Keynote Speakers 2021
Confirmed keynote speakers:
William Hughes
Professor of Literature in English at the University of Macau, China; former Professor (26 years) at Bath Spa University; former President of the International
Gothic Association; former Chief-Editor of Gothic Studies. William has specialised in the study of Bram Stoker. He was educated at the Liverpool Collegiate School and the University of
East Anglia, and also holds a PGCE from Christ Church, Canterbury. He has presented radio programmes for the BBC World Service and BBC Radio 4, and has also appeared on live television through
Living TV's Most Haunted Live!, most recently during the 2009 broadcast from St George's Hall, Liverpool.[1] In 2015, he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society and, in 2019, a
Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland.
Wikipedia: William Hughes.
Marius Crisan
Dr Habil Marius-Mircea Crișan (PhD 2008 University of Turin, Italy) is Associate Professor at the Teacher Training Dept.,
West University of Timișoara. He is the editor of Dracula: An International Perspective (Palgrave Macmillan, Springer Nature 2017), coordinator of the special issue of Biblioteca
Nova Bulletin "Speculative Fiction and the Frontiers of the Possible" (2019), author of The Birth of the Dracula Myth: Bram Stoker’s Transylvania (2013) and The Impact of a
Myth: Dracula and the Fictional Representation of the Romanian Space (2013), and co-editor of the volume Beliefs and Behaviours in Education and Culture: Cultural Determinants and
Education (2017). He was the manager of the research project The impact of a Myth: Dracula and the Image of Romania in British and American Literatures (2011-2013). For more
information, see: http://www.themythoftransylvania.ro/
Victoria Amador
Assistant Professor of English at the American University of Sharjah. Her research interests include feminist discourses in classical Hollywood cinema, vampire and Gothic representations in British and American film and literature, and fashion history. She has held two Fulbright senior lectureships in American literature, received three teaching awards, and has worked as a professor as well as administrator in international higher education for over thirty years. Amador is also one of the co-editors of SXSE Magazine, an online publication on photography of the American South, and a long-time member of the National Book Critics Circle. Currently she is writing a critical biography of the actress Olivia de Havilland for the University of Kentucky Press.
Sorcha Ní Fhlainn
Senior Lecturer in Film Studies, Gothic and American Studies at Manchester Metropolitan University.
BA in Arts (History and Politics) - University College Dublin, Ireland
MA in American Studies - University College Dubin, Ireland.
PhD in English (Postmodern Vampires in Fiction, Culture, and Film from 1968 - ) - Trinity College, Dublin. Ireland
Postgraduate Certificate in Academic Practice - MMU
Fellow of Higher Education Academy (FHEA).
Previous employment:
Trinity College, Dublin (Adjunct Lecturer and Tutor) in School of English. 2005-2012.
University College, Dublin (Part-Time Lecturer in Film Studies) in School of English, Drama and Film. 2011-2013.
Hans Corneel de Roos
Independent researcher, NL/DE/Phil, studied Political & Social Sciences at the University of Amsterdam and the Free University, Berlin. Hans made a career in Public Administration and in the financial field; his true passions, however, were/are Art and Art History. He got involved in Dracula Studies while preparing a photo-illustrated version of Dracula. Since then, he has made a series of groundbreaking discoveries, about the true location of Castle Dracula and the Scholomance, the lifetime identity of Count Dracula, and the Icelandic and Swedish versions of Dracula. Hans is the translator/editor of Powers of Darkness, and initiator of the Fourth World Dracula Congress in Dublin (2016) and the "Children of the Night" International Dracula Conference series.
Website: www.vampvault.jimdofree.com.
Magdalena Grabias
Magdalena Grabias is an Assistant Professor and a Deputy Head of the Institute of Cultural Studies at Maria Curie-Skłodowska University in Lublin, Poland. She specialises in Film Studies, American Studies, Gothic Studies, literary translation and music journalism. She is a co-founder of the international organisation The Children of the Night and a co-organiser of the biannual World Dracula Congress. Her academic publications include book "Songs of Innocence and Experience: Romance in the Cinema of Frank Capra" (UK, 2013) as well as numerous articles in Polish and English propagating film, music and theatre viewed from the perspective of philosophy, semiotics, anthropology and popular culture.
Clemens Ruthner
Clemens Ruthner is Professor at the Dept. for German and Central European Studies at Trinity College, Dublin, and Director of Research at its School of Languages, Literatures and Cultural Studies. He studied German Philology, Philosophy, History and Communication Studies at Alma Mater Rudolphina. He has been living and working abroad since 1991: in Budapest (Hungary), Antwerp (Belgium), Edmonton (Canada) and Birmingham (UK), before coming to Trinity in 2008. Visiting professorships in Leuven (Belgium), Vienna (Austria), Sarajevo (Bosnia-Herzegovina), Leipzig (Germany), and Berkeley (USA). Moreover, Dr Ruthner is a publicist and translator. His research focusses on German and Austrian literature (19th-20th c.), Central European Studies, Otherness (e.g. ethnicity, foreignness, sexuality, monstrosity / vampirism), Postcolonial Studies, Literary and Cultural Theory.