Martin Barker is Emeritus Professor at Aberystwyth University. Across a long research career, he studied in particular: contemporary forms of racism; children’s comics; censorship campaigns, their histories, motives and claims about audiences; and forms and methods of film analysis. In the later stages of his career he focused in particular on the empirical study of film and television audiences, from very small projects (eg on Being John Malkovich) to very large ones (eg on The Lord of the Rings, The Hobbit, and Game of Thrones). In 2006 he undertook commissioned research into audience responses to screened sexual violence for the British Board of Film Classification. He founded in 2003 and still edits the online journal Participations.
Carl Sweeney completed an MA in Film & Screen at the University of Wolverhampton. During the course, he has written about the Post-Western subgenre, spirituality in The X-Files, representations of terrorism in 24 and the portrayal of cinema-going in the films of Woody Allen.
Kristina Pia Hofer is a post-doc researcher with the Austrian Science Fund (FWF) supported project A Matter of Historicity – Material Practices in Audiovisual Art, based at the Department of Art History at the University of Applied Arts Vienna, Austria. Her research interests are in film sound, gender/queer theory, and theories of audio/visuality. She has published on amateur pornography, exploitation/trash film and new (feminist) materialisms in Porn Studies, Sexualities, Transatlantica – Revue d’études américaines, and other journals and edited volumes. Together with Marietta Kesting, she has edited the FKW Zeitschrift für Geschlechterforschung und visuelle Kultur special issue Dated Formats Now: Material Practices in Audiovisual Art (nr. 61 / 2017). As Ana Threat/The Boiler, she records and performs lo-fi hypno pop music.
Joan Hawkins is an Associate Professor in Cinema and Media Studiesat Indiana University Bloomington. She is the author of Cutting Edge: Art Horror and the Horrific Avant-garde and has written extensively on horror cinema and the avant-garde. Her most recent book is a co-edited (with Alex Wermer-Colan) anthology William S. Burroughs Cutting Up the Century (Indiana University Press,2019). She is currently editing an anthology on 1968 and writing a monograph on Independent Horror.
Lindsay Hallam is a Senior Lecturer in Film at the University of East London. She is author of the books Screening the Marquis de Sade: Pleasure Pain and the Transgressive Body in Film (McFarland, 2012) and a Devil's Advocates edition on Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me (Auteur Press, 2018). She has contributed to the collections Trauma, Media, Art: New Perspectives (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2010), Dracula’s Daughters: The Female Vampire on Film (Scarecrow Press, 2013), Fragmented Nightmares: Transnational Horror Across Visual Media (Routledge, 2014), Critical Insights: Violence in Literature (Salem Press, 2014), and the journals Asian Cinema, Senses of Cinema, 16:9 and Journal of Italian Cinema and Media Studies.
Ekky Imanjaya is a faculty member of Film Program, Bina Nusantara University (Jakarta). He completed his PhD study in Film Studies at University of East Anglia. The title of his thesis is “The cultural traffic of Classic Indonesian Exploitation Cinema”. The research was funded by DIKTI Scholarship; Higher Education Directorate; Ministry of Research, Technology, and Higher Education; Republic of Indonesia. His scholarly papers were published in journals, including Cinemaya, Asian Cinema, Plaridel, Jump Cut and Cinematheque Quarterly. His popular articles were published in a variety of media, including Rolling Stone Indonesia, Catalogue of Taipei International Film Festival, and Südostasien. In 2015, he guest edited a special issue titled “The Bad, The Worse, and The Worst: The Significance of Indonesian Cult, Exploitation, and B Movies” in Plaridel: A Philippine Journal of Communication, Media, and Society.
Email: eimanjaya@binus.edu
David Maguire is the author of the 2018 Columbia University Press/Wallflower Press book I Spit on Your Grave. He is also a programmer for the Leeds International Film Festival’s Fanomenon strand, the largest programme section of the event, catering for fans of fantasy, horror, science fiction and action/adventure, with an MA in Film Studies from the University of Bradford.
Shellie McMurdo is a visiting lecturer at both the University of Hertfordshire and Roehampton University. Her most recent publications include an article on the true crime fandom and school shooters in the European Journal of American Culture, and a co-written chapter on late phase torture horror with Dr. Wickham Clayton. Her research interests include a specific focus on the cultural significance of the horror genre and its ability to communicate trauma, as well as extreme horror, cult film and television, and the true crime fandom.
Xavier Mendik is Professor of Cult Cinema Studies at Birmingham City University, where he also runs the Cine-Excess International Film Festival. He is the author/editor/co-editor of nine volumes on cult cinema traditions, including Bodies of Desire and Bodies in Distress: The Golden Age of Italian Cult Cinema (2015), Peep Shows: Cult Film and the Cine-Erotic (2012) and The Cult Film Reader (2008). He has also completed a number of documentaries on cult film traditions, most recently The Quiet Revolution: State, Society and the Canadian Horror Film (2019).
Renee Middlemost is an early career researcher and Lecturer in Communication and Media at the University of Wollongong, Australia. Her PhD Thesis entitled “Amongst Friends: The Australian Cult Film Experience”, examined the audience participation practices of cult film fans in Australia. Her forthcoming publications reflect her diverse research interests; these include a chapter on cult film and nostalgia for The Routledge Guide to Cult Cinema (2019); a chapter on the star persona of Jason Statham; and a co-authored chapter on the finale of Dexter.
Email: reneem@uow.edu.au
Sarah Pogoda is a Lecturer in German Studies at Bangor University. After receiving her Dr. phil. at the Freie Universität Berlin she came to The University of Sheffield in 2012. Here, she pursued her interest in the German filmmaker, theatre director and actionist artist Christoph Schlingensief (1960-2010) in research, teaching and art projects (for the latter see: www.bellotograph.jimdo.com). In 2016 she organised the interdisciplinary conference “Christoph Schlingensief and the Avant-Garde” at the ZIF Bielefeld and an edited volume on the respective subjects is about to be published. Three further publications in this area are: ‘Erweiterung der Avantgardeforschung. Schlingensiefs wissenschaftliche Aktionen Müllfestspiele, 7x Universität und Erster Attaistischer Kongress’ in: Lore Knapp and Sarah Pogoda (ed.): Christoph Schlingensief und die Avantgarde (forthcoming Fink). ‘Deutschland in den Sand setzen – The Transformative Metaphorology of Searching for Germany’ in: Art of Wagnis : Christoph Schlingensief’s Crossing of Wagner and Africa, ed. by Nadine Siegert, Fabian Lehmann, Ulf Vierke, Vienna: Verlag für Moderne Kunst (2017). ‘Christoph Schlingensiefs Grenzüberschreitungen. Die Wiener Aktion Bitte liebt Österreich. Erste österreichische Koalitionswoche und Elfriede Jelineks Kasperlestück Ich liebe Österreich’ (with Lore Knapp) in: Germanistische Mitteilungen. Zeitschrift für deutsche Sprache, Literatur und Kultur 41.1(2015), 75-89.
Webpage: https://www.bangor.ac.uk/ml/staff/sarah-pogoda/en
Janet Staiger is William P. Hobby Centennial Professor Emeritus in Communication at the University of Texas. She particularly attends to questions about situated and historical authorship, audiences and reception, and positionalities of gender and sexuality. Among her books are The Classical Hollywood Cinema: Film Style and Mode of Production to 1960 (1985, co-authored), Interpreting Films (1992), Bad Women: Regulating Sexuality in Early American Cinema (1995), Perverse Spectators (2000), Authorship and Film (2002, co-ed.), Media Reception Studies (2005), and Political Emotions (2010, co-ed.).
Jon Towlson is a journalist & film critic. He is author of Candyman (Auteur/ Columbia University Press, 2018), The Turn to Gruesomeness in American Horror films, 1931-1936 (McFarland, 2016), Close Encounters of the Third Kind (Auteur/Columbia University Press, 2016) and Subversive Horror Cinema: Countercultural Messages of Films from Frankenstein to the Present (McFarland, 2014).
Glenn Ward is Senior Lecturer in the School of Humanities at the University of Brighton. He has published extensively on cult cinema traditions, with particular reference to the films of the Spanish director Jesus Franco. He has had chapters published in The Films of Jess Franco (2018), Grindhouse: Cultural Exchange on 42nd Street, and Beyond (2016), The Transnational Fantasies of Guilermo del Toro (2014) and Latsploitation, Latin America and Exploitation cinemas. Beyond these publications Glenn Ward has also acted as Co-Director of the Cine-Excess International Film Festival and Conference between 2014 and 2016.
Carl Sweeney completed an MA in Film & Screen at the University of Wolverhampton. During the course, he has written about the Post-Western subgenre, spirituality in The X-Files, representations of terrorism in 24 and the portrayal of cinema-going in the films of Woody Allen.
Kristina Pia Hofer is a post-doc researcher with the Austrian Science Fund (FWF) supported project A Matter of Historicity – Material Practices in Audiovisual Art, based at the Department of Art History at the University of Applied Arts Vienna, Austria. Her research interests are in film sound, gender/queer theory, and theories of audio/visuality. She has published on amateur pornography, exploitation/trash film and new (feminist) materialisms in Porn Studies, Sexualities, Transatlantica – Revue d’études américaines, and other journals and edited volumes. Together with Marietta Kesting, she has edited the FKW Zeitschrift für Geschlechterforschung und visuelle Kultur special issue Dated Formats Now: Material Practices in Audiovisual Art (nr. 61 / 2017). As Ana Threat/The Boiler, she records and performs lo-fi hypno pop music.
Joan Hawkins is an Associate Professor in Cinema and Media Studiesat Indiana University Bloomington. She is the author of Cutting Edge: Art Horror and the Horrific Avant-garde and has written extensively on horror cinema and the avant-garde. Her most recent book is a co-edited (with Alex Wermer-Colan) anthology William S. Burroughs Cutting Up the Century (Indiana University Press,2019). She is currently editing an anthology on 1968 and writing a monograph on Independent Horror.
Lindsay Hallam is a Senior Lecturer in Film at the University of East London. She is author of the books Screening the Marquis de Sade: Pleasure Pain and the Transgressive Body in Film (McFarland, 2012) and a Devil's Advocates edition on Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me (Auteur Press, 2018). She has contributed to the collections Trauma, Media, Art: New Perspectives (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2010), Dracula’s Daughters: The Female Vampire on Film (Scarecrow Press, 2013), Fragmented Nightmares: Transnational Horror Across Visual Media (Routledge, 2014), Critical Insights: Violence in Literature (Salem Press, 2014), and the journals Asian Cinema, Senses of Cinema, 16:9 and Journal of Italian Cinema and Media Studies.
Ekky Imanjaya is a faculty member of Film Program, Bina Nusantara University (Jakarta). He completed his PhD study in Film Studies at University of East Anglia. The title of his thesis is “The cultural traffic of Classic Indonesian Exploitation Cinema”. The research was funded by DIKTI Scholarship; Higher Education Directorate; Ministry of Research, Technology, and Higher Education; Republic of Indonesia. His scholarly papers were published in journals, including Cinemaya, Asian Cinema, Plaridel, Jump Cut and Cinematheque Quarterly. His popular articles were published in a variety of media, including Rolling Stone Indonesia, Catalogue of Taipei International Film Festival, and Südostasien. In 2015, he guest edited a special issue titled “The Bad, The Worse, and The Worst: The Significance of Indonesian Cult, Exploitation, and B Movies” in Plaridel: A Philippine Journal of Communication, Media, and Society.
Email: eimanjaya@binus.edu
David Maguire is the author of the 2018 Columbia University Press/Wallflower Press book I Spit on Your Grave. He is also a programmer for the Leeds International Film Festival’s Fanomenon strand, the largest programme section of the event, catering for fans of fantasy, horror, science fiction and action/adventure, with an MA in Film Studies from the University of Bradford.
Shellie McMurdo is a visiting lecturer at both the University of Hertfordshire and Roehampton University. Her most recent publications include an article on the true crime fandom and school shooters in the European Journal of American Culture, and a co-written chapter on late phase torture horror with Dr. Wickham Clayton. Her research interests include a specific focus on the cultural significance of the horror genre and its ability to communicate trauma, as well as extreme horror, cult film and television, and the true crime fandom.
Xavier Mendik is Professor of Cult Cinema Studies at Birmingham City University, where he also runs the Cine-Excess International Film Festival. He is the author/editor/co-editor of nine volumes on cult cinema traditions, including Bodies of Desire and Bodies in Distress: The Golden Age of Italian Cult Cinema (2015), Peep Shows: Cult Film and the Cine-Erotic (2012) and The Cult Film Reader (2008). He has also completed a number of documentaries on cult film traditions, most recently The Quiet Revolution: State, Society and the Canadian Horror Film (2019).
Renee Middlemost is an early career researcher and Lecturer in Communication and Media at the University of Wollongong, Australia. Her PhD Thesis entitled “Amongst Friends: The Australian Cult Film Experience”, examined the audience participation practices of cult film fans in Australia. Her forthcoming publications reflect her diverse research interests; these include a chapter on cult film and nostalgia for The Routledge Guide to Cult Cinema (2019); a chapter on the star persona of Jason Statham; and a co-authored chapter on the finale of Dexter.
Email: reneem@uow.edu.au
Sarah Pogoda is a Lecturer in German Studies at Bangor University. After receiving her Dr. phil. at the Freie Universität Berlin she came to The University of Sheffield in 2012. Here, she pursued her interest in the German filmmaker, theatre director and actionist artist Christoph Schlingensief (1960-2010) in research, teaching and art projects (for the latter see: www.bellotograph.jimdo.com). In 2016 she organised the interdisciplinary conference “Christoph Schlingensief and the Avant-Garde” at the ZIF Bielefeld and an edited volume on the respective subjects is about to be published. Three further publications in this area are: ‘Erweiterung der Avantgardeforschung. Schlingensiefs wissenschaftliche Aktionen Müllfestspiele, 7x Universität und Erster Attaistischer Kongress’ in: Lore Knapp and Sarah Pogoda (ed.): Christoph Schlingensief und die Avantgarde (forthcoming Fink). ‘Deutschland in den Sand setzen – The Transformative Metaphorology of Searching for Germany’ in: Art of Wagnis : Christoph Schlingensief’s Crossing of Wagner and Africa, ed. by Nadine Siegert, Fabian Lehmann, Ulf Vierke, Vienna: Verlag für Moderne Kunst (2017). ‘Christoph Schlingensiefs Grenzüberschreitungen. Die Wiener Aktion Bitte liebt Österreich. Erste österreichische Koalitionswoche und Elfriede Jelineks Kasperlestück Ich liebe Österreich’ (with Lore Knapp) in: Germanistische Mitteilungen. Zeitschrift für deutsche Sprache, Literatur und Kultur 41.1(2015), 75-89.
Webpage: https://www.bangor.ac.uk/ml/staff/sarah-pogoda/en
Janet Staiger is William P. Hobby Centennial Professor Emeritus in Communication at the University of Texas. She particularly attends to questions about situated and historical authorship, audiences and reception, and positionalities of gender and sexuality. Among her books are The Classical Hollywood Cinema: Film Style and Mode of Production to 1960 (1985, co-authored), Interpreting Films (1992), Bad Women: Regulating Sexuality in Early American Cinema (1995), Perverse Spectators (2000), Authorship and Film (2002, co-ed.), Media Reception Studies (2005), and Political Emotions (2010, co-ed.).
Jon Towlson is a journalist & film critic. He is author of Candyman (Auteur/ Columbia University Press, 2018), The Turn to Gruesomeness in American Horror films, 1931-1936 (McFarland, 2016), Close Encounters of the Third Kind (Auteur/Columbia University Press, 2016) and Subversive Horror Cinema: Countercultural Messages of Films from Frankenstein to the Present (McFarland, 2014).
Glenn Ward is Senior Lecturer in the School of Humanities at the University of Brighton. He has published extensively on cult cinema traditions, with particular reference to the films of the Spanish director Jesus Franco. He has had chapters published in The Films of Jess Franco (2018), Grindhouse: Cultural Exchange on 42nd Street, and Beyond (2016), The Transnational Fantasies of Guilermo del Toro (2014) and Latsploitation, Latin America and Exploitation cinemas. Beyond these publications Glenn Ward has also acted as Co-Director of the Cine-Excess International Film Festival and Conference between 2014 and 2016.