Event registration can be found here including tickets for Workshops and the Networking Event.
Speaker abstract and bios can be found here.
Keynotes and Reading Suggestions can be found here. 
Workshops and Roundtable information can be found here. 

This document is updated as needed. All times listed are BST, British Summer Time.

Zoom Links are sent to registered attendees only by Eventbrite emails during GIFCon.

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Day 1: Wednesday May 15, 2024 

9:45 – 10:00: Platform Wide Welcome / Opening words and explanation of the mechanics with Will Tattersdill  

10:00 – 11:00: Opening Roundtable: Conjuring Creatures and Worlds with Chris Lynch Becherer, Madeline Potter, and Michelle Anya Anjirbag
Chair: Mariana Rios Maldonado 
Deputy Chair: Matthew Sangster 

11:00-11:15 Coffee Break ☕

Panel 1
11:15 – 12:30 

Panel 1A Intertextual Conjurations  Chair: Emma French  Deputy Chair: Olivia Cacciatore  11:15 Vaibhav Dwivedi, “Of Faceless Monsters and Secret Terrors: Analysing the Hybrid Anatomy of Slenderman”  11:35 Elliott Greene, “(Re)Writing Reality: Authorial Power and Narration as Conjuration in Alan Wake 2”  11:55 Maria Damkjær, “Conjuring worlds through book culture”  12:15: Discussion

Panel 1B Shifting Legends  Chair: Sam Tegetmeyer Deputy Chair: Maggie Naylor  11:15 Grace Rhyne, “Charlotte Riddell: Literary Banshee”  11:35 Martine Gjermundsen Ræstad, “When Nature Speaks: Fictional A.I. as Folkloric Creatures of the Technological Age”  11:55 Anisha Das, “Legends of the land: Assam’s mythical creatures and their ecological resonance.”  12:15: Discussion

Panel 1C Monster Myths    Chair: Dulmi Wickremasinghe Deputy Chair: Karla Calvillo-Salinas 11:15 Zainab Wahab, “Monsters of Greed and Guilt: Examining Mythical Monsters as Symbols of Oppression in Tumbbad and Ghoul”  11:35 Hannah Mimiec, “‘The Screaming Horrors’: Animal Advocacy and Eldritch Horror in Watership Down”  11:55 Corinne Matthews, “Conjuring Consent: Magic, Power, and Patriarchy in Young Adult Fantasy”   12:15: Discussion

12:30-13:30 Lunch Break 🍽️

14:30 – 14:45 Coffee Break ☕

Panel 2 
14:45 – 16:00

Panel 2A The Imperial and the Gothic Chair: Georgina Gale   Deputy Chair: Chris Lynch Becherer 14:45 Hannah Frances Roux, ““Not the Real Orient but a Fantasy”: C.S. Lewis’s Calormen and Edith Sitwell’s Modernist Orientalism.”  15:05 Manon Hakem-Lemaire, “The Fantasy of Alterity in Richard Marsh’s Imperial Gothic Novel The Beetle (1897)”  15:25 Discussion

Panel 2B Constructed Disability Chair: Grace A.T. Worm  Deputy Chair: Maggie Naylor  14:45 Emilie Morscheck, “Reimagining Disability in YA Fantasy: Exploring Harper and Rhen in ‘A Curse So Dark and Lonely’”  15:05 Madeline Wahl, “Who Can Speak Characters Into Existence?: Stuttering, Fluency, and Conjuring Characters in Cornelia Funke’s Inkheart”  15:25 Şevval Tufan, “Liminal Worlds, Marginalised Beings and Disabled Bodies in Ihsan Oktay Anar’s “The Atlas of Misty Continents” and “Amat””  15:45 Discussion

Panel 2C The Non-Human Chair: Will Tattersdill  Deputy Chair: Diana Rotar 14:45 Ane B. Ruiz-Lejarcegui, ”Enacting the Nonhuman: A.I. Consciousness and Text-Reader Interaction in Becky Chambers’ A Closed and Common Orbit”  15:05 Scarlett Butchers, ““This was a place of wonders once”: David Rudkin’s Magical Landscapes”  15:25 Nick Stember, “Desert Solitaire: Tales of the Strange, Fantastic, and Immortal in Nie Jun’s Seekers of the Aweto”  15:45 Discussion

Panel 2D Monstrous Sexuality Chair: Dulmi Wickremasinghe  Deputy Chair: Robbin Dowling 14:45   Brynnah Runyan, “Alienation of A-Spec Identities: Sexuality, Romantic Love, and What it Means to Be Human”  15:05 Mercury Natis, “Letting the Beastly Beast Go: Navigating compulsory heterosexuality through King Pellinore and the Questing Beast in The Once and Future King”  15:25 Discussion

16:15-17:00 Research Spotlight with Martine Gjermundsen Ræstad in the Discord

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Day 2: Thursday May 16, 2024 

Panel 3  
9:30 – 10:45 

Panel 3A   Female Horrors   Chair: Hollie Willis Deputy Chair: Hollyn Middleton 9:30Caroline Hannum, “Girls Against Gods: Divinity as the Female Hero’s Antagonist, a Metaphor for Patriarchal Control”  9:50 Xiana Vázquez Bouzó, “Representations of the Alien Enemy in the Post-Anthropocene: Two Case Studies of Filmic Depictions of Otherness through Gender (Under the Skin) and Animality (Nope)”  10:10 Amy Richmond, ““It makes us feel a little like God”: Conjuring Delusions and Creation in Mona Awad’s Bunny”  10:30 Discussion

Panel 3B Marginalized Multimedia Chair: Emma French  Deputy Chair: Maidah Rihan  9:30 Catherine Hall, “Dwarvish Point of View?: Neo-Khuzdul, Fanfiction, and the Construction of an Alternative Middle-earth”  9:50 Kristine Larsen, ““Even those who are different can survive”: Dragons, Speciesism, and Procreation in Andrzej Sapkowski’s The Witcher and its Adaptations”  10:10 Discussion

Panel 3C Science Cycles   Chair: Will Tattersdill  Deputy Chair: Diana Rotar  9:30 Rebecca Lloyd, “Reuse, recycle: Terry Pratchett’s Igors and the monstrous remade body.”  9:50 Vincent Pritchard, “The Conjuring Trinary: Systems of Summoning”  10:10 Dr. Bettina Charlotte Burger, “Their Primitive Superstition vs. Our Scientific and Enlightened Magic – Magic Systems in T.L. Huchu’s Edinburgh Nights series”  10:30 Discussion

10:45 – 11:15Coffee Break ☕

11:15 – 12:30: Workshops 

4A: Epics and Emporiums – A Cozy Storytelling Game led by Frankie Bradley
Deputy Chair:  Amber Pasternack

4B: Creating World Connected Characters led by Lily M. Frenette
Deputy Chair: Catherine Hall

4C: Conjuring Politics: World-making as Pedagogy in the Social Sciences  led by Maha Rafi Atal
Deputy Chair:  Maidah Rihan

12:30-13:30 Lunch Break 🍽️

14:30 – 14:45 Coffee Break  ☕

Panel 5  
14:45 – 16:00

Panel 5A  Monster Girls Chair: Hollie Willis  Deputy Chair: Hollyn Middleton   14:45 Inês Vaz, “Monster Girls Turning Darkness to Light: Subversive Uses of Monstrosity in She-Ra and the Princesses of Power and Nimona”  15:05 Tara West, “Made a Villian: ND Stevenson’s Nimona and a Lesson in Difference”  15:25 David Muiños Garcia, “Motherless: Absent, Spectral, and Monstrous Motherhood in Video Games”  15:45 Discussion

Panel 5B Representations and Symbols in Film  Chair: Sam Tegtmeyer  Deputy Chair: Robbin Dowling 14:45 Zoe Wible, “A Link Between the Historical Evolution of  Creature Design in Fantastic Film and Fine-Grained Representation of Non-Human  Experience?”  15:05 Barbora Kaplánková, “Children of Miyazaki: Travellers into the Unseen”  15:25 Tam Moules, “Holly Berries Like Drops of Blood: Conjuring the Green Knight as Monster in Prose and Film”  15:45 Discussion

Panel 5C Conjuring Identity Chair: Grace A.T. Worm  Deputy Chair: Maggie Naylor  14:45 Michael Quinn, ““The stolen future cannot be given back to me”: Exploring personal identity through Paragon in Robin Hobb’s ‘Realm of the Elderlings’”  15:05 Siravich Khurat, “Shoukan: The Summoners who conjure the other Half of their Souls”  15:25 Supriya Baijal, “Magical Realms of Morality and Mystery: Reimagining Reality in ‘The Adventures of Amir Hamza’ and ‘Five-and-Twenty Tales of the Genie’”  15:45 Discussion

16:15-17:00 Research Spotlight with Michael Quinn in the Discord

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Day 3: Friday May 17, 2024 

13:30- 13:45 Coffee Break ☕

Panel 6  
13:45 – 15:00 

Panel 6A Interrogating Television   Chair: Will Sherwood  Deputy Chair:  Catherine Hall  13:45 Zvonimir Prtenjača, “X-Men’s White Gaze: Conjuring an Apocalypse of Superheroines of Colour”  14:05 Dulmi Wickremasinghe, “An LOTR world “for everyone”? Discussing Amazon’s interventions in Tolkien’s representation of Elvish gender aesthetics” 14:25 C. T. Power, “House of the Dragon: Gender, Race and the Persistent Past”  14:45 Discussion

Panel 6B   Conjuring Utopia Chair: Emma French  Deputy Chair: Rebecca Solomon 13:45 Astrid Roesen Abildgaard, “Conjuring a World of Women – And a Solution to our Climate Struggles? Human-nature relationships in Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “Herland””  14:05 Rachel Harrison, “From Her Mind to Herland: The Women Conjuring Gynotopia”  14:25 Meg Horridge, “Conjuring Utopia: How Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Dispossessed Builds an Imperfect World”  14:45 Discussion

Panel 6C Re-Writing History  Chair: Georgina Gale   Deputy Chair: Karla Calvillo-Salinas 13:45 Hollie Willis, “’The Locals Bite Back’: A Defence of the Tuunbaq and the Use of Fantasy in ‘The Terror’”  14:05 Gao Weiming, “Conjuring Historical Figures and Alternative History Narratives: A Study of the Japanese Fantasy Franchise Fate”  14:25 Rebecca Pearce, “”All in a Day’s Work for a Hero”: Once Upon a Time and the Fantastical Byronic Hero-Villain Cycle”  14:45 Discussion

Panel 7 — 15:00-16:00 
Roundtable Conjuring Creatures (and Worlds) in YA Fantastika with Alkisti Kalliniko, Jeddie Bristow, Leah Phillips, and Shiqing Zhang
Chair: Grace A.T. Worm 
Deputy Chair: Will Tattersdill  

16:00 – 16:15 Coffee Break ☕

16:15-17:15 Networking Event moderated by Sam Tegetmeyer                   
Zoom link available for registered attendees only 

Panel 8  
17:15 – 18:30 

Panel 8A Experiencing Change in Fantasy Chair: Hollie Willis   Deputy Chair: Robbin Dowling 17:15 Fiona Reid, “Humans and robots: neuroqueer identity exploration through Dungeons and Dragons”  17:35 Anna Milon and Tom Emanuel, “Conjured Presence: Spiritual Experiences in Fantasy Spaces”  17:55 Discussion

Panel 8B The Other Other Chair: Will Sherwood  Deputy Chair: Karla Calvillo-Salinas  17:15 Iria Seijas-Pérez, “Analysing the Witch Figure in Irish YA Fiction: Deirdre Sullivan’s Perfectly Preventable Deaths (2019) and Sarah Maria Griffin’s Other Words for Smoke (2019)”  17:35 Nathaniel Harrington, “Teachd Chonain: Celticism, settler colonialism, and the fantasy barbarian”  17:55 Olivia Scarr, “(Un)homely Cultivations: the botanical Other as the ‘Monstrous Feminine’ in Short Fiction of the Fin de Siècle”  18:15 Discussion

Panel 8C Body Transformation Chair: Dulmi Wickremasinghe  Deputy Chair: Olivia Cacciatore  17:15 Alice Langley, “Transformation as conjuration: the power of the post-menopausal woman.”  17:35 Ning Lee, “Age’s Mischief: Writing Ageing into the Fantastika in Kazuo Ishiguro’s The Buried Giant”  17:55 Rachel Cairns, “Fat in the Forgotten Realms: Fat embodiment, monstrosity and the non-normative body in participatory fantasy storytelling”  18:15 Discussion

18:45-19:30 Research Spotlight with Anna Milon and Tom Emanuel in the Discord