Dr James Aston is Director of Studies for the Film Studies Degree at the University of Hull, UK and teaches extensively on the programme including American Alternative Cinema, East Asian Cinema and Global Nightmares: Horror From Around the World. His principal research interests lie in the field of horror and apocalyptic cinema, especially post 9/11 texts. He has published numerous articles in both research areas and is co-editor of Small Screen Revelations: Apocalypse in Contemporary Television and To See the Saw Movies: Essays on Torture Porn and Post-9/11 Horror. Currently, he is writing a chapter entitled, ‘Nightmares outside the mainstream: August Underground and reel/real horror’ to be published in a forthcoming Digital Horror anthology.

Dr John Walliss is senior lecturer in criminology in the Faculty of Sciences and Social Sciences, Liverpool, UK. He has published widely on contemporary apocalyptic religious movements and the influence of apocalyptic texts in popular culture. He is the author of Apocalyptic Trajectories: Millennialism and Violence in the Contemporary World, The End all Around Us: Apocalyptic Texts and Popular Culture, Reel Revelations: Apocalypse and Film, Screen Revelations: Apocalypse and TV, and the forthcoming edited To See the Saw Movies: Essays on Torture Porn and Post-9/11 Horror.