Avery Delany
I am a PhD student in the Department of Anthropology at Goldsmiths University and budding baby video game developer. My work explores human/non-humanness, future imaginaries, worlding, video games, and the potentials of technology. My thesis looks specifically at the construction of human/non-humanness in single player, science fiction video games (primarily Detroit: Become Human); the relationship between video games, science and society; and co-creation between video game developers and players. In addition to Beyond Gender, I am one of the directorate for the London Science Fiction Research Community, co-founder of the Decolonising Anthropology reading group, and editorial board member of Decol Anth @ Gold.
Molly Ackhurst
Ibtisam Ahmed
Ibtisam Ahmed (he/him) is an independent scholar and performer, with expertise in queer utopianism, decolonisation, and cultural history. After completing an MPhil in Politics at the University of Nottingham, he worked for a few years in the LGBTQ+ charity sector and is now in the process of re-entering academia full-time. He performs on-stage as Indigo Spice, a founding member of the House of Spice collective, where he highlights theatre and dance styles from his home country of Bangladesh, along with using sustainable costume techniques which showcase his heritage. For an example of his recent work, please check out his essay on costume and community history published in Vector. He is a huge fan of superheroes and is a happy co-parent of a mischievous tuxedo cat by the name of Miles Mewrales.
Raphael Kabo
I am an academic, coder, and poet working for free and open access to knowledge, the creation of resilient communities, and the arrival of a post-capitalist utopia. My academic work examines the manifestations of utopia, the commons, and precarity in contemporary culture, with a particular interest in post-2008 poetry, novels, and speculative fiction, and cultural production within contemporary global activist movements. Apart from Beyond Gender, I am a co-founder of the Utopian Acts radical research network.
Eleonora Rossi
I am a second year PhD student at Birkbeck College, University of London. My research focuses on contemporary science fiction, and I explore how feminist posthumanist themes and images emerge within and influence these recent writings. I am particularly interested in the role that feminist and anticolonial posthumanism might have in establishing novel, utopian practices of collective care.
Alongside my PhD, I am currently the creative nonfiction editor for the Mechanics' Institute Review (MIR) Online, a Birkbeck-based multimedia publication designed to represent the quality and diversity of the UK literary scene. I am also passionate about teaching and event planning, particularly in connection with engagement.
Sinéad Murphy
My work focusses on Arabfuturisms and theories of world literature. I analyse speculation as a critical practice which both registers and co-constitutes temporal and spatial transformation in contemporary Arab creative works. My research brings world-literary notions of combined and uneven conditions of production to bear on the organising principles and cultural capital of science fictional texts. I recently completed a Postdoctoral Research Fellowship at Freie Universität Berlin, with the Cluster of Excellence "Temporal Communities: Doing Literature in a Global Perspective". Prior to this I worked as a Lecturer in English and Comparative Literature at King's College London, having completed my AHRC London Arts and Humanities Partnership-funded PhD in Comparative Literature in 2019. Along with Beyond Gender I am an assistant editor at Fantastika Journal. My writing can be found in Science Fiction Studies, Strange Horizons, The Literary Encyclopedia, and the Postcolonial Studies Association Newsletter.
Smin Smith
I am a Lecturer in Fashion Styling and Communication (UCA), and a PhD student at University for the Creative Arts (UCA) and University of the Arts London (UAL). Outside of academia, I work as a fashion stylist and coordinate Vagina Dentata Zine, a publication that celebrates still-image science fiction. The publication has been exhibited in zine collections at the BFI, Tate Modern and V&A, alongside features in Dazed, Dazed Beauty and It's Nice That. My PhD research builds upon this practice, documenting the interwoven relationship between contemporary queer feminisms and science fiction artwork. In particular, my research highlights SF artworks from a range of traditionally "deemphasized" visual and conceptual mediums (e.g. fashion imagery, fashion design, digital collage and interdisciplinary practices). My research gathers these case studies under the term 'feminist science fiction art'; highlighting their attempts to fiction new worlds into reality. My thesis aims to expand upon established academic frameworks in feminist critique, creating a model for 'feminist science fiction art criticism'.
Sing Yun Lee
I am an illustrator and designer working under the identity Sinjin Li. My creative practice is led by my interest in how science fiction can inform and influence method, approaches to learning, and visual communication. I work on commissions, such as book cover artwork and visual identities for conferences, as well as projects relating to my academic research and interests.
I have previously created work for Jo Fletcher Books, Glasgow University and the Petrocultures Research Cluster, the London Science Fiction Research Community, Gylphi Press, Fantastika Journal, and the Science Fiction Poetry Association. My projects have twice been longlisted, and once shortlisted, for a BSFA Award for Best Artwork.
Katie Stone
I am a PhD student and Associate Tutor working at Birkbeck, University of London. In my research I explore childhood and utopianism as they are imagined within science fiction. I am interested in the many ways that SF creators allude to childhood to reinforce and justify their science-fictional imaginings. My work is centrally informed by queer and feminist Marxism. Along with Beyond Gender I am co-founder of the research network Utopian Acts and former director of the London Science Fiction Research Community. I have published on H. G. Wells and imperialism, James Tiptree Jr. and trans fictioning and have a forthcoming article on the utopian potential of vampiric hunger.
Felix Kawitzky
Judy Thorne
Sasha Myerson
I am a PhD student at Birkbeck, University of London. My research focuses on urban space and the built environment in 1990s feminist Cyberpunk science-fiction. Examining posthuman and multiple subjectivities, my work explores how such individuals navigate, survive and resist within technologized cities of surveillance and discipline. My research interests include Utopian and resistance studies; history of consciousness; postmodernism; gender; de-colonial thought and experimental film/music. I am a former director of the London Science-Fiction Research Community, and I have an article on Japanese science fiction film in the Science Fiction Film and Television journal. Aside from my academic work, I also write fiction and poetry.
Rachel Clare Hill
Tom Dillon
I am a PhD student and Associate Tutor at Birkbeck, University of London. My thesis attempts to contextualise the British 'New Wave' in science fiction within the wider cultural and social landscape of the 1960s. Academic work by me can be found in Science Fiction Studies, Fantastica, and, with Linda Stupart, in Studies in Arts and Humanities: as well as a chapter in Sci Fi: A Companion. I am a member of Beyond Gender and a former director of the London Science Fiction Research Community.
Amy Butt
I am a practising architect and a lecturer in architecture at the University of Reading with a specialisation in architectural representation and communication. My research explores the way the fictional worlds we construct influence and reflect the world we inhabit, writing about utopian thought and the imaginary in architecture through science fiction literature and film. In my teaching, I explore the role of narrative and empathetic engagement in design using science fiction literature to provide a critical point of reflection on cities we currently inhabit as well as future worlds currently under construction. In addition to Beyond Gender, I am one of co-founders of the architectural design collective Involve.
Josephine Taylor
Josie Taylor spends much of her free time analysing women's pop music videos for their use of car freedom imagery and petrocultural ideologies, while also searching for queer utopian aspects of pop music (vengaboys and their promotion of public transport: the venga bus). She has been categorised as having bipolar disorder and expresses her experience of mania and psychotic symptoms through midnight/early morning solo dance, as well as writing extracts of poetry which combines research interests with lived experience. She is writing a memoir performance piece called Running on Gasoline: Madness and Dance. She sees dance as SF world building.