James Bell is an artist, writer and researcher based in Newcastle upon Tyne. James
previously served on the committee of artist-run space Generator, Dundee (2011—
12); as a co-director of Rhubaba, Edinburgh (2013—14); and as a Producer at
Collective, Edinburgh (2012—17), developing and delivering the learning
programme. Selected projects include: Aye, and Gomorrah..., Rhubaba, Edinburgh
(2017); The Sphere, part of Of Other Spaces, Cooper Gallery, Dundee (2016); Moloch!
part of The Arbroath Template, Hospitalfield Arts (2015); The Sunday Driver,
Collective, Edinburgh (2013); and 24 Spaces, Malmö Konsthall, Malmö (2013). James
is currently undertaking postgraduate research at Northumbria University into
histories of queer-feminist cultural activism in contemporary art practice.
​
​
MC Ferro has an MA in Historical Sciences from the University of Naples Federico II, and is a PhD
candidate at the same university. S Palumbo has an MA in Philosophy from the University of
Naples Federico II, and is a PhD candidate at the same university.
​
​
Dr. Fiona Johnstone lectures on the history and theory of photography at Middlesex
University and the University of the West of England. She is working on a number of
projects, including a monograph for IB Tauris, Representing AIDS: Portraits and Self-Portraits
during the AIDS Crisis in America. She completed an AHRC-funded PhD on self-portraits by
HIV positive artists in 2015, and has published in a number of journals, essay collections and
exhibition catalogues, including Third Text (2011), and Changing Difference (Milan: Silvana
Editoriale, 2012). Her edited volume on Anti-Portraiture is forthcoming with IB Tauris for
2019.
​
​
Theo Gordon is a Teaching Fellow in Art History at the University of Sussex.
​
Ben Miller is an American writer and researcher based in Berlin, Germany and a graduate
student in Global History at the Freie Universität Berlin. His academic work focuses on the
transnational intellectual history of queer movements, examining a genealogy of same-sex-
loving identity formation between Germany and California connecting occultism, labor, and
ideas about indigeneity produced under colonial conditions. His work has been published or is
forthcoming in Invertito: Fachverband Homosexualität und Geschichte (Fall 2018, German),
Jacobin, and OutHISTORY. From 2016-2017, he was in residence at the Magnus Hirschfeld
Gesellschaft in Berlin with grant funding from the DAAD. Committed to public history as a vital
component of his practice, Ben has been invited to speak on his work at the Kings College World
History Student Conference, the Berlin Colloquium on the History of Sexualit_ies, the Schwules*
Museum Berlin, the WelcomeOUT Pride Festival in Uppsala and on Swedish public radio, and to
Humanity In Action fellows in Berlin. As a researcher, he is currently assisting artist AA Bronson
on a Public Apology to the Siksika Nation, an artistic research project towards indigenous
reconciliation on the western plains of Canada.
​
​
Charli Brissey is an interdisciplinary artist, scholar, and teacher who works choreographically
with various technologies and materials. This primarily includes bodies, cameras, objects,
instincts, language, and ecosystems. They are invested in movement practices to illuminate the
role of the nonhuman in formation-practices of self and material environment, and turn to
interspecies ecologies to challenge distinctions between nature and culture. They have been
creating performances, installations, experimental videos, and written scholarship for over fifteen
years, and have been presented in various galleries, conferences, film festivals, and performance
venues nationally and internationally. Brissey is currently an Assistant Professor in the Department of Dance at the
University of Michigan.
​
​
Scarlett Steven is a Sydney-based artist and writer whose current research is focused on stickiness as a
material, process and way of thinking. Her practice spans sculpture and installation and she has
exhibited throughout Australia and New Zealand. She is currently completing her Master of Fine Arts
at UNSW Art & Design, Australia.
​
​
Ege Altan completed her Master’s in Comparative Literature at King’s College London, UK
(2018). Before coming to King’s College London, she completed a Bachelor’s degree in English
Language and Literature at Bilkent University, Ankara, Turkey (2016). In her master’s
dissertation, she explored queer narratives and temporalities in Bilge Karasu’s Death in Troy and
Jeannette Winterson’s Written on the Body. She has presented papers at international
conferences held in the UK and Romania. She is interested in queer studies, narrative theories,
modes of storytelling in experimental and contemporary writings.
​
​
Richard Huddleson is a PhD student in Catalan Studies at Queen Mary, University of London. His project is
practice-led and focuses on translating queer, Catalan drama for an Irish context. He hopes that his
translations will more people to a wider variety of queer drama, but he also sees his project as an
opportunity to document and foster queer identities in Ireland and Scotland.
​
​
Ibtisam Ahmed is a final-year Doctoral Research Student at the School of Politics
and IR, the University of Nottingham. His work claims to be a decolonial killjoy by
deconstructing the ways in which British colonialism viewed itself as a utopia, with
the goal of shifting the focus to indigenous, feminist, queer, and marginalised
narratives of true utopian revolution. His major activist focus is on decriminalising
homosexuality in the Commonwealth of Nations through the building of transnational
solidarity and the use of queer politics. As a long-time fan of the art of drag, he finds
particular excitement in its political potential.
​
​
Ashley Jay Brockwell (Ash) is a non-binary artivist and consultant specialising in LGBTQ+ inclusion,
wellbeing and social justice. They established the social enterprise Reconnecting Rainbows with
Vivi L’Amour and Angel Rae, co-founders of art collective Art Therapy Creations, in 2017. Their
joint book, Happiness, The Four Keys: It’s LGBTQ+ Mental Health, Spacecat, But Not As We Know
It, will be available in 2018 (@ReconnectingRainbows, #AshAndSpacecat). Prior to their transition
to full-time eco-spiritual-social entrepreneur, Ash gained a Master of Biochemistry degree from
the University of Oxford and an MSc in Environmental Anthropology from Kent, co-founded an
NGO in Tanzania, worked as a Research Fellow at the University of Brighton, and contributed to
more than 30 publications in the fields of wellbeing, values, evaluation and sustainability. They
are currently finalising their PhD in Education for Sustainability at Wageningen University.
​
​
Matthijs Walhout is an Amsterdam-based artist and researcher with an interest in queer practices, christianities,
language, and its negations. Their work plays on diferent systems of meaning, most notably symbolic, ritual, performative, theological, and autobiographic, attempting to make the diferent discourses
they are concerned with simultaneous. They graduated in 2016 from the Master’s programme in Artistic
Research in Fine Arts at the Royal Academy of Art in The Hague, NL. Before training as an artist, they trained extensively in religious practices of intercession and prophecy.
​
​
Dan Bird completed his undergraduate degree in English Language and Literature at King's College London in 2015. He is currently completing his MA at Queen Mary University of London in English Studies: Contemporary Writing. His dissertation will focus on Tom McCarthy's Satin Island, and digital anthropology.
Zdeněk Sloboda received his Master Degree in Media Studies at the Faculty of Social Sciences, Charles
University in Prague in 2005. Between years 2008 and 2009 he was a junior researcher at the Gender &
Sociology Department at the Institute of Sociology, the Czech Academy of Sciences, where he currently
works again on a research project on homoparental desires and intentions. He is enrolled in PhD-studies
of Media Pedagogy/Education at the University Leipzig, Germany, and of Civil Society Studies at Charles
University Prague. Since Fall 2011, he has been lecturer and academic staf of the Department of Media
and Cultural Studies and Journalism at Palacky University in Olomouc. He publishes and teaches in the
areas of gender and sexualities, media theories, and media literacy and education. Since 2013 he is a
member, and since 2015 the chair of the Committee for Sexual Minorities, of the Commission for Human
Rights of the Government of the Czech Republic.
Jonathan Nash is an MA candidate in Theory and Criticism at the University of Western Ontario.
Dani Williams-Jones is a Research Fellow in the Departments of History and African American Studies with a
concentration in Race, Gender and Inequality. Her research focuses primarily on the political identity of Black
women in the context of a racialized American nation state. Dani is a poet, critical essayist, socio-cultural
historian, contemporary folklorist and Black Feminist theorist whose scholarship employs Black Literature,
Black Art and Black Musicology as an archive in order to fully contextualize the specificity of Black
womanhood in the millennial moment.
​
Chris Mowat is a Teaching Associate in Ancient History at the University of Sheffield. They recently received their PhD in Classics and Ancient History at Newcastle University, with a thesis focused on the relationship between gender and religion in the ancient world. They are currently a guest editor for NOTCHES.
​
​
Hilary Harp. Trained in sculpture at Parsons School of Design (BFA), Tyler School of Art (MFA), and at the
Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, Hilary Harp creates sculptures, installations and
media projects which explore new hybrid forms, and challenge categories, particularly
categories of high and low, male and female, technology and craft. Since 2003 she has
collaborated with Suzie Silver on a range of projects. Their videos have screened at over one
hundred festivals on five continents and are distributed by the Video Data Bank. Harp’s awards
include a Pew Fellowship in the Arts, a Heinz Creative Heights Grant, and an Arizona
Commission on the Arts Project Grant. Her ongoing project with Suzie Silver, “Fairy Fantastic!”
a queer fairy and folk tale video series for gender non-conforming kids of all ages, has screened
at festivals in Belarus, Portugal, Romania Australia and London. The project is supported by a
grant from the Frank Ratchye Fund for Art @ the Frontier. Harp is Associate Professor of
Sculpture at Arizona State University in Tempe, Arizona.
Rebecca Miller is a Ph.D. student in the History & Culture program at Drew University. Her
concentration is in 19 th century British History, specializing in intersections between queer theory
and imperialism.
pavleheidler. Since their mid-teens pavleheidler have been performing, studying,
writing, and teaching; inevitably considering their varied engagements as
opportunities to continue studying the notions of performativity and
success in communication. pavleheidler graduated from
Performing Arts Research and Training Studios in 2012 and took their
MFA degree in Choreography-specialisation-Performance from Dans och
Cirkushögskolan in 2015. In recent years they’ve been nourishing collaborative
relationships with Cristina Caprioli (CCAP) and Madeleine Lindh, Anja Arnquist,
Louise Permig, Philip Berlin, Ulrika Berg, Frédéric Gies, Sunna and others; with Silvia Marchig
(KIK Melone), Sonja Pregrad and Marko Gutić Mižimakov; with the WELD
Company; with Ilse Ghekiere; with Manon Santkin; with Mira Mutka; and
TOGETHER ALONE. TOGETHER ALONE stands for the volatile and developing
agreement that defines the relationship between pavleheidler, Ilse
Ghekiere, Mira Mutka, Samuel Draper, Manon Santkin, Eleanor Campbell,
Matilda Lidberg, Roos van Berkel, Skye Reynolds, Deirdre Morris; and
others. In February 2016 pavleheidler have been awarded Fellowship at
SITE Sweden.
​
​
Chiara Pellegrini is a Ph.D. candidate in English Literature at Newcastle University. Her project focuses on
contemporary novels and autobiographies with gender-variant first person narrators. Her background is in
queer theory, transgender studies, literature and continental philosophy. Her essay ‘Posttranssexual Times:
Uses of the Autobiographical in Contemporary Trans Writing’ is forthcoming with a/b: Auto/Biography
Studies, and she has presented her work at conferences and research seminars in the UK. She is currently
co-editing a Special Issue for the Journal of Gender Studies entitled ‘Anonymized Subjects: Gender and
Anonymity in Contemporary Culture’.
Tawnya Renelle graduated with her MFA in Creative Writing from Goddard College. She is currently undertaking her PhD at the University of Glasgow in Creative Writing and is working on a textbook about hybrid forms. She is a poet first and foremost but loves investigating forms. Outside of her studies she spends extensive time in the Scottish Highlands.
​