Speakers

Carole Cusack

Carole M. Cusack received her Bachelor of Arts (Honours) in Religious Studies and English Literature from the University of Sydney in 1986. She later graduated PhD in Studies in Religion in 1996 and Master of Education (Educational Psychology) in 2001. She has taught in Studies in Religions since 1989, first as a casual tutor and lecturer, and from 1996 as a full-time staff member.

Lisa Bennett

Lisa Bennett completed a BFA (Hons) at the University of Ottawa before earning a BA (Hons) and PhD in medieval Icelandic literature and cultural memory at Flinders University. At Flinders, she has taught a wide variety of topics, including Anglo-Saxon literature, reading and writing short stories, life writing, crime fiction, adaptations and creative writing. Under the name Lisa L. Hannett, she has published 50 short stories in a number of venues. She has won three Aurealis Awards.

Helen Young

Helen Young focuses her research around representations of power and cultural relations, with a particular interest in race and ethnicity. Her PhD explored postcoloniality in Middle English romance. Since graduating in 2007, she has worked on several projects, including an exploration of the ways ‘England’ is portrayed in Anglo-Norman chronicles, the reception of Anglo-Norman in the modern era, and contemporary medievalism. She has taught in English and Communication.

Kim Wilkins

Kim Wilkins was born in London and grew up in south-east Queensland. She is the author of more than 20 novels for adults and children, and writes across genres both under her own name and her pseudonym Kimberley Freeman. In 2012, she passed two million words of fiction in print, has publications in more than a dozen languages, and has been a bestseller in the United States. She has degrees in literature and creative writing and teaches in the writing program at University of Queensland.

Kate Forsyth

Kate Forsyth is the internationally bestselling author of more than twenty books, including The Witches of Eileanan and Rhiannon’s Ride series for adults, and The Puzzle Ring, The Gypsy Crown, and The Starthorn Tree for children. She has won or been nominated for numerous awards. Kate is currently undertaking a doctorate in fairytale retellings at the University of Technology Sydney and recently published Bitter Greens, a retelling of the Rapunzel story; and The Wild Girl, a history of the woman who provided the Grimm brothers with many of their fairy tales.

Catriona Mills

Catriona Mills holds degrees from Macquarie University and The University of Queensland. Her PhD dissertation employed Eliza Winstanley’s writing career as a case study for the better understanding of the production and consumption of mid-Victorian penny weeklies. She has previously published on adaptations of penny-weekly serials to the English suburban stage. She currently works as a researcher for AustLit.

Helen Merrick

Helen Merrick lectures in Curtin University’s Internet Studies program, after working in a number of other Western Australian Universities teaching cyberculture, women’s studies and history. Previously she worked for the Women in Leadership program at Edith Cowan University, and was the Acting Director of the Centre for WA History at UWA. Helen supervises a number of PhD students, and pursues research interests in feminist theory, science fiction, feminist science studies, sustainability and online cultures.

Frances Bonner

Associate Professor Bonner holds an MA (Tas) and a PhD (Open) and is a reader in the School of EMSAH, University of Queensland. Her current research includes popular non-fiction television programs and their presenters; magazines, especially magazines and health; and celebrity. She is also the author of numerous articles on television, magazines, science fiction, and film, as well as books on the media climate today.

 

Clare Bradford

Clare Bradford is a Professor in the Faculty of Arts and Education on the Melbourne campus of Deakin University, Australia. Much of her research has centred on postcolonial readings of children’s texts, resulting in Reading Race: Aboriginality and Australian Children’s Literature (2001), which won both the Children’s Literature Association Award and the Book Award of the International Research Society for Children’s Literature, and Unsettling Narratives: Postcolonial Readings of Children’s Literature (2007), which was named an Honour Book by the Children’s Literature Association.

Jodi McAlister

Jodi McAlister is an academic and a theatre critic. Her research interests lie in the field of romance fiction, particularly around the issues of love and virginity. She is currently a doctoral candidate in the Department of Modern History, Politics and International Relations at Macquarie University, working on a thesis entitled “The Origins, Historical Evolution and Representations of the Virgin Heroine in English Literature”

Oliver Chadwick

Oliver Chadwick is a doctoral candidate in the School of English, Media Studies, and Art History at the University of Queensland. His research explores masculinity in contemporary medievalism. He is the author of a recent chapter “Courtly e-Violence, Digital Play: Adapting Medieval Courtly Masculinities in Dante’s Inferno” in Digital Gaming Re-imagines the Middle Ages (ed. Daniel Kline, Routledge 2013). He has a particular interest in digital gaming, comic books, and masculine subcultures.