Gordon Booth
Following his retirement in 1996 from the post of chief educational psychologist for the Grampian Region of Scotland, Gordon Booth turned his interests to the life and times of William Robertson Smith and in 1999 completed a doctoral thesis on The Scientific, Literary and Cultural Context of that notable late Victorian polymath. Since then he has continued to research numerous aspects of Smith’s controversial career, while simultaneously forging fruitful academic relationships with other admirers of this uniquely influential “lad of pairts” from rural Aberdeenshire. In 20004, Dr Booth collaborated with Astrid Hess, a German descendant of the Smith family, in the publication of Children of the Manse, a detailed account of Robertson Smith’s upbringing and education, based upon the original memoirs, handwritten in German by Alice, the eighth member of their father’s large family.
J.S. Mackley
J.S. Mackley teaches at the University of Northampton. His research and publication interests include the medieval perception and reception of apocryphal legends, British mythology and folklore, and Medieval astronomy and cosmography. He is the author of The Legend of Brendan: A Comparative Study of the Latin And Anglo-Norman Versions (Leiden, Brill: 2008), has written articles on the medieval legend of Judas Iscariot and is currently editing and translating a fourteenth century treatise on cosmography.
Ivona Misterova
Ivona Misterova is a lecturer in the Department of English Language and Literature at the University of West Bohemia in Pilsen. She received her Ph.D. in English and American Literature from Charles University in Prague. She conducts research in the area of theatrical interpretations of English and American plays performed on Pilsen theatre stages in the context of 20th-century events. She is the author of the book entitled Shakespeare’s Plays Performed in Pilsen Theatres (2005).
Jake Poller
Jake Poller recently completed has doctoral thesis on the place of mysticism in the work of Aldous Huxley. His essays have appeared in the D.H. Lawrence Review and the Aldous Huxley Annual. His research interests include: the intersection of literature and theology (particularly monistic religions); primitivism in 20th century literature; and psychoanalysis.
Susie Thomas
Susie Thomas edited A Reader’s Guide to Hanif Kureishi (Palgrave, 2005).
Mark P. Williams
Mark P. Williams has studied at the University of Hull and the University of Warwick and is in the process of completing a PhD at the University of East Anglia on ‘fantasy and the body politic in contemporary genre fiction’ looking at the work of Michael Moorcock, Angela Carter, Alan Moore, Grant Morrison and China Miéville. He has contributed to conferences on Science Fiction, globalization and literature, millennial fictions, the literary canon and the literary response to 9/11, and co-organised a conference on Michael Moorcock at Liverpool John Moores.