Nandita Biswas Melamphy

Western University

Dr. Nandita Biswas Mellamphy is Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science, Affiliate Member of the Department of Women’s Studies and Feminist Research, and Director of the EGG/Electro-Governance Group at Western University, Canada. She is also an ongoing Associate and Research Fellow of both the Center for Transformative Media at The New School in New York and The Centre for War and Technology at Bath University in the UK. Her areas of study are situated at the intersection of Political Theory, Continental Philosophy and Media Theory, focusing on the political dimensions of the contemporary neuro-sciences, techno-sciences and—in addition—works of speculative science-fiction. She is the author of several works including The Three Stigmata of Friedrich Nietzsche: Political Physiology in the Age of Nihilism (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010/2011), and is the co-editor — with Dr. Dan Mellamphy — of The Digital Dionysus: Nietzsche and the Network-Centric Condition (New York: Punctum Books, 2016).  She is currently writing two books, the first entitled War on Terror and the Digital Darkside (on the surveillance state and the politics of larval warfare), the second entitled The New ‘P.R’.: Posthuman Rationality and the Politics of ‘Nudging’ (on the politics of perception management and the implications of algorithmic governance/governmentality).

 

Gabriella Colombo Machado

Université de Montréal

Gabriella Colombo Machado is a PhD candidate in English Studies at the Université de Montréal. Her research interests include queer and feminist theory, graphic novels, and science fiction. She has earned an MA in Comparative Literature from Western University, an MA in Literatures in English from VU University Amsterdam, and a BA in Portuguese and English Languages from Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio Grande do Sul (PUCRS), in Brazil.

 

Apala Das

University of Toronto

Apala Das is a first-year PhD student at the Department of English, University of Toronto. Born and raised in India, she received her undergraduate and master’s degrees in English Literature from The English and Foreign Languages University, Hyderabad, India. Her primary area of research interest is Transatlantic Modernist Literature. She is also interested in Global Modernisms, Comparative Medievalisms, Aesthetics and Poetics, and South Asian Studies.

 

Amany Dahab

Western University

Amany Dahab is a PhD candidate who studies comparative literature at Western University (Canada). She earned her Masters’ Degree in Architecture from the University of Ain Shams (Egypt). Her Master’s thesis illustrates the influence of African and Eastern art on the formation of German expressionists’ rebellious aesthetics and on the emergence of the concept of Organic Architecture as well. Her current research focusses on Expressionism in Sufi poetics and Islamic architecture. Her research interests include Sustainability, Aesthetics, Spirituality, and Diaspora.

 

Maria Theodora Diakantoniou

University of Windsor

Having completed an undergraduate degree with a double major in Biology and English, Maria Theodora Diakantoniou aims to combine the two disciplines in her scholarly endeavours. She is currently entering her second year in the English Literature and Language Master’s program at the University of Windsor. Her primary area of interest is ecocriticism, including the role of nature in a given text. Her thesis focuses on John Clare’s bird poetry and his skill as a natural historian. Her projected completion date is April 2018.

 

Jeff Gagnon

University of Toronto

Jeff Gagnon is a PhD candidate at the University of Toronto’s Centre for Drama Theatre and Performance studies.

 

Heather M. Humphrey

Binghamton University

Heather M Humphrey is a PhD student in English Literature, Rhetoric and Composition, and Creative Writing at Binghamton University. Heather is the Director of the Literati Reading Series, Assistant Director of the Binghamton Poetry Project, and Fiction Editor for the Harpur Palate Literary Journal.

 

Fiana Kawane

University of Toronto

Fiana Kawane is pursuing an MA in English at the University of Toronto. Her research pertains to the fields of gender and sexuality, sociolinguistics, and literary theory. More specifically, she is currently working on reticence in American literature and psychogeographic readings of domestic space. She received her BA Honours in English (academic direction by Goldsmiths College) and Graduate Diploma in International Relations (academic direction by London School of Economics) from the University of London. Alongside her literary pursuits, she is a professional Kathak dancer.

 

Donatas Šinkūnas

Western University

Donatas Šinkūnas is a second-year PhD student in Comparative Literature at Western University in London, Ontario. His interests are dystopia and dirty realism in Latin American, more specifically Colombian, literature. He is interested in writers who come from troubled environments or who write about them. Moreover, he is also interested in social, political, economic, financial, and philosophical aspects of literature, boundaries between reality and fiction, and different sorts of authorship.

 

Jacob Vangeest

New Centre for Research and Practice

Jacob Vangeest is currently a certificate student in social and political thought at the New Centre for Research and Practice in Grand Rapids, Michigan. A graduate of the School of Library, Information and Archival Studies at the University of British Columbia, his research exists at the intersection of information, technology, politics, philosophy, and religion.