Matthew Potolsky is Professor of English at the University of Utah, specializing in nineteenth-century literature and literary theory. His career spans from 1998 Lecturer at Harvard University to current University Professorship. He earned a BA in Comparative Literature and Philosophy (1990), followed by MA and PhD in Comparative Literature (1992, 1997) from UC Irvine. Chair of English Department (2013-2016) University Professor (2014-2016) Research focuses on Decadence , Mimesis , Finance-Aesthetics intersections , and Government Secrecy . His work traces connections between financialization and decadent aesthetics, revealing how economic cycles influence artistic production. Key themes include: Decadent anti-realist literary movements Finance capital's cultural impact Decadent counterpublic formations Victorian aesthetic education debates Sublime aesthetics in national security Cosmopolitanism in literary communities Recent publications analyze: Decadent style as financialization rhetoric Reintroduction of verisimilitude theory Decadent responses to financial crises Mimetic labor in artistic production Decadent cosmopolitan counterpublics Historical parallels between financialization and literary decadence
Ramsey McGlazer is an Associate Professor specializing in twentieth-century European and Latin American literature, film, and critical theory. His research engages with poetry, politics-aesthetics intersections, critical carceral studies, and feminist/queer/psychoanalytic frameworks. He holds a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature and Critical Theory from UC Berkeley (2015) and previously taught at the University of St Andrews and Brown University’s Pembroke Center. McGlazer’s work interrogates modernist critiques of progress, radical psychiatry movements, and the interplay between aesthetic practices and institutional critique. His acclaimed monograph Old Schools: Modernism, Education, and the Critique of Progress (2020) won the American Association for Italian Studies First Book Prize. Current projects include The Clinic and its Double , exploring mid-century radical psychiatry and avant-garde art. He serves as Senior Editor of Critical Times and Coeditor of Italian Culture , and has translated key works like Rita Segato’s The War Against Women . McGlazer’s writing appears in venues such as Los Angeles Review of Books and n+1 . Research interests span Surrealist provocations, Brazilian artist Lygia Clark’s propositions, and transnational feminist solidarities. His scholarship bridges literary analysis with critical engagements in carceral studies, postcolonial theory, and decolonial thought.
Harsha Ram is an Associate Professor in the Department of Comparative Literature at the University of California, Berkeley. His research focuses on Russian and European Enlightenment, modernist literature, and the cultural histories of the Caucasus region. He holds dual B.A. Honors degrees in Italian and Russian from the University of Sydney and University of New South Wales, and a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from Yale University. His work bridges literary theory, post-colonial studies, and geopoetics, with a particular emphasis on Georgia's literary modernism and its intersections with Russian imperial culture. Key themes include spatial theory, peripheral modernisms, and the transnational dimensions of cultural production. Recent work examines the role of ritual feasts in Georgian national identity and the geopoetics of Eurasian avant-garde movements. Ram has published extensively on figures like Velimir Khlebnikov and Boris Pasternak, exploring their engagement with imperial legacies and revolutionary aesthetics. His book The Imperial Sublime: A Russian Poetics of Empire (2003) remains a seminal study of Russian imperial poetics. Current projects include studies on Georgian literary encounters with Russian culture and the symbolic dimensions of Caucasus representations. His scholarship frequently appears in leading journals such as Modernism/Modernity , Slavic Review , and Ab Imperio . He has held visiting positions at institutions globally and actively participates in interdisciplinary dialogues between literary studies, history, and cultural geography.
Dr. Majdi Faleh is an Academic Fellow/Lecturer in Cultural Heritage at the School of Architecture Design and Built Environment, Nottingham Trent University. He focuses on architectural globalization, migration and heritage, Islamic architecture ethics, and social justice in cities. Previously, he held roles at the University of Bahrain, MIT’s Aga Khan Programme, and multiple Australian institutions. He coordinates the Tunisia ENGAGE Hub Network for Humanitarian Heritage and leads the ARC-funded 'Australian Mosque Today' project. Education: PhD in Architecture and Humanities (University of Western Australia), Master of Architecture (Ball State University). Affiliations: Registered Architect in Tunisia, member of AIA, ICOM, and multiple architectural networks. His research bridges marginalized communities’ heritage with global architectural trends, emphasizing ethical frameworks in design. Notable projects include studies on Tunisian medinas, Dubai’s urbanization, and Australian mosque architecture. His work has been supported by ARC grants, Fulbright, and other international bodies. He has authored/co-authored over 20 peer-reviewed articles and book chapters on topics like public housing challenges for refugees, Islamic architectural ethics, and cultural preservation. Awards include the MIT Aga Khan Fellowship and Fulbright grants. Grants & Projects: Led £400k ARC-funded mosque project, coordinated Tunisia-UK humanitarian heritage networks, and contributed to Melbourne’s African immigrant housing studies. He has taught at universities in Australia, China, and the Middle East, and his practice spans architecture in the US, Tunisia, and France. Fluent in five languages, he engages in international conferences and editorial roles for journals like Journal of Architecture .
Johannes Riquet is a Professor in the Department of English at Tampere University , Finland, and Head of English. He directs the Spatial Studies and Environmental Humanities research group and leads interdisciplinary projects such as Mediated Arctic Geographies funded by the Academy of Finland (EUR 480,000, 2019–2023). Research Interests : Spatial theory, literary geography, environmental humanities, Arctic studies, mobility, and deconstruction. Recent Publications include monographs on island aesthetics, Arctic geopoetics, and co-edited volumes with Wesleyan UP and Manchester UP. His work spans cinematic geographies, Arctic comics, and hip-hop narratives. Grants : Principal Investigator for Mediated Arctic Geographies (Academy of Finland, 2019–2023). Collaborative Projects : Co-curated Circumpolar Connections with Indigenous scholars, integrating Arctic and Indigenous knowledges.
Anne-Lise François is an Associate Professor in the Departments of English and Comparative Literature at the University of California, Berkeley. She earned her PhD in Comparative Literature from Princeton University. Her work bridges 18th- and 19th-century British literature with contemporary environmental humanities, focusing on themes of ecological ethics, literary minimalism, and non-productive temporalities. Current research explores pastoral worldliness and commons-based economies in Romantic and modernist texts. Key scholarly contributions include her prize-winning book *Open Secrets: The Literature of Uncounted Experience* (2007), which examines 'affirmative reticence' in works by Jane Austen, Mme de Lafayette, and Emily Dickinson. Her recent projects address climate crisis narratives, food politics, and the intersection of aesthetic theory with ecological urgency. Teaching emphasizes transhistorical literary studies and environmental criticism Active in interdisciplinary collaborations across literature, philosophy, and environmental science Current book project: *Provident Improvisers: Parables of Subsistence from Wordsworth to Benjamin* Her writing synthesizes close textual analysis with broader socio-ecological frameworks, challenging Enlightenment models of productivity and advocating for 'recessive fulfillment' in both art and life.
Dr. Konstantinos Kalantzis is a Lecturer in Anthropology and Visual Culture at the Department of Anthropology, University College London (UCL). His academic journey includes a PhD in Anthropology from UCL (2010), an MSc in Visual Anthropology from the University of Oxford (2005), and a BA in History from the University of Crete (2004). He also serves as an Honorary Research Fellow at UCL. PhD in Anthropology, UCL (2010) MSc in Visual Anthropology, University of Oxford (2005) BA in History, University of Crete (2004) Kalantzis specializes in the intersection of visual culture, anthropology, and political imagination, with a focus on Greece and the Mediterranean. His research explores colonialism/postcolonialism, photography, ethnographic film, materiality, psychoanalysis, and rural societies. He has contributed to critical debates on crisis representation, Occidentalism, and the role of photography in documenting social imaginaries. His publications span ethnographic books, journal articles, and exhibitions, including Tradition in the Frame (2019) and the Citizens of Photography series (2021–2022). Recent work like "The Indigenous Sublime" (2023) and "Slippery Delight" (2022) examines visual ambiguity and pleasure in crisis contexts, while earlier articles analyze the debt crisis, tourism, and ethnographic film. He has received an ERC grant for the Citizens of Photography project, which investigates the camera's role in political imagination. His publications frequently address themes of displacement, crisis, and cultural representation through visual methods.
Sianne Ngai is the Andrew W. Mellon Professor in the Department of English at the University of Chicago, where she has taught since 2017. Her work bridges aesthetic theory, critical theory, and cultural studies, with a focus on the affective dimensions of capitalist culture and equivocal aesthetic judgments. Her educational background includes: Ph.D., Harvard University, 2000 Ngai's research centers on everyday aesthetic categories (cute, zany, interesting, gimmick) and their relationship to capitalism, revolutionizing affect theory through analyses of politically ambiguous emotions. Her work critically intersects with feminist and queer studies , examining how gender, sexuality, and race shape aesthetic experience. She approaches mundane aesthetic judgments with philosophical rigor previously reserved for the sublime, revealing their embeddedness in labor, value, and temporal structures of capitalist culture. Her publications form a cohesive trajectory: from Ugly Feelings ' exploration of non-cathartic negative affects to Our Aesthetic Categories ' elevation of trivial aesthetic terms, culminating in Theory of the Gimmick 's investigation of capitalist contradictions. Recent works extend this framework to comedy, dialectical thought, and cross-cultural translations, demonstrating global scholarly impact through multiple language editions. Her major awards include: Modern Language Association’s James Russell Lowell Prize Christian Gauss Award finalist ASAP Book Prize (co-winner) Literary Hub Book of the Year Honorary Doctorate from the University of Copenhagen Guggenheim Fellowship Berlin Prize (American Academy in Berlin) Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin Fellowship ACLS Fellowship Huntington Library Fellowship Stanford Humanities Center Fellowship Ngai's research has been sustained by prestigious fellowships enabling extended scholarly residencies at top institutions worldwide. Her collaborative work includes co-editing Critical Inquiry 's special issue on Comedy with Lauren Berlant. Teaching remains central to her practice, with courses spanning American literature, feminist/queer criticism, and aesthetic theory—including upcoming 2025-2026 courses on literary criticism, Marx's Capital , and Adorno's Aesthetic Theory . Though not explicitly mentioned in institutional labs, Ngai's intellectual influence operates through international lecture circuits (from Aarhus University to Seoul National) and shaping critical discourse across humanities disciplines through her conceptual innovations in affect and aesthetic theory.
Benjamin Morgan is the Department Chair and Associate Professor at the University of Chicago, Department of English. He received his Ph.D. from the University of California at Berkeley in 2010 and has been teaching at UChicago since 2010. Ph.D., University of California at Berkeley, 2010 His research focuses on literature, science, and aesthetics in the Victorian period and early twentieth century, with specific interests in nineteenth-century sciences of mind and emotion; aestheticism and decadence; speculative and science fiction; and environmental humanities topics like extinction, energy cultures, and the literary history of climate change. Methodologically, his work engages aesthetic theory, affect theory, and science studies. His publications explore scalar disjunctures, the interplay of geological time with human narratives, and materialist approaches to art and literature. Key themes include the Victorian origins of cognitive science, the politics of aesthetic autonomy, and formal strategies for representing ecological devastation. Benjamin Morgan advises students on projects spanning nineteenth and early-twentieth century British literature, literature and the environment, embodiment and affect, science fiction, and aesthetic theory. He is affiliated with the University of Chicago's English Research Labs and contributes to intellectual life through collaborative projects like the V21 Collective.
Dr Anthony Faramelli is a Lecturer in Visual Cultures at Goldsmiths, University of London, serving as Programme Leader for the BA in Fine Art and History of Art, and co-Leader of the PhD in Visual Cultures. He holds a PhD in Critical Humanities from The London Graduate School, Kingston University (2014). His research focuses on psychosocial studies, coloniality, institutional analysis, digital cultures, and psychotherapy aesthetics, with notable works including Resistance, Revolution and Fascism: Zapatismo and Assemblage Politics (2018) and The Mass Psychology of Fascism in the Age of Machines (forthcoming). He is affiliated with the Goldsmiths Centre for Migrant Futures and the Psychosocial Studies Association. Faramelli also consults for mental health and housing organizations, applying institutional psychotherapy principles in practice. Education: PhD in Critical Humanities (2014), The London Graduate School, Kingston University Research Interests: Coloniality, institutional psychotherapy, digital surveillance, micro-fascist movements, Fanon’s ethico-aesthetic paradigm, Zapatismo, and decolonial mental health practices. His work bridges psychoanalytic theory, political philosophy, and postcolonial critique. Recent Projects: Refugee Cartographies (mapping Latin American diaspora networks), and critical analyses of the Alt-Right and algorithmic fascism. He has presented at conferences such as the IV Jornadas Deleuze in Buenos Aires and the Université Le Havre-Normandie. Professional Roles: Editor of Deleuze and Guattari Studies , Executive Board member of the Psychosocial Studies Association, and consultant for Southwark Council’s Housing Solutions.
Andrew Huddleston is Professor of Philosophy and Director of the Centre for Research in Post-Kantian Philosophy at the University of Warwick. He previously taught at Birkbeck College, University of London and Exeter College, Oxford. He holds a PhD from Princeton University. His research focuses on post-Kantian philosophy (Nietzsche, German Idealism, Romanticism) and intersects with aesthetics, social philosophy, and ethics. His 2019 monograph, Nietzsche on the Decadence and Flourishing of Culture , challenges individualist interpretations of Nietzsche, arguing for a more socially-oriented understanding of cultural flourishing. Current work explores the 'Religion of Art' concept in European thought, examining art's role as a religious substitute in a secular age. Education: BA from Brown University and Pembroke College, Cambridge; PhD from Princeton University (supervised by Alexander Nehamas). Research trends in recent articles emphasize Nietzschean moral psychology (ressentiment), narratives of cultural decadence, and the interplay between aesthetics and existential concerns. His work also engages with Adorno's critical theory and Hegel's philosophy of comedy. Editorial roles include serving as Book Reviews Editor for European Journal of Philosophy , Editorial Board member of British Journal for the History of Philosophy , and area editor for Ergo . He is also Treasurer of the Royal Musical Association Music & Philosophy Study Group. Teaching responsibilities include modules on Nietzsche's Beyond Good and Evil , the 'Religion of Art' in post-Kantian philosophy, and convening the MA in Continental Philosophy.
Professor Daniel Katz is a faculty member at the University of Warwick's Faculty of Arts, affiliated with the English and Comparative Literary Studies program. His research focuses on modernism and its aftermath, with a special interest in poetry and poetics. BA (Reed College) PhD (Stanford University) His work spans psychoanalysis, critical theory, transatlantic literary studies, and multilingualism. He has published extensively on Jack Spicer, Samuel Beckett, and Ezra Pound, including the edited volume Be Brave to Things: The Uncollected Poetry and Plays of Jack Spicer (2021). Current projects include a monograph The Big Lie of the Personal: Poetry, Politics, and the Lyric Subject (Oxford UP, forthcoming). Recent publications analyze subjects such as sublimation in psychoanalysis, materialist poetics, and the politics of avant-garde movements. He is a founding editor of the Bloomsbury Studies in Critical Poetics series and co-directed Warwick's Centre for Research in Philosophy, Literature and the Arts. He supervises doctoral research in modernism (especially Beckett and Pound), American poetry, and critical theory, including psychoanalysis and post-Derridean thought. Teaching includes undergraduate modules like US Writing and Culture, Modern American Poetry, and Twentieth-Century Avant-Gardes, as well as MA options in American Poetry and Modernist Psychoanalysis. Office hours: Monday 14.30-15.30, Tuesday 13.00-14.00, and by appointment.
Distinguished Professor David Jewitt is a prominent planetary scientist at UCLA's Department of Earth and Space Sciences within the College of Letters and Science. He has held this position since 2009 and also serves as a Professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy since 2010, and as Director of the Institute for Planets and Exoplanets since 2011. Dr. Jewitt earned his B.Sc. in Astronomy from the University of London (1979), followed by M.S. (1980) and Ph.D. (1983) in Planetary Science from Caltech. Prior to UCLA, he served on the faculty at MIT (1983-1988) and the University of Hawaii (1988-2009), where he became a full Professor in 1993. His research focuses on primitive bodies of the Solar System, particularly comets which he considers remnants from planetary accretion processes. His work aims to understand solar system formation and evolution through studying these objects. Recent publications explore non-gravitational forces in planetary systems, interstellar interlopers, and the asteroid-comet continuum, reflecting his continued leadership in solar system small body research. Shaw Prize (2012) Kavli Prize (2012) Member of the National Academy of Sciences (2005) Exceptional Scientific Achievement Medal, NASA (1996) Professor Jewitt has mentored numerous students including Jane Luu (co-discoverer of the Kuiper Belt) and Chadwick Trujillo. As Director of the Institute for Planets and Exoplanets, he fosters interdisciplinary research connecting planetary science with exoplanet studies. His work continues to shape our understanding of the solar system's formation through analysis of its smallest constituents.
Professor Ian Gregory , Distinguished Professor of Digital Humanities at Lancaster University's School of Global Affairs , is a pioneer in integrating Geographical Information Systems (GIS) with humanities research. His work bridges historical demography, literary studies, and social geography through projects like the European Research Council-funded Spatial Humanities: Texts, GIS, Places and the Leverhulme Trust's Geospatial Innovation in the Digital Humanities . BA in Geography (Lancaster), MSc in GIS (Edinburgh), PhD in Historical GIS (London) Co-founder of Lancaster’s Digital Humanities Centre Former Head of Department of History (2018-2022), now Associate Dean of Research Research Interests : Historical GIS for long-term change in Britain and Ireland Textual GIS to analyze large corpora (e.g., Lake District literature, 19th-century newspapers) Developing spatial methodologies for humanities scholarship Publications span GIS applications in literary geography, historical demography, and corpus linguistics, with recent trends focusing on emotional mapping of testimonies and deep mapping of cultural landscapes. Grants include 25 major awards (14 as PI) from the ERC, AHRC, ESRC, and Leverhulme Trust, supporting projects on topics like space-time narratives and historical vegetation change. Labs/Teams : Co-directs Lancaster’s Digital Humanities Centre, fostering collaboration in spatial humanities, NLP, and AI.
Frances Ferguson is the Mabel Greene Myers Distinguished Service Professor in the Department of English at the University of Chicago. She has taught there since 2012 and holds a Ph.D. from Yale University (1973). Her research focuses on 18th-century British literature, Romanticism, law and literature, and the novel, with additional interests in critical theory and the history of education. She explores how literature intersects with legal frameworks, educational systems, and evolving social values. Education: Ph.D., Yale University, 1973 Her research investigates the transformation of literary forms and critical practices across centuries, including the role of dissent in educational thought, the relationship between poetry and the novel, and the historical context of reading practices. She has advised students on topics ranging from Wordsworth’s philosophical influences to the critique of marriage in Victorian novels. Her publications include Pornography, The Theory (2005), Solitude and the Sublime (1992), and Wordsworth: Language as Counter-Spirit (1977), alongside numerous articles on Romanticism, legal narratives, and literary form. Her work bridges literary analysis with interdisciplinary inquiries into law, education, and cultural history, offering critical perspectives on how literature shapes and reflects societal structures.
