connection to racial and gendered stereotypes. Her published work on vampires includes the edited collections Buffy Conquers the Academy (2013), and the Brill | Sense collections Race in the Vampire Narrative (2015), Gender in the Vampire Narrative (2016), and Gender Warriors: Reading Contemporary Urban Fantasy (2018). Finally, she starred in the documentary “Lestat, Louis, and the Vampire Phenomenon” for the Interview with the Vampire 20th Anniversary Edition DVD (Warner Brothers, 2014).
Alba María Fuentes Muñoz
is currently a PhD student in Literary Studies at the Complutense University of Madrid but, before that, she earned a Master’s Degree in Literary and Theatre Studies from the University of Granada. Her master’s thesis, a comparative analysis between the lesbian representation in Carmilla by Sheridan Le Fanu and its 2014 web series adaptation, combined three of her favorite research interests: vampires, the Gothic and gender and sexuality in media, which she intends to explore further in her dissertation.
Hannah Hansen
is a PhD candidate and tutor in the School of Humanities, Media and Creative Communication at Massey University, Auckland. Her current research is a feminist examination of the paranormal romance genre. She is particularly interested in the manifestation of power and monstrosity within the genre and how this intersects with current feminist debates around agency and empowerment. Her MA thesis focused on the role of female masochism within Laurell K. Hamilton’s Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter series (1993+), and she maintains an interest in all aspects of vampire fiction, film, and television.
Amanda Jo Hobson
(Ph.D.) is the Associate Director of Diversity, Inclusion, and Belonging at Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology. She writes and presents on the portrayal of gender, sexuality, and race within contemporary popular culture, including the vampire in apocalypse narratives and vampiric themes in pornography, and
Jennifer Lawn
(Ph.D.) is an Associate Professor of English at Massey University’s Auckland campus. Her teaching and research areas span Gothic studies, New Zealand literature, crime fiction and narrative genres. She is the author of Neoliberalism and Cultural Transition in New Zealand Literature, 1984–2008 (Lexington, 2016) and co-editor of Gothic NZ: The Darker Side of Kiwi Culture (Otago UP, 2006).
Mary Beth McAndrews
earned her MA in Film Studies and Gender Studies from the University of Chicago where she wrote her thesis on the rise of the female-directed rape-revenge film with a primary focus on Coralie Fargeat’s 2017 film Revenge. Currently, she is the editor-in-chief of Dread Central, one of the largest horror publications in the world. She is also the co-host of the Scarred for Life podcast and is finishing a book on paranormal activity.
Eleanor Miller
is currently a PhD student at Manchester Metropolitan University in the department of English. Her research focuses on female authorship and sexual violence on screen. She holds a Film Studies MA from the University of Manchester in 2020. Her MA thesis explored representations of alternative sexualities within The Twilight Saga novels and movie adaptations.
Maurice Moore
(PhD) is an Assistant Professor of Drawing and Painting at The University of Tennessee, Knoxville. They received a Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) in Performance Studies from the University of California-Davis, and a Master of Fine Arts (MFA) in Studio Art from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. Their works have appeared in Communication and Critical Cultural/Studies,
Kendra R. Parker
(Ph.D.) is an Associate Professor of African American Literature at Georgia Southern University. She is the author of She Bites Back: Black Female Vampires in African American Women’s Novels, 1977–2011 (2018), co-editor of The Bloomsbury Handbook to Octavia E. Butler (2020), and co-editor of For Us, to Us, about Us: Racial Unrest and Cultural Transformation (2020).
Brian M. Peters
(Ph.D.) teaches in the English Department at John Abbott College and Concordia University, in Montreal. His approaches to understanding the Gothic include sexuality studies and psychoanalysis, and he first started his vampire research when he worked on the 19th century Gothic and Anne Rice‘s modernization of the vampire. Brian is done editing his first novel manuscript, a coming-of-age narrative set in early 1990s Montreal and New York City, and he has started his new fiction project. Aside from his academic-professional life, Brian is also a competitive athlete and competes in show jumping, and his favorite time is spent with his horse, Timmy.
Jennifer Piper
is a multidisciplinary, cross-media storyteller whose award-winning writing and directing includes screen, live performance, essays and radio. JP is known for using humour and pathos to create character-driven work that invites audiences to reflect on their own lives and imagine new ways of being. Recent works include plays That Time Everything Went Well and We Were Totally Fine and A Scandal in the Weimar (published by APT), and films Fine Bone China, The Golden Rollers, Russian Spy and What We Do for Family, all exploring ideas of belonging, identity and otherness. JP also created “The Representation Hour” for Triple Bi-Pass on JOYFM Melbourne, Australia, exploring queer representation in pop culture. JP holds a Master’s degree from WA Screen Academy (Australia).
Leah Richards
(Ph.D.) is a Professor of English at LaGuardia Community College, City University of New York, a co-editor of Supernatural Studies: An Interdisciplinary
D. Stachowiak
earned an MA in Texts, Technologies and Literature from the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. They are currently pursuing a PhD in English at the University of Delaware. Their research interests include 20th century literature, fandom studies, gender and sexuality, the Gothic, and representations of monstrosity. They are also the host of the film criticism podcast “Trash and Treasures.”
Billy Tringali
earned his Master of Science in Library and Information Science from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2019, graduating with special honors. His research interests include queerness, vampire studies, gender studies, and anime and manga studies. He currently works as an academic librarian at Emory University. Tringali is the founder and Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Anime and Manga Studies, an open-access journal run out of the University of Illinois. Tringali first began researching the figure of the vampire and the queer, socio-cultural as an undergrad, and first presented his research alongside many of the amazing scholars present in this work.