Dina Al-Kassim is a critical theorist who works on political subjectivation, sexuality and aesthetics in transnational modernist and contemporary postcolonial cultures, including the Middle East, Africa, Europe and the United States. She is an Associate Professor at the Institute for Gender, Race, Sexuality and Social Justice at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver (Canada) and the author of On Pain of Speech: Fantasies of the First Order and the Literary Rant (University of California Press, 2010).
Sheila Cavanagh is Associate Professor of sociology at York University, Toronto (Canada). She is chair of the Canadian Sexuality Studies Association and co-editor of the Somatechnics journal. Her research is in the area of gender and sexuality with a concentration on queer, cultural, and psychoanalytic theories. She is the editor of a special issue on transgender and psychoanalysis in Transgender Studies Quarterly (2017). She is also the author of Sexing the Teacher: School Sex Scandals and Queer Pedagogies (UBC, 2007) and Queering Bathrooms (UTP, 2010).
Laura Chernaik is a psychotherapist in private practice, and a trainee at the Site for Contemporary Psychoanalysis. She has a PhD in History of Consciousness, University of California at Santa Cruz, 1995. She has published two books, Social and Virtual Space, Fairleigh Dickinson Press, 2005, and New Hope, a science fiction novel, Kindle and paperback, 2016.
Paul Gurney studied Philosophy and Politics at Southampton University, Psychodynamic Counselling at Goldsmiths College and Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy at the Philadelphia Association. He has been in practice since 1987 in charity, NHS and private sectors. Publications include “The Acc(id)ental Tourist: exploring the tribal areas between class and race” in Sitegeist No.3/Online Journal for Psychotherapy & Social Studies.
Juliet Jacques is a freelance author based in London, a journalist, critic and writer of short fiction, known for her work on the transgender experience, including her transition as a trans woman.