Presenters

• 
  Professor Denise Varney, Dean, Faculty of Arts

  Professor Denise Varney

  Dean, Faculty of Arts
  University of Melbourne

  

  Denise Varney is Dean of the Faculty of Arts, Professor of Theatre Studies and codirector of the Australian Centre in the School of Culture and Communication at the University of Melbourne. She has served as coconvenor of the Feminist Research Working Group of the International Federation for Theatre Research (2010–2015) and Senior Reviews Editor for *Theatre Research International* and is the Australian Drama Series Editor for Rodopi/Brill Scholarly Press, Amsterdam. She publishes on Brechtian and contemporary German theatre, feminist criticism and performance, women’s theatre, modern Australian Theatre and contemporary drama and performance and supervises research students in these fields. She is the author with Rachel Fensham of *The Dolls’ Revolution: Australian Theatre and Cultural Imagination* (2005), the contributing editor of *Theatre in the Berlin Republic* (2008), the author of *Radical Visions: The Impact of the Sixties on Australia Drama* (2011) and coauthor of *Theatre in the Asia Pacific* (2013). She is currently working on an ARC funded research project on the theatre of Patrick White 19622015.

• 
  Professor Ken Gelder, Professor of English and Theatre Studies

  Professor Ken Gelder

  Professor of English and Theatre Studies
  University of Melbourne

  

  Ken Gelder is the codirector of the Australian Centre and Professor of English and Theatre Studies at the University of Melbourne. He has been a visiting fellow at University College, London, and the University of Edinburgh. His books include *Reading the Vampire* (Routledge, 1994), *Uncanny Australia: Sacredness and Identity in a Postcolonial Nation* (with Jane M. Jacobs: Melbourne University Press MUP, 1998), *Popular Fiction: The Logics and Practices of a Literary Field* (Routlegde, 2004), *Subcultures: Cultural Histories and Social Practice* (Routledge, 2007) and *New Vampire Cinema* (British Film Institute, 2012). He is also editor of *The Horror Reader* (Routledge, 2000) and *The Subcultures Reader: Second Edition* (Routledge, 2007). Ken is coauthor (with Paul Salzman) of two Australian literary histories *The New Diversity: Australian Fiction 19701988* (McPhee Gribble, 1989) and *After the Celebration: Australian Fiction 19892007* (MUP, 2009) and coeditor (with Rachael Weaver) of four anthologies of colonial popular fiction, covering the Gothic, crime fiction, romance and adventure (all published by MUP). His most recent books, coedited and compiled with Rachael Weaver, are *The Colonial Journals, and the emergence of Australian literary culture* (University of Western Australia Publishing, 2014) and *Colonial Australian Fiction: Character Types, Social Formations and the Colonial Economy* (Sydney University Press, 2017) Ken is currently working on an ARCfunded research project (201720) titled EcoColonial Australian Literature: Environment, Species, Climate. Ken is on the editorial boards of the following journals: Gothic Studies, Australian Humanities Review, Adaptations, antiTHESIS, Journal of Popular Romance Studies, Transgressive Culture, and CineExcess ejournal. He is also on the editorial board of the International Gothic Series, and the Anthem Australian Humanities Research series.