CONFERENCE ORGANIZERS
CHARLOTTE NAYLOR DAVIS
Charlotte Naylor Davis studies the Bible as a cultural artefact. Her research specialises in the history of interpretation of the Bible, and the reception of texts through arts and literature—most recently contributing to a volume on the science fiction works of Octavia Butler. She is a scholar of Metal Music Studies engaging in research and collaborative projects on gender and the Bible in metal lyrics, fandom and material culture. She works both inside and outside the academy to provide tools of good biblical scholarship to students and community groups alike, and her work encourages constructive dialogue about these texts in places where they are often misunderstood or misused.
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JEREMY SWIST
Jeremy Swist is a Visiting Assistant Professor in the Department of French, Italian, and Classical Studies at Miami University in Ohio, USA. He earned his BA in European History and Latin from the University of Maine, and his MA and PhD in Classics from the University of Iowa. His primary research areas include Greek and Latin historiography under the Roman Empire, the thought and writings of the emperor Julian, and the reception of ancient Greece, Rome, and Byzantium in metal music. Jeremy has discussed this last topic in multiple conference presentations, invited lectures, and podcasts, with special emphasis on appropriations of antiquity by politically far-right bands. His publications in this area include “Satan’s Empire: Ancient Rome’s Anti-Christian Appeal in Extreme Metal” in Metal Music Studies (2018); “Headbanging to Byzantium: The Reception of the Byzantine Empire in Heavy Metal Music” in What Byzantinism in Istanbul is This? (ed. E. Alışık, Istanbul Research Institute, 2021); “Wolves of the Krypteia: Lycanthropy and Right-Wing Extremism in Metal’s Reception of Ancient Greece and Rome” in Metal Music Studies (2022); “Sparta and Metal Music’s Reception of Ancient History” in the Cambridge Companion to Metal Music (ed. J. Herbst, Cambridge University Press, 2023).
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SHAMMA BOYARIN
Shamma Boyarin is an Assistant Professor in the English Department at the University of Victoria. He is also appointed to the Religion, Culture, and Society Program. His research and teaching interests span medieval Hebrew and Arabic literature and the intersection of religion, and pop culture, with a special focus on heavy metal. Through this focus he explores ways in which metal engages with religious ideas and draws from the Middle Ages as a source for inspiration, sometimes as part of the problematic role metal plays in White Nationalist or Supremacist movements. He has been involved in organizing several Metal Studies-related conferences at UVic, and in the area of metal studies published “The New Metal Medievalism: Alexander the Great, Islamic Historiography and Nile’s ‘Iskander Dhul Kharnon’” in Medievalism and Metal Music Studies: Throwing Down the Gauntlet (Emerald Studies in Metal Music and Culture, eds. R. Barratt-Peacock & R. Hagen, 2019).
KEYNOTE SPEAKER & PERFORMER
FULYA ÇELIKEL SOĞANCI
Fulya Çelikel Soğancı studied music theory, composition and classical piano at Bilkent University in Ankara, following up with a Performing Musician master degree on piano from ARTez Fine Arts University, The Netherlands. After working for seven years in various European countries, she decided on academia and begun further studies on Musicology at Istanbul Technical University, Center for Advanced Studies in Music. In this period, she founded a symphonic-progressive metal band called Listana, performed, wrote, published and toured extensively in Turkey and abroad. Fulya defended her PhD thesis: “Music Non-literate Virtuosi: The Autodidact Metal Musician” in 2019. After working at Sabanci University as a Lecturer and the audio sector as product manager for SynthMaster, a software synthesizer company for 15 years, Fulya is currently an independent scholar and entrepreneur, working to implement a technology-based community improvement project called “Music for Everyone”.
PANEL CHAIRS
JÁNOS FEJES
János Fejes is a Hungarian historian of religions working at Pázmány Péter Catholic University, Budapest. Since his BA studies of history his interest revolves around various ancient and contemporary religions and religious phenomena, constantly looking for their reception in popular culture. His MAs of history of religions and aesthetic studies and also his PhD program were centered around the reception of mythological themes in heavy and extreme metal lyrics, accompanied by a series of publications on the topic both in Hungarian and English. Since 2020 Fejes teaches courses on PPCU regarding politics and arts while being head of the research administration team of the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences. In the last year his interest shifted from metal to a general analysis of popular arts regarding liminality and rites of passage. For more information: https://www.instagram.com/metal_mythologist/ | https://doktormetal.home.blog/
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JACQUELINE JUNG
Jacqueline Jung is Professor and Director of Undergraduate Study in the Department of History of Art at Yale University. She specializes in the art and architecture of medieval Europe, with a focus on Gothic architecture and sculpture, but her undergraduate teaching has come to take a wider perspective, encompassing sacred buildings and allied arts in many living and historic religious traditions (including Greek and Roman antiquity). She has published two books—The Gothic Screen: Space, Sculpture, and Community in the Cathedrals of France and Germany (Cambridge University Press, 2013) and Eloquent Bodies: Movement, Expression, and the Human Figure in Gothic Sculpture (Yale University Press, 2020)—which have won some awards. In 1984 she convinced her Dad to take her and a friend to the American Rock Festival in Battle Creek, Michigan, which brought together the likes of Ratt, Quiet Riot, Motley Crue, and Ozzy.
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PETER MILLER
Peter Miller is a Visiting Assistant Professor of Biblical Studies at the University of Iowa, where he earned his PhD in Religious Studies for his dissertation, “Usual Labors and the Wealth of Philosophy,” which investigated the intersection of monasticism and educational practices of Late Ancient Christianity in Persia. His research focuses on the Syriac Church of the East and the ascetic training regimen of monks in Southwest Asia and Northern Mesopotamia. Peter has broad interests in the reception and transformation of themes and figures from myth, religion, and history in wide-ranging media, including video games, novels, music, and theater. Prior to his work at the University of Iowa, Peter completed a Master’s in Theological Studies at Vanderbilt University, including a thesis on the demonology of Evagrius of Pontus. Outside of his academic interests, Peter is an avid player of tabletop games and reader of science fiction.
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SOL PÉREZ PELAYO
Marisol “Sol” Pérez Pelayo es licenciada en Filosofía y Ciencias Sociales por ITESO (Instituto de Estudios Superiores de Occidente) y tiene una maestría en Antropología Sociocultural por Ku Leuven en Bélgica, donde presentó una tesis sobre el Metal. Ha publicado en la revista Metal Music Studies, Lenguas Radicales (Universidad de Atacama) y RIFFS. Ha participado en coloquios y debates para antropología, filosofía, música y feminismo. También como poeta en la feria municipal del libro de Guadalajara en dos ocasiones. Antes de dedicarse a la investigación social, trabajó como actriz profesional y modelo para diversos proyectos. Hoy es colaboradora del programa radial de Metal “El Despeñadero” (Universidad de Guadalajara). También se desempeña como investigadora independiente en estudios de Heavy Metal y trabaja en el archivo y catalogación de obras de arte en el Museo M de Lovaina en Bélgica.
Marisol “Sol” Pérez Pelayo holds a Bachelor’s degree in Philosophy and Social Sciences from ITESO Western Institute of Higher Studies) and a Master’s in Sociocultural Anthropology by Ku Leuven in Belgium, where she presented a thesis on Metal music. She has published in the journal Metal Music Studies, Lenguas Radicales (University of Atacama) and RIFFS. She has partaken in colloquia and debates for Anthropology, philosophy, music and feminism and as a poet at the municipal book fair of Guadalajara on two occasions. Before pursuing in the line of social research, she worked as a professional actress and model for diverse projects. Today she is a contributor to the Metal radio show “El Despeñadero” (University of Guadalajara). Currently also an independent researcher regarding Metal Studies and working in the archiving and cataloging of artworks in Museum M in Leuven, Belgium.
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OSMAN UMURHAN
Osman Umurhan earned his PhD in Classics from New York University. His primary research focuses on verse satire and other literature of the Roman Empire, with a concentration on the shifting correspondences between geographical boundaries and those of cultural and political identity. His book Juvenal’s Global Awareness: Circulation, Connectivity, and Empire (Routledge, 2018) applies theories of globalization to an investigation of Juvenal’s articulation and understanding of empire, imperialism, and identity. His co-edited volume with Dr. Kris Fletcher Classical Antiquity in Heavy Metal Music (Bloomsbury, 2020) has pioneered novel approaches to the study of antiquity in heavy metal music. Other areas of publication and teaching interest include ecocriticism, the spatial turn, ancient uses and abuses of food, intersections between Roman and New Testament literary traditions, and cinematic receptions of classical antiquity, and more. You can spot Osman at any given metal show. He’s the sole metalhead in a Hawaiian shirt.
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VANESSA TOUPIN-LAVALLÉE
Vanessa Toupin-Lavallée is a PhD candidate in religious studies at the University of Quebec in Montreal, Canada. She also holds a postgraduate degree from the UK in Ancient Religions (University of Wales). Her areas of research are ancient demons, gender construction, ancient magic and its reception in contemporary esoteric practices and neopaganism.
PANELISTS & PRESENTERS
STEFANIE ACQUAVELLA-RAUCH
Stefanie Acquavella-Rauch holds degrees from the Philipps-Universität in Marburg, Germany (M.A. and Ph.D. in Musicology). She is a professor of historical musicology at the Johannes Gutenberg-Universität (JGU) Mainz. Before she held positions as research assistant, assistant professor and junior professor at the Universität Bayreuth, the Universität Paderborn, the JGU and the Akademie der Wissenschaften und der Literatur Mainz. She has fifteen years of teaching experience from various universities and was a visiting scholar at the University of California, San Diego. Her main research interests are compositional processes and sketch studies with special focus on Arnold Schönberg, Hardcore and Metal Music. She also specializes in (digital) musical editing and is interested in musical practices and music historiography in the eighteenth-century focusing on lost residences and forgotten musicians. Together with Nico Schüler, she is the co-editor of the international research book series Methodology of Music Research (Peter Lang International Academic Publishers).
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ANTJE BOSSELMANN-RUICKBIE
Antje Bosselmann-Ruickbie studied Art History, Archaeology, and Ancient History at Bonn University, Germany. Her MA focused on Byzantine architecture, and her PhD thesis on Byzantine jewelry won her two academic awards (published in 2011). Antje has lectured and researched at Mainz University and is currently at Gießen, Institute of Art History. She is a fellow of the Royal Historical Society and an associate member of the Leibniz Science Campus Mainz/Frankfurt: Byzantium between Orient and Occident. Her research was supported by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst, Gerda Henkel Stiftung, Dumbarton Oaks in Washington DC, the Mary Jaharis Centre for Byzantine Art and Culture, and others. Antje has published extensively on Byzantine goldsmiths’ works and enamels, cultural exchange in the Middle Ages, Technical Art History, Byzantine magic, and on Byzantium and Heavy Metal music. Her interest in Metal Studies has also resulted in a course taught at Gießen University.
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DAVID BURKE
David Burke is a PhD student and associate lecturer at Bath Spa University, focusing on heavy metal music and culture. His work incorporates media studies, musicology and cultural sociology alongside critical theory, Continental philosophy and psychoanalysis, aiming to expose vernacular practices in heavy metal culture which aid its longevity and continuity. His work has been published in Metal Music Studies and the Bloomsbury Encyclopedia of Popular Music of the World, and he has presented papers at the London Conference of Critical Theory and the International Society of Metal Music Studies, among others. David draws directly on his own experience as a metal musician, events promoter and journalist in his work and currently performs with the Bristol-based doom metal band Warrior Pope.
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MARINA DÍAZ BOURGEAL
Marina Díaz Bourgeal es una doctora en Historia Antigua por la Universidad Complutense de Madrid (2021) y en la actualidad colaboradora honorífica en el Departamento de Prehistoria, Historia Antigua y Arqueología de dicha universidad. Su tesis doctoral –en preparación para ser publicada como monografía en inglés- abordaba el mundo social del emperador Juliano desde la perspectiva del Análisis de Redes Sociales. Ha complementado su formación como historiadora (Grado en Historia, UAM, 2014; Máster Interuniversitario en Historia y Ciencias de la Antigüedad, UAM-UCM, 2016) con el estudio de las lenguas clásicas a través del Grado en Ciencias y Lenguas de la Antigüedad, que se encuentra terminando en la actualidad en la Universidad Autónoma de Madrid. Ha sido contratada predoctoral en la UCM (2017-2021) y postdoctoral en la Universidad de Málaga (2022), realizando además estancias de investigación en las universidades de Oxford (Reino Unido, 2018) y Münster (Alemania, 2019, 2020). Ha formado parte del equipo de varios proyectos de investigación sobre el ámbito educativo y cultural tardoantiguo y el escenario religioso tardoantiguo de convicencia y conflicto. Sus principales intereses de investigación son la historia social y cultural de la Antigüedad tardía, la historia desde abajo, la historia de género, la esclavitud al final del mundo antiguo, los usos políticos del pasado y la recepción clásica. Sus publicaciones pueden consultarse en Academia.edu, ORCID o Dialnet.
Marina Díaz Bourgeal holds a PhD in Ancient History from the Complutense University of Madrid (2021), and is currently “honorary collaborator” at the Department of Prehistory, Ancient History and Archaeology of the same university. Her PhD dissertation –which is now being prepared to be published as a monograph in English– dealt with the social world of the emperor Julian from a Social Network Analysis perspective. She has complemented her training as historian (BA in History, UAM, 2014; MA in History and Sciences of Antiquity, UAM-UCM, 2016) with the study of classical languages through the BA in Sciences and Languages of Antiquity (Classics), which she is currently finishing at the Autónoma University of Madrid. She was a Predoctoral Fellow at the Complutense University of Madrid (2017-2021) and a Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Málaga (2022), as well as a visiting scholar for short periods at the universities of Oxford (UK, 2018) and Münster (Germany, 2019, 2020). He has been part of the team of several research projects on the late antique educational and cultural sphere and the late antique religious scenario of coexistence and conflict. Her main research interests are the social and cultural history of Late Antiquity, history from below, gender history, late antique slavery, political uses of the past and classical reception. For her publications, check Academia.edu, ORCID or Dialnet.
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TOBIA DE SIATI
Tobia De Siati is a singer, musician and composer based in Apulia, Italy. He earned his Bachelor’s Degree in Performing Arts from the University Ca’Foscari di Venezia with a thesis in film music about the artistic partnership between Akira Kurosawa and Fumio Hayasaka. He is currently working on his Master’s degree at the Dipartimento di Musicologia e Beni Culturali di Cremona, Università di Pavia, with a thesis in Popular Music Studies on cultural heritage and musical genre hybridization in the discography of the Norwegian metal band Enslaved. Since 2012, Tobia has focused his musical efforts mainly on metal music, sharing the stage with national and international metal bands, even performing a song with the aforementioned band in 2017. With his main band Vetrarnott, he’s been touring Italy and Europe since 2018 and is currently working on an album about the cultural and historical heritage of ancient Italy.
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BRIAN EGEDE-PEDERSEN
Brian Egede-Pedersen holds a Master’s degree in History and English and spends most of his time teaching in his native Denmark’s upper secondary sector, previously winning the national Teacher of the Year Award. Brian always tries to make sure that his students listen to as much metal as possible, often to the benefit of neighboring classrooms. In the realms of education, he has also co-authored several textbooks and worked as a consultant for various schools and associations as well as the Ministry of Education. In academia, Brian has been a lecturer at the University of Southern Denmark and published on both application of the past and Tolkien metal. Today, he takes a slight step away from his usual subject of far-right Templar and Viking appropriation to talk about over-the-top German folk metal and gender.
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INGRID CRISTINI KROICH FRANDJI
Ingrid Cristini Kroich Frandji is a Lecturer at State University of Paraná, Brazil. She holds a PhD in History from the Federal University of Paraná, with a thesis on female agency, family and emotions in Roman Egypt. Besides Roman Egypt, she has always been interested in how ideas about Greco-Roman culture shaped the modern world. She leads a research project about receptions of Antiquity in the 21s century, and she was part of Antiga e Conexões, a project about receptions of Antiquity in the modern world. With that, she united her passion for Heavy Metal (started in her teenage years while listening to Black Sabbath) and reception studies. Her main research focus in masculinities and historical consciousness in the appropriations of Greco-Roman Antiquity within Heavy Metal culture. She is also a dog lover and will always be happy to see a picture of your dog.
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KRIS FLETCHER
Kris Fletcher is Associate Professor of Classics at Louisiana State University (USA), where he has been teaching since 2007. With Osman Umurhan he co-edited Classical Antiquity in Heavy Metal Music (Bloomsbury, 2019), to which he contributed a chapter on “Vergil’s Aeneid and Nationalism in Heavy Metal.” In addition to writing about the reception of the ancient world, he has published extensively on the Roman use of Greek mythology, including the books Finding Italy: Travel, Nation, and Colonization in Vergil’s Aeneid (U. of Michigan Press, 2014) and The Ass of the Gods: Apuleius’ Golden Ass, the Onos Attributed to Lucian, and Graeco-Roman Metamorphosis Literature (Brill, 2023).
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TYLER FRANCONI
Tyler Franconi is a Visiting Assistant Professor at the Joukowsky Institute for Archaeology and the Ancient World at Brown University. He is a Roman archaeologist interested in the economic and environmental history of the Roman Empire, especially the northwestern provinces of Gaul, Germania, and Britannia. Tyler has conducted archaeological fieldwork in the United States, Tunisia, and Italy and he currently co-directs the excavation of a Roman villa and early medieval settlement in Vacone, Italy. A lifelong metal fan, he had the opportunity to teach a class at Brown in the spring of 2023 entitled “Somewhere back in time: the Ancient World and Heavy Metal,” uniting archaeology, ancient history, and metal music studies in a classroom with 30 undergraduates. Tyler now never wants to teach another class without blast beats again.
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STEVEN GONZALEZ
Steven Gonzalez is a postdoctoral fellow in general education at the University of Southern California. His primary research area is agricultural literature in the Roman Empire, which he examines from a materialist perspective. His work necessarily intersects with slavery, social and cultural history, and Roman intellectual culture. He is currently working on an article on Columella’s De Re Rustica for a collection on the poetics of slavery. He is also interested in the reception of Roman agricultural literature in the Americas and the American South. Recently, he has begun developing an interest in environmental humanities and the classical world. His affinity for metal music grew from his love for guitar playing. Although he no longer plays in any groups, he still enjoys playing various genres, such as country, rock, blues, and of course, metal. He is currently based in Los Angeles County.
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THOMAS GÖTTLICH
Thomas Göttlich teaches English and History at a Gymnasium in Wetzlar, and spent the last five years as a lecturer at the department for History of the Justus Liebig University of Gießen, specializing in History Didactics. He is also a practicing Heavy Metal musician and was songwriter and bassist for the band Grave Digger. With his own band Rebellion, he has released concept albums on different historical topics, such as the Vikings, Byzantium and the French Revolution.
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BEN GOULD
Ben Gould is a second-year Master’s student at Brandeis’ Graduate School of Arts and Sciences pursuing his MA in Ancient Greek and Roman Studies. His thesis research focuses on classical reception and historicity in Shakespeare’s Coriolanus, and he works as a graduate writing consultant at the Brandeis University Writing Center. While he is originally from upstate New York, Ben received his B.A. in History, with a minor in Writing and Rhetoric, from College of the Ozarks, a work-study liberal arts college in southwestern Missouri. Ben recently presented an essay entitled, “Intimations of the Miltonic Canon in Becoming the Archetype’s Children of the Great Extinction” at the International Society for Metal Music Studies conference in Montreal this past summer. Ben’s favorite subgenres of metal music are melodic death metal, brutal/technical death metal, and deathcore. He especially enjoys concept albums that tell overarching stories through music and lyrics.
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ANNA-KATHARINA HÖPFLINGER
Anna-Katharina Höpflinger is a research and teaching assistant at the Ludwig- Maximilians-University in Munich (Germany). After completing her Ph.D in the Study of Religion at the University of Zurich (Switzerland), she has developed different research projects in the field of media and religion, particularly focusing on the body, clothing, and gender. She is also interested in religions in the ancient world and in European history, in Heavy Metal and religion, and in charnel-chapels. For more information: http://media-religion.org/e/team/hoepflinger.htm
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CHRISTINA HOTALEN
Christina Hotalen is the Program Manager for the Institute of Social Science Research at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, promoting services and grant opportunities for the social sciences to the UMass Amherst community. As a graduate student, she focused on gender and women, material culture, and digital humanities, specializing in the late Roman Empire. Since then, she’s taken a keen interest in reception studies, particularly ancient women in metal music, combining her passion for metal with her academic interests. Christina has presented papers on the Roman empress Messalina and goddess Medusa in metal. Currently, she is writing on the empress Agrippina in metal for another conference.
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NATHANIEL KATZ
Nathaniel Katz is a Lecturer in the Department of Religious Studies & Classics at the University of Arizona. Before coming to Arizona, he earned his BA in Classics and History from Kenyon College and his PhD in Classics from the University of Texas at Austin. He is a Roman historian researching Roman imperial self-representation and regime change. His current research examines Roman imperial assassinations with a particular focus on the political affordances those moments of sudden violence gave the various actors in Roman politics. His work has appeared in Historia and is forthcoming in The Journal of Ancient History and Archaeology. Though he has long been a metalhead, this is his first foray into combining that interest with his interest in the ancient world.
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EDEN KUPERMINTZ
Eden Kupermintz holds a B.A in history and philosophy and has been fascinated with and passionate about science fiction, metal and literature for the past two decades. He has written and given numerous talks on these topics, covering the future of the state, urbanism, space exploration, the body and many other futures. Eden curates the online archive anarchySF, is co-host for the Death // Sentence literary podcast, is editor-in-chief for Heavy Blog is Heavy, and does some work for corporations so he can eat.
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CEREN KUŞDEMIR ÖZBILEK
Ceren Kuşdemir Özbilek is an instructor of English and a curriculum specialist at Yaşar University, Turkey. She received her BA in English Language and Literature at Ege University where she is currently a PhD candidate. She is working on a dissertation on the politics of language and literary form in James Joyce’s novels. She has presented mainly about literature, cinema, and music in many national and international conferences and her book reviews appeared in James Joyce Quarterly. She is a metalhead, a gamer, and an unapologetic crazy cat lady. Her academic interests include Marxist literary criticism, politics of popular culture, metal music studies, gaming studies, science fiction, and weird fiction. This will be her second music related conference presentation after her work titled “Time to open your eyes to this genocide: Gojira, Metal Music, Environmental Violence and Activism” in Representations of Violence in Literature, Culture, and Arts Conference in 2021.
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MARKUS KUTSCHKA
Markus Kutschka is presently pursuing his Bachelor’s thesis in Egyptology and Coptology, with a research emphasis on applying statistical inference to historical Nile heights. Prior to this, he obtained a bachelor’s degree in Statistics from the Ludwig-Maximilians University in Munich, Germany. His academic focus revolves around the utilization of statistical analytical methods within the field of Egyptology. In addition to his academic pursuits, Markus has been an active member of the metal music scene for approximately two decades, and he has been involved in music performance for ten years. He initially started with 80s hard rock but has since evolved his musical interests towards more extreme metal genres. Furthermore, he has been engaged in exploring the incorporation of ancient Egyptian themes in primarily black and death metal music. In conjunction with this, he aspires to employ Statistical text mining techniques to analyze the lyrics within these musical genres.
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FEDERICO LANDINI
Federico Landini obtained his Bachelor’s Degree in Literature at the Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore in Milan, with a thesis on the chronology of Vegetius’ De Re Militari. He is now enrolled at the Alma Mater Studiorum – University of Bologna to obtain a Master’s Degree in Medieval History, with a thesis on the reception of the Byzantine Empire in Heavy Metal Music. His interests are mainly military history and heavy metal, and he is a member of the student organization “Casus Belli – Arma Mater Studiorum,” which covers every aspect of warfare from ancient times to the present. He has published a review of the book Vikings in the South: Voyages to Iberia and the Mediterranean for the journal Nuova Antologia Militare (NAM), in which he will also publish his paper “Flavius Belisarius Epicus Metallicus.” He has also published the paper “The Influence of Climate on the Nomadic Population of the Eurasian Steppe: The Case of the Avars and Turks” for the journal Informaciòn (Vol. 18) of the Universidad Autónoma de Campeche.
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N. NYAR LINDER
N. Nyar Linder is an international PhD student in Assyriology, based at the University of Vienna after completing their Master’s in the same field there. Their background includes work as a curator of cuneiform tablets from ancient Ur at the British Museum in London. Nyar’s current PhD research delves into Sumerian lexicography and the hermeneutics of an almost 4,000 year-old bilingual encyclopedia, employing a theoretical foundation rooted in (cultural) semiotics and cognitive linguistics. Their wide-ranging interests span early Sumerian religion, the Neolithic in SW-Asia, and the reception of Mesopotamia in popular (oc)culture—from films like Ghostbusters to the internet writing collective ‘SCP Foundation’ and to its role in New Religious Movements. As a long-time Extreme Metal enthusiast and an individual with neurodivergent traits (ADHD and ASD), they are excited to integrate some of these passions into their approach to Metal Music Studies.
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RALPH MOORE
Ralph Moore is an independent scholar of ancient history and archaeology at early career research level. Ralph recently completed a doctorate in Classics at Trinity College Dublin, with a thesis titled ‘Keeping Up with the Julii: Roman Impact on Social Stratification and Mobility in the Rhône Basin c. 125-10 BCE’, examining the ways in which Roman conquest affected the evolution of elite identities and cultural hierarchies in southern and eastern Gaul. Ralph has several journal articles in publication examining Roman Imperialism towards temperate Europe through lenses of ethnography, anthropology, and diplomacy in theory and practice. Ralph is currently awaiting a decision on British Academy funding for a proposed project on evidence for the power and influence of Gallic communities in Belgica over Late Iron Age and Early Roman Britain, complicating traditional narratives of binary opposition between Roman conquerors and colonisers and indigenous populations.
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MARÍA DE LA LUZ NÚÑEZ
María de la Luz Núñez es peruana-mexicana y metalhead desde los 15 años. Doble magister en Desarrollo Humano y en Arte con una mención en música. Actualmente, cursa el doctorado en Estudios Latinoamericanos de la Universidad de Chile. Y su proyecto de tesis trata sobre las masculinidades presentes en el metal andino peruano. Cuenta con algunos artículos publicados sobre metal peruano y metal con perspectiva de género. El título de su último paper es “Las portadas de los álbumes de Yana Raymi como una expresión de neobarroco peruano: la resistencia gráfica de los guerreros wankas.”
María de la Luz Núñez is a Peruvian-Mexican scholar, and has been metalhead since she was 15. She holds two Master’s degrees in Human Development and in Arts with a mention in Music. She is currently a Ph.D. student in Latin American Studies at the University of Chile. Her thesis project is about Peruvian Andean metal and masculinities. She already has some publications on Peruvian metal and metal and gender. The title of her latest published article is “Yana Raymi Album Cover Art as an Expression of Peruvian Neobaroque: The Graphic Resistance of the Wanka Warriors.”
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MIGUEL REYES CONTRERAS
Miguel Reyes Contreras es licenciado en Lengua Inglesa y Maestro en Lingüística Aplicada por la UAEM. Actualmente es Profesor-investigador en la Universidad de Ixtlahuaca CUI y Estudiante del Doctorado en Humanidades con Línea en Lingüística en la Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana Iztapalapala Cd. Mx. Ex becario del programa Fulbright y profesor afiliado al Institute of American Indian Arts (IAIA) (Nuevo México). Investiga las áreas de Docencia de lenguas, Onomástica, Paremiología, Análisis del Discurso y Estudios sobre Heavy Metal. Ha participado en diversos congresos nacionales e internacionales y publicado varios trabajos en estas áreas.
Miguel Reyes Contreras holds a B.A. in English and M.D. in Applied Linguistics from UAEM. He is currently a Professor-researcher at Universidad de Ixtlahuaca CUI and studies the PhD in Humanities with speciality in Linguistics at Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana Iztapalapala, Mexico City. He is an ex Fulbright grantee and an affiliated Professor at Institute of American Indian Arts (IAIA) (New Mexico). He researches the areas of Language Teaching, Onomastics, Paremiology, Discourse Analysis, and Heavy Metal Studies. He has participated in several national and international congresses and has published several research papers in these areas.
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STEPHEN SILLIMAN
Stephen Silliman is Professor of Anthropology at the University of Massachusetts Boston and has a PhD in Anthropology from the University of California Berkeley. He is not only an archaeologist who researches the past, but also an anthropologist who studies the uses of heritage in the present. His focus has been community-based work with Indigenous communities to showcase their persistence despite centuries of colonialism and to support their struggles for social justice. His forays into heritage have included studying frontier imagery in U.S. military language from Vietnam to Afghanistan and Iraq and, more recently, the representations of Indigenous history in popular music, particularly rock and metal. In fact, his graduate course on indigeneity and colonialism now regularly includes a soundtrack. These represent more than just academic interests; he is an avid listener of heavy music, supporter of local bands, and concert attendee.
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ALEXANDRA SILLS
Alexandra Sills is a Master’s student at the University of Leicester School of Archaeology and Ancient History. Her research focuses on Roman gladiatorial spectacle and its adoption, adaptation and reception in the eastern provinces, discussing cultural identity and performance. Another of her research areas is the reception of gladiators in modern popular culture across screen, video games, music and fiction. Her recent publication ‘The Tropification of Hollywood Heroes Thrown Into the Arena’ explores the apocryphal depictions and narrative similarities between various screen gladiators over seven decades, and forthcoming research discusses the popularity of this protagonist-as-gladiator motif and its appropriation by the alt-right. Devoted to public history, Alexandra is a regular contributor to BadAncient.com, discussing female gladiators and the physiques of Greek combat fighters, and WorkingClassicists.com where she not only unravels the knots of gladiatorial spectacle for the general public, but also adapts Roman recipes for the modern home cook.
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MIROSLAV VRZAL
Miroslav Vrzal earned his PhD at the Department for the Study of Religions at Masaryk University in Brno (Czechia) where he is still currently affiliated. He also worked as a researcher in the Department of Sociology at the Czech Academy of Sciences in Prague in 2019. His main field of interest is the sociology of religion with a specific focus on the religious situation in Czechia and new religious movements, especially Satanism and Paganism. Additionally, he is involved in the study of music subcultures/scenes, mainly metal. His main interest in this regard is the area of ‘metal and religion’. Vrzal is also the founder of Czech Metal Studies, an association of scholars interested in metal studies in Czechia; and founder of Metal Studies in Central and Eastern Europe, an international network of scholars. His most recent publications are, for example, the articles “Against the Devil’s Metal: Christian Public Discursive Strategies Against Metal Concerts and Festivals in Czechia and Slovakia” (2022) in the journal Metal Music Studies, and “Czech Metal Studies: 5 Years of the Study of Metal(and Religion)” in the journal Studia de Cultura.
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CLARA WANNING
Clara C. Wanning holds an MA degree in aesthetics from Goethe University Frankfurt, Germany. She studied philosophy, Japanese studies, media studies and aesthetics at the University of Siegen and the Goethe University of Frankfurt. Her fields of study include political and social philosophy, contemporary aesthetics, popular culture of film and comics, and occasionally metal studies and equine culture studies. She is working on her PhD project in political philosophy and aesthetics and also works as a German teacher and freelance journalist for the German horse magazine Cavallo.
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CAROLYN WILLEKES
Carolyn Willekes is an Assistant Professor in the Department of General Education at Mount Royal University. She received her Ph.D. in Greek and Roman Studies from the University of Calgary in 2013. Her research focuses on the horse-human relationship in antiquity, and its influence on social and cultural identities. She is the author of The Horse in the Ancient World: from Bucephalus to the Hippodrome, as well as several book chapters and articles on ancient cavalry, equestrian sports, and representations of equines in visual culture (with forthcoming chapters for Cambridge University Press and Brill). She has been involved with numerous public education programs on the history of the horse, and is past-President of the Equine History Collective.