Biographical Notes
Daniel ADSETT
American University in Bulgaria
Currently an assistant professor in the business department at the American University in Bulgaria, Daniel Adsett obtained a PhD in philosophy from Marquette University in 2020 with a dissertation on Karl Jaspers. He specializes in existentialism and phenomenology and has published articles in The Heythrop Journal and in International Philosophical Quarterly. At AUBG he teaches business ethics and introduction to philosophy.
Mihail ATANASOV
Sofia University St. Kliment Ohridski
Mihail Atanasov is a fourth-year BA student in English and American Studies, with an interest in literary studies and science fiction studies. He was awarded the Kalina Filipova Memorial Grant to do research on the novel The Lathe of Heaven by Ursula Le Guin.
Bryan BANKER
TOBB University of Economics and Technology, Turkey
Bryan Banker is an assistant professor of English language and literature at TOBB University of Economics and Technology in Ankara, Turkey. He has a PhD in American Literature from LMU-München and a MA in American Studies from Universität Heidelberg. He studies and teaches American literature and culture, postcolonial world literature and culture, philosophy, science fiction, music, and television. He has published on themes such as race and racism in speculative cultures, racism in antiquity and video games, Neanderthal ontology, John Coltrane as philosopher, and dialectical philosophy in African American aesthetics.
Bozhidara BONEVA-KAMENOVA
Plovdiv University “Paisii Hilendarski”
bozhidara_boneva@uni-plovdiv.bg
Bozhidara Boneva-Kamenova has graduated from The Paisii Hilendarski University of Plovdiv with a BA in English Philology in 2015 (after writing a thesis on the topic of Spheres of Female Identity in Anne Brontë’s ‘The Tennant of Wildfell Hall’) and received her MA in English Philology: Linguistics and Translation a year later. She enrolled in a PhD program in 2017 and successfully defended her dissertation (Paradigms of Identity in the Novels of Toni Morrison and Alice Walker. The Faces of Discrimination) in 2020. Her work explored the lives of female characters in Morrison and Walker’s works from birth through maturity, motherhood, and relationships with others. Currently, she works as an Assistant Lecturer for the Department of English Philology at The Paisii Hilendarski University of Plovdiv and continues pursuing her interest in African American Studies and Women’s Studies. Some of her latest publications include: “Contemporary Visions of Love in Jacqueline Woodson’s Red at the Bone” (in Научни трудове на ПУ “Паисий Хилендарски” – Филология, vol. 59, № 1, 2021) and “Exploring the Representation of All-Black Towns Across the 20th c.: Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God and Toni Morrison’s Paradise” (in Scientific Research of the Union of Scientists in Bulgaria – Plovdiv, series B. Natural Sciences and Humanities, Vol XXIII, 2022).
Vesselin BUDAKOV
Sofia University “St. Kliment Ohridski”
Vesselin M. Budakov is Senior Assistant Professor in the Department of English and American Studies at St. Kliment Ohridski University of Sofia. He holds a PhD in eighteenth-century epistolary fiction. He teaches English Literature of the Enlightenment period and conducts seminars on American literature and Victorian Literature. His research interests and publications include “Dystopia: an Earlier Eighteenth-Century Use,” Notes and Queries 57.1 (2010), “Cacotopia: An Eighteenth-Century Appearance in News from the Dead (1715),” Notes and Queries 58.3 (2011) as well as studies on eighteenth-century epistolary fiction, travel writing, early science fiction, and utopianism. Along with Jonathan McCreedy and Alexandra Glavanakova, he co-edited Swiftian Inspirations: the Legacy of Jonathan Swift from the Enlightenment to the Age of Post-Truth (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2020).
Payal DAHIYA
University School of Humanities and Social Sciences, Guru Gobind Singh Indraprastha University, New Delhi, India
Payal Dahiya is a Research Scholar (PhD) at the School of Humanities and Social Sciences, Guru Gobind Singh Indraprastha University, New Delhi. Her research focuses on manifestations of conflict, trauma and resistance in world literature. She is working on interdisciplinary approaches to conflict and revolution in the Middle East for her doctoral thesis.
Caroline EDWARDS
Birkbeck, University of London
Caroline Edwards is Senior Lecturer in Modern and Contemporary Literature, Department of English, Theatre and Creative Writing at Birkbeck, University of London. Her research focuses on the utopian imagination in contemporary literature, science fiction, apocalyptic narratives, and Western Marxism. She is author of Utopia and the Contemporary British Novel (Cambridge University Press, 2019), which examines temporal experience and utopian anticipation in contemporary texts by British writers. Her work has also led to two co-edited books of essays: China Miéville: Critical Essays (Gylphi, 2015) and Maggie Gee: Critical Essays (Gylphi, 2015). She is currently working on her second monograph, Hopeful Inhumanism: The Elemental Aesthetics of Ecocatastrophe, which examines strangely hopeful moments of inhuman collaboration within the elemental contexts of the lithic, the mycological, the arboreal, and the hydrological.
Robert A. EMMONS JR.
Rutgers University-Camden
Robert A. Emmons Jr. is a documentary filmmaker, video essayist, and Associate Teaching Professor of Filmmaking in the Department of Visual, Media, and Performing Arts at Rutgers University-Camden. From 2016-2020 he was the co-founding Associate Director of the Digital Studies Center. His most recent documentary with partner Joe Tropea, Fugazi’s Barber (2021), has screened throughout the US. His feature documentaries include, Sickies Making Films (2019), an investigation of early film censorship, Diagram for Delinquents (2014), a deep dive into the work of psychiatrist Fredric Wertham and the comic book panic of the 1940’s and ‘50s, Goodwill: The Flight of Emilio Carranza (2007), and De Luxe: The Tale of Blue Comet (2010). His non-fiction video essays have been screened at conferences and symposia around the globe and include X9: CHØOSE YOUR OWN ADVENTURE (2022), ChiroMANIA (2018), Fake News (2018), 1 13 5 18 18 25 11 1: An Adaptation of Uncle Buddy’s Phantom Funhouse (2016), and Social Media Narrative (2016). His is currently in production on two new documentary essay films on the history of video gaming in America: Game of Nim (2023) and Chambers of MUON (2024).
Paweł FRELIK
University of Warsaw
Paweł Frelik is Professor and the Leader of Speculative Texts and Media Research Group at the American Studies Center, University of Warsaw. His teaching and research interests include science fiction, audiovisual media (film, television, video games, music video), and unpopular culture. He has published widely in these fields, serves on the boards of Science Fiction Studies (USA), Extrapolation (USA/UK), and Journal of Gaming and Virtual Worlds (UK), and is the co-editor of the New Dimensions in Science Fiction book series at the University of Wales Press. In 2013-2014, he was President of the Science Fiction Research Association (USA), the first in the organization’s history from outside North America. He now serves as President of the International Association for the Fantastic in the Arts (USA). In 2017, he was the first non-Anglophone recipient of the Thomas D. Clareson Award.
Emilia GANEVA
Sofia University St. Kliment Ohridski, BA student
Emilia Ganeva’s interests are predominantly related to the possibilities encapsulated in human nature and potential. Hence, she has been an avid reader of speculative fiction that explores the porous boundaries of the concept of the human species outlined by the ideas of transhumanism and the subversion of the concept of biological determinism. Furthermore, she also tends to question the ability of all man-made enterprises to categorize and comprehend their surroundings via epistemological means which gave birth to her modest paper titled How Non-Human Spaces Preclude the Utopian Vision in Arkady and Boris Strugatsky’s Roadside Picnic and Stanislaw Lem’s Solaris. Similarly, she also has a keen interest in the hypothetical limits of human adaptability to a changing environment on a biological level and feels partial to narratives that test the potential of human society to contain hostile or even apocalyptic scenarios and remodel them to survive and even thrive. Moreover, Emilia has recently been increasingly fascinated by the complex workings of the forces of capitalism and anthropocentrism and their influence on the natural environment. Thus, these interests ignited a newfound passion for research into climate fiction representations of the opposing views on how humankind may navigate a socio-ecological disaster and the implication such narratives have for the future.
Nikolay GENOV
Institute for Literature, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences
Nikolay Genov has a PhD in Literary Theory, Senior Assistant Professor at the Institute of Literature of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences. His research interests include science fiction, genre studies, digital media and video games. He is the author of the book The Virtual Man: An Essay on Phantomatics (2022), and his writings have been published in various journals, anthologies and electronic platforms.
Alexandra GLAVANAKOVA
Sofia University “St. Kliment Ohridski”
Alexandra K. Glavanakova, PhD, is associate professor in American Literature and Culture at the Department of English and American Studies at St. Kliment Ohridski University of Sofia, Bulgaria. Her teaching, academic research and publications focus on the culture and literature of the U.S.A.; transcultural studies and identity; the major cultural shifts in literacy, education, and literary studies under the impact of digital technology. She is the author of two monographs: Posthuman Transformations: Bodies and Texts in Cyberspace (2014) and Transcultural Imaginings. Translating the Other, Translating the Self in Narratives about Migration and Terrorism (2016); the editor et al. of New Paradigms in English Studies. Language, Linguistics, Literature and Culture in Higher Education (2017) and Swiftian Inspirations: The Legacy of Jonathan Swift from the Enlightenment to the Age of Post-Truth (2020). She has been involved in several projects and publications on reading literature in the digital age (including a Fulbright grant at UCSB, 2022) and e-learning and has recently served as the editor of the special issue “Reading Modes in the Digital Age” of the Sofia University online journal for arts and culture Piron (2020). She received a Fulbright grant as a research scholar at UCSB on a project investigating reading literature online (Feb – July 2022).
Bogdan GROZA
Siena University, Italy
Bogdan Groza finished his Master’s Degree programme in European, American and Postcolonial Language and Literature at the university of Padua with a thesis entitled “Knighthood and anti-heroic behaviour in the figures of Falstaff and Don Quixote”. He is currently developing a PhD project at the faculty of Siena on the subject of the Anthropocene in science fiction literature; the main writers he is working on are Philip K. Dick, Frank Herbert and Ayn Rand. He gave presentations on the ontological themes implied by the transhumanism and posthumanism (conference in Milan 2022 – Screens: Rhetorics of Disconnection) and on the Anthropocene portrayed in Philip K. Dick (Hermes Consortium Studies Summer School in Arezzo 2023 – Possible World: Enviroment, Community, Heterotopia).
Angel IGOV
Sofia University “St. Kliment Ohridski”
Senior assistant professor Dr. Angel Igov, PhD, has graduated from Sofia University with a BA in English Studies, MA in Literary Studies, and PhD on Fictional Models of the City in the Contemporary British Novel: Ian McEwan and Martin Amis. He has also specialized at the UC Berkeley on a Fulbright scholarship. He teaches English literature and Translation at the Department of English and American Studies of Sofia University. His current academic interests are focused on comparative poetics and intertextuality. He is the author of Flags and Keys: A Poetics of the Epigraph (in Bulgarian), as well as three novels, two collections of short stories, and a number of publications in periodicals. He is a practicing translator of fiction and poetry from English, and holds several national awards for fiction and translation.
Georgi ILIEV
Institute for Literature, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences
Georgi Iliev defended his PhD in 2017 in the section “Theory of Literature” at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences with his dissertation on “The Relationship between Epistemology and Ethics in Literary Theory after the Frankfurt School”. His research interests lie mainly in critical and political theory.
Dusty KEIM
University of Vienna
Dusty Keim holds a Bachelor of Arts in English Literature from the University of Montana, where she graduated in 2019 before moving to Austria on a Fulbright grant to work as an English Teaching Assistant. After her grant period, she began her master’s studies, and she is currently a master’s student in Anglophone Literatures and Cultures and Slavic Studies at the University of Vienna. Her work focuses on mass/popular culture and her research is grounded in the interdisciplinary study of literature, language, material culture, and history.
Alexander KIOSSEV
Sofia University “St. Kliment Ohridski”
Alexander Kiossev is professor in the History of Modern Culture, Director of The Cultural Centre of the University of Sofia, and editor-in-chief of the electronic journal “Piron”. His research interests are in the spheres of reading research, cultural history of communist totalitarianism, post-colonial studies and construction of identities. Recently has he published the monograph The Quarrels about Reading (2013, Sofia: Ciela, in Bulgarian). He was editor of the collective volume Post-Theory, Games and Discursive Resistance, and the collective volume “Rules” and “Roles”. Fluid Institutions, Hybrid Roles and Identities in East European Transformation Processes (1989–2005). Many of his essays are translated in English, German, French, Dutch, Ukrainian, Czech, Polish, Romanian, Serbian and Macedonian languages. Since 2000 he has been a leader of several international research projects dedicated to the Balkan cultures, reading problems and autobiographies.
Beatrice MASI
Bologna University
Beatrice Masi is a second year World Literature and Anglophone studies PhD student at Bologna University and literary translator. In her PhD research she is developing an analytical framework called Uncanny Realism, through the analysis of a cluster of Irish Celtic Tiger and Post-Crash Novels. She has recently published her second full length translation of the Irish novel The Blocks by Karl Parkinson.
Adela A. MIROLEVSKA
Sofia University St. Kliment Ohridski
Adela Mirolevska is a PhD candidate in the field of American Culture at Sofia University, researching female body politics and self-identification in the digital age, and the intersection of social media activism and contemporary American culture. She holds a BA in English and American Studies and an MA in Language and Culture from Sofia University. Her MA thesis explores the current transformations of the Lolita myth in popular culture and on social media, with a focus on girl-dominated Internet subcultures. Adela has taken part in two international student conferences in Zagreb and in Vienna, as well as two translation workshops in Sofia, Bulgaria. She has two published translations of short stories by Angela Carter and Vladimir Nabokov. Her short story “White Rabbits” won the National literature competition for poetry and prose organized by St. Kliment Ohridski Foundation.
Bologna University
Federica Moscatelli is a 38th cycle PhD candidate in World Literature and postcolonial
studies with a specific focus on Hispano-American literature. Her fields of research are postcolonial studies, border studies, migrations, dystopias, and post-apocalyptic literature in the Hispano-American context. For her PhD thesis, she is currently working on critical rewritings of ancient texts in post-apocalyptic literatures. During her Master’s studies, she spent a semester in Mexico as an exchange student and took her curricular exams there. For her Master’s thesis, she worked as a volunteer at the migrant shelter “La Asunción” in Puebla and wrote on Central American migration to the United States. She graduated in 2019 cum laude, and then worked for three years as a Spanish Language and Literature Teacher in High School.
Elena MUSTAKOVA
Independent Social Scientist
Dr. Elena Mustakova is an evolutionary psychologist, social scientist, and spiritual philosopher, with 40 years of experience in the field of education, psychological and human services in North America, Europe, Africa, and the Arab Peninsula. She received her undergraduate degree from the English Department at Sofia University, and her doctorate in Human Development at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. After 33 years in the United States, as an Assistant and then Associate Professor in Humanistic and Transpersonal Psychology, a clinical psychotherapist, and a keynote speaker at interdisciplinary forums, such as the NATO Advanced Research Workshop on Indigenous Terrorism and Addressing the Root Causes of Radicalization in Europe (Budapest, Hungary, 2008), she is now based in Sofia, Bulgaria. She received the 1995 Henry A. Murray Dissertation Award, Radcliffe College, Harvard University to support her cross-cultural research on “Social Responsibility and Critical Consciousness in Bulgarian Mid-lifers”, which explored adult social consciousness and citizenship in the context of economic, political, and social transformation. Her dissertation on The Ontogeny of Critical Consciousness received the 1998 Outstanding Dissertation Award of the Association for Moral Education, for her contribution in rethinking of human motivation. Her work with immigrant communities received the 2003 Carter Campus Community Partnership Award. Dr. Mustakova is senior editor of Toward a Socially Responsible Psychology for a Global Era, and co-founder of the Unitive Justice & Global Security Thought Leaders Circle https://sdgthoughtleaderscircle.org/unitive-justice-and-global-security-circle/, as well as member of the World Upshift Movement https://worldupshift.org/ . Her Nautilus 2022 award-winning book, Global Unitive Healing has been called “a hymn to collective sanity”, offering “potent and wise medicine for our time.” Dr. Mustakova serves the transformation of individual consciousness and collective culture to meet the challenges of a planetary age.
Lilia NIKOLOVA
Sofia University “St. Kliment Ohridski”
Lilia Nikolova is a third-year bachelor in the Department of English and American Studies at “St. Kliment Ohridski” University of Sofia. She possesses a deep passion for exploring alternative visions of society, particularly social relationships that contribute to the formation of a family circle. Lilia’s academic focus revolves around science-fiction literature, anthropology, and social theories related to utopianism. Actively engaging in various student-led study groups, Lilia collaborates on innovative projects and eagerly participates in conferences and extracurricular events dedicated to the exploration of utopian studies. She is driven by her deep curiosity about how idealistic visions can influence existing cultures and she is committed to contributing to the field through her latest research endeavours. Her research endeavour aims to examine the portrayal of kinship and family relations across utopian literature and seeks to shed light on how these fundamental aspects are conceptualized. Outside of her academic pursuits, Lilia currently works as a private English teacher. She believes in the transformative potential of children’s creative thinking and aims to develop it further by introducing them to some of the utopian ideals and their practical applications in contemporary society.
Robert O’CONNOR
York St John University
Dr Robert O’Connor is a Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing and Creative Industries at York St John University, UK. As well as leading the MA Publishing programmes at York St John, Rob also teaches on the undergraduate creative writing programme, focusing on genre fictions and practical vocational projects with the students. In April 2020 Rob completed a PhD in Literature Studies at York St John University, focusing on the work of China Miéville and the depiction of monsters as motifs for social commentary within Miéville’s work. His areas of research and interest include publishing and literary communities, science fiction and fantasy, contemporary literature, weird fiction, psychogeography, genre theory and creative writing pedagogy. Rob has had articles on science fiction and fantasy published in Vector and Fantastika as well as presented at several conferences on subjects around science fiction, fantasy, horror, psychogeography, gothic fiction, myth and folklore and creative writing. Rob is also the chair of the York Literature Festival board of trustees and has worked in literary events for twenty years.
Alexander POPOV
Sofia University “St. Kliment Ohridski”
Alexander Popov is senior assistant professor at the Department of English and American Studies, Sofia University “St. Kliment Ohridski”, where he teaches linguistics, science fiction and utopian studies. He has a PhD in computational linguistics and has written on topics such as natural language processing, artificial intelligence, science fiction studies, literary theory. He is the author of the monograph Zone Theory: Science Fiction and Utopia in the Space of Possible Worlds (2023), published by Peter Lang.
Anna SCHUBERTOVA
Charles University, PhD student
Anna Schubertová is a PhD candidate in Comparative and General Literature at the Faculty of Arts of Charles University in Prague. Her research interests encompass literary realism, authorship and literary theory from a historical perspective. In her PhD project titled “Problematic Totality: Literary Realism in 20th-Century Theory,” she examines the concept of literary realism in the works of Lukács, Adorno, Jameson, and Barthes within the context of 20th-century cultural and political history. She investigates how these scholars’ approaches to 19th-century fiction were influenced by their involvement in the Cold War discourse on the role of literature in society and by the emerging movements of modernism and postmodernism. Anna Schubertová pursued Czech literature and language, as well as Philosophy, for her bachelor’s degree and furthered her studies in Philosophy and Comparative Literature for her master’s degree. She published an expanded version of her diploma thesis as a monograph titled “Stávám se řečí. Smrt a návrat autora v perspektivě filozofie identity” (I Become Speech: Death and Return of the Author in the Perspective of Philosophy of Identity) in 2021.
Severina STANKEVA
Sofia University “St. Kliment Ohridski”
Severina Stankeva is a doctoral student in the History of Philosophy department at the Faculty of Philosophy, Sofia University “St. Kl. Ohridski”. Her research interests include modern and contemporary philosophy, cultural studies, and game studies.
Ana Kocić STANKOVIĆ
University of Niš, Serbia
ana.kocic.stankovic@filfak.ni.ac.rs
Ana Kocić Stanković currently works as an Associate Professor of American and African American Studies and American Literature at the English Department of the Faculty of Philosophy, University of Niš, Serbia. She received her MA degree from the School of Education, University of Nottingham, U.K. and a PhD in Anglo-American literature and culture from the University of Niš, Serbia. Besides teaching courses in American literature, history and culture, she has designed and taught a BA elective course in African American Studies, an MA elective course called Images of Others in American Literature and Culture and a PhD elective course American Women Writers. She is also acting president of the Serbian Association for Anglo-American Studies (UASS) and a member of The European Association for American Studies (EAAS) and the Association for American Studies in South East Europe (AASSEE). She is the participant of the 2023 SUSI – Study of U.S. Institutes for Scholars program of the U.S. Department of State and University of Montana. Her areas of academic interest include: African American literature and history, American literature – the classics and drama, American women and other minority writers and American colonial history.
Phillip STOILOV
Sofia University “St. Kliment Ohridski”
Philip Stoilov is an independent researcher in the field of literary theory and criticism. He
graduated in English and American Studies from Sofia University with a major in “Modern English and American Literature”. His interests span the domains of literary history and theory, modernist literature, narratology, cultural studies of the body. He works as a translator of artistic and humanitarian texts from English and French.
Enyo STOYANOV
Sofia University “St. Kliment Ohridski”
Enyo Stoyanov is an Assistant Professor at the Literary Theory Department of the University of Sofia “St. Kliment Ohridski”. He has published articles on various topics pertaining to contemporary processes in literature and culture. His interests are in the field of literary theory, digital culture, and contemporary philosophy.
Darin TENEV
Sofia University “St. Kliment Ohridski”
Darin Tenev is Assoc. Professor at the Literary Theory Department of the University of Sofia “St. Kliment Ohridski”. He has published two books: Fiction and Image. Models (2012) and Digressions. Essays on Jacques Derrida (2013), both in Bulgarian. His interests are in the field of fiction theory, model theory, deconstruction and contemporary philosophy.
Ognyan TENEV
Sofia University “St. Kliment Ohridski”
Ognyan Tenev is a 3rd year Bachelor’s student in English Philology in Sofia University.
Natalia VYSOTSKA
Kyiv National Linguistics University, Ukraine
Natalia Vysotska received her Doctoral degree in American literature from the Institute of Literature, National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine (1998). Current position – Full Professor, Theory and History of World Literature Department, Kyiv National Linguistics University. Scholarly interests encompass American and British Literature; multi/transculturalism; theatre and drama in the USA. Major publications include three books (The Concept of Multiculturalism as a Factor in US Recent Literary History, Kiev, KNLU Publishers, 2012 (in Ukrainian); The Unity of the Plural. Late 20th – early 21st cc. American Literature in the Context of Cultural Pluralism, Kiev, KNLU Publishers, 2010 (in Ukrainian); At the Crossroads of Civilizations: African American Drama as a Multicultural Phenomenon, Kiev, KNLU Publishers, 1997 (in Ukrainian)); – and numerous essays, articles, sections in textbooks, and dictionary entries addressing various issues of British and American fiction and drama published in Ukraine, Russia, Belarus, Greece, Germany, Poland, Romania and the USA. Member of the European Association of American Studies (EAAS). European Collegium for African American Research (CAAR). Fulbright Program Alumna (1995), Resident Scholar at the Kennan Institute (Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, Washington, D.C., 2002). Participant in Salzburg Global Seminar in American Studies (2000, 2009, 2022). Current work-in-progress – Shakespearean Presence in Contemporary American Drama.
Bryan YAZELL
University of Southern Denmark and a fellow at the Danish Institute for Advanced Study, Denmark
Bryan Yazell is an Associate Professor of American Literature at the University of Southern Denmark and a fellow at the Danish Institute for Advanced Study. His recent book, The American Vagrant in Literature: Race, Work and Welfare (Edinburgh), examines vagabondage in nineteenth- and twentieth-century literature in the US and Britain. His current project studies climate-induced migration as a representational problem in US climate fiction. Examples of this research appear in Configurations and Bloomsbury’s Precarity in Contemporary Literature and Culture.