AAS Board Elections 2025-2028
We are proud to announce elections for the next Association of Adaptation Studies Board!
We will be electing one (1) postgraduate student member and seven (7) general members. Board members serve for a term of three years and meet to select the next board Chair, Treasurer and Secretary. You can read more about how the AAS board is composed here.
To vote, use the link at the end of the candidate bios. Please note, voting is currently only open to members. If you encounter any problems registering your vote, or would like to check up on the status of your membership, please email us at info@adaptation.uk.com.
We have 2 candidates standing for the position of postgraduate member, and 14 candidates standing for the position of general member. The candidates standing for election are as follows:
Candidates for Postgraduate Member:
Moni Razavi
Moni Razavi is a graduate student in the School of Translation and Interpretation at the University of Ottawa, Canada. She has defended two master’s theses on adaptation, and her PhD research focuses on decolonizing AS with the goal of developing a meta-theory of AS. Her most recent adaptation project will be presented at the AAS conference in Istanbul next June.
As a member of AAS since 2018, she has presented on adaptation at multiple international conferences, including DHSI 2024 (Victoria, Canada), Transmedial Turn? (Tartu, Estonia, 2020), and Under His Eye? (Lodz, Poland, 2019).
Beyond her research, Moni also works as a research coordinator and administrative assistant at the Humanities Data Lab, where she engages in digital humanities projects and aims to integrate digital tools into her study of adaptation in the future. Additionally, she serves as a volunteer co-chair for DHSI 2025 Aligned Events, furthering her experience in academic service and association leadership.
Azranur Elif Sucuoğlu
I graduated at the top of my class with a BA in English Language and Literature and am currently pursuing an MA in the same department, where I also serve as a teaching assistant. My research focuses on adaptation studies, particularly the cross-media and cross-national reimaginings of Frankenstein and Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde across different artistic and cultural contexts. In my undergraduate thesis, I examined the unfinished nature of John Keats’s Hyperion and adapted it into a radio play, exploring the transition from textual to auditory storytelling. Now in the final stages of my master’s thesis, I intend to continue my academic trajectory with a PhD, further expanding my research within adaptation studies. Beyond academia, I am actively engaged in theater as both an actor and director, leading a departmental theater group where I explore adaptation through performance and dramaturgical reinterpretation.
Given my current academic status, I would be eligible to stand for election to the graduate student seat. Please let me know if there is any additional information you need. I greatly appreciate this opportunity and look forward to hearing from you.
Candidates for General Member
Barbara Braid
Dr Barbara Braid is an Assistant Professor at the Institute of Literature and New Media, University of Szczecin, Poland. She specializes in neo-Victorian literature and media, particularly in biofiction as adaptation, appropriation, and remix. Her latest publications include “Queer Heritage and Strategic Humour in Recent Screen Biofictions of Emily Dickinson” (co-written with Anna Gutowska, Neo-Victorian Studies, 2024) and “Queering the Female Writer in Screen Biofictions: Daphne (2007) and Shirley (2020)” (Neohelicon, 2024). She has been a member of the AAS since 2022, and in 2024, she served as the co-convenor and organizing co-chair of the 19th AAS Conference “Time and Space in Adaptation” at the University of Szczecin, Poland. That same year, she also curated the online lecture series “Neo-Victorian Television.” Before this, she organized and co-organized approximately 20 conferences and symposia, both in-person and online, and she intends to use this experience as a Trustee of AAS to support the future organization of conferences, workshops, and meetings.
Andrew Bumstead
I am currently in my second year of a tenure-track position as Assistant Professor of English at Buena Vista University, where I teach first-year writing, British Literature, Shakespeare, and Narrative in Entertainment Media. As a scholar, I focus on the intersections of children's literature, media, and adaptation. I am particularly interested in Disneyland theme park adaptations of Golden Age children's literature, which was the subject of my doctoral work at the University of Utah. I have published an article in South Atlantic Review titled “Alice in Disneyland: Power and Subversion in Two Theme Park Rides,” which received an Honorable Mention for Best Essay at the most recent SAMLA. Serving as a Trustee of the Association of Adaptation Studies will provide me with opportunities to make important connections with other adaptation scholars and keep me informed of recent developments in adaptation studies so that I can keep my research and pedagogy relevant.
Liam Burke
Associate Professor Liam Burke is the Cinema and Screen Studies discipline leader at Swinburne University of Technology (Australia), where he is also a member of the Centre for Transformative Media Technologies. Liam has published widely on adaptation and transmedia franchising, including the best-selling book The Comic Book Film Adaptation. Liam has been an Associate Editor of the Oxford University Press journal Adaptation since 2019, overseeing dozens of articles and helping to widen the journal’s focus beyond the page-to-screen process. Liam has developed practice-based approaches to teaching adaptation for which he has won a number of teaching awards. Prior to entering academia Liam worked for several arts organisations including the Irish Film & Television Academy (IFTA). Liam’s current research project, Everyday Adaptation, focuses on industrial, unofficial, and vernacular adaptations that are often overlooked in traditional Adaptation Studies scholarship such as cosplay, toys, and pop culture food.
Tomas Elliott
I am an Assistant Professor in English at Northeastern University London. My work focuses on adaptation and transmedia studies, specifically the reception and adaptation of ideas from the history of science and philosophy in twentieth-century cinema. I have published articles in Adaptation, Humanities, and Classical Receptions Journal, and my translation of The Limit of the Useful by Georges Bataille was published by MIT Press. I am currently completing a monograph entitled Evolving Adaptation: Myth, Metaphor, and Media, which traces the influence of biological theories of evolution on concepts of adaptation in literature and film. I currently serve on the editorial board of Film International and as a peer-reviewer for Adaptation and Humanities. In 2024 I presented at the AAS Annual Conference in Szczecin, and in 2025 I will present at the AAS/LFA Online Conference. At Northeastern University I coordinate the interdisciplinary Comparative Methods Lab and Network, as well as the English Studies Research Seminar.
I would very much welcome the opportunity to contribute in a more formal capacity to the Association of Adaptation Studies, which has been my intellectual home for much of the early part of my career. I would hope to focus specifically on continuing to develop the association’s international scope, its online community-building (particularly for early career scholars), and its ability to support and foster the teaching of adaptation studies in the classroom.
Kristen Figgins
I am an early career researcher whose work examines the intersections of adaptation studies, nineteenth-century literature and media, and science. Since graduating with my PhD in 2021 (Project Title: Adapting Animals: Nineteenth-Century Literature, Science, and Media), I have remained committed to the study of adaptation as a teacher-scholar, a public scholar, and a researcher. The most salient example of this dedication finds life in Adaptation Today, a resource that I developed alongside a group of other scholars, which provides pedagogical resources, a podcast, a listserv, and mentoring workshops to adaptation scholars at all career levels. Additionally, I have published on adaptation in Adaptation, Literature/Film Quarterly, Adaptation Before Cinema (2013, Palgrave), and am slated to be published in To Make a Short Story Long (forthcoming 2026, Ed. Glenn Jellenik). I am currently an Assistant Professor of English at Mississippi University for Women.
Robert Geal
Robert Geal is Senior Lecturer in Media, Film and Television Studies at the University of Wolverhampton, UK. His research interests revolve around adaptation studies, particularly in relation to contemporary and emerging concerns like climate change and the proliferation of AI. He has published numerous works in the field, including the monograph Anamorphic Authorship in Canonical Film Adaptation (part of the ‘Palgrave Studies in Adaptation and Visual Culture’ series); for the journals Adaptation, Literature/Film Quarterlyand Interfaces; and in collections such as The Routledge Companion to Adaptation Studies (2018). His article ‘Towards an Ecocritical Adaptation Studies’ won Adaptation’s 2022 ECR prize. Robert is peer reviewer for numerous journals, and serves on the Editorial Board for the journals Adaptation and Film International. He is committed to contributing to the ongoing success of the Association, and of its developing project to disseminate and expand the field.
Anna Gutowska
Anna Gutowska works as Assistant Professor at the Department of Humanities at the Jan Kochanowski University of Kielce, Poland. She holds MAs in Sociology and English Studies and completed a PhD in Victorian literature at the University of Warsaw in 2011. In the years 2017-2019 she held a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Individual Fellowship at the Linnaeus University Centre of Intermedial and Multimodal Studies in Växjö, Sweden. Her academic interests include screen adaptations of Jane Austen's novels, neo-Victorian film and television, and reception studies. Anna’s recent publications include a chapter about authenticity and anachronism in the television series The Great (2020-2023), published in an edited volume titled Truth Claims Across Media (Palgrave, 2023, eds. Beate Schirrmacher and Nafiseh Mousavi) and an article on recent screen biofictions of Emily Dickinson, co-written with Dr Barbara Braid and published in Neo-Victorian Studies (vol. 15 no.1, 2024). Anna is a regular participant at AAS conferences since 2018 and was the co-convenor of the 2024 conference in Szczecin alongside Dr Barbara Braid. Apart from her academic job, Anna works as Head of Development at the WFDiF Feature and Documentary Film Studios in Warsaw and has a career as a screenwriter. Her most recent credit is a costume drama series titled Matylda, which had a premiere at the Polish National Television (TVP) in 2024.
Madeleine Hunter
Madeleine Hunter is a Vice-Chancellor’s Postdoctoral Research Fellow at RMIT University, Australia, where her research focuses on children’s media franchises and entertainment. She has been an active member of the Association of Adaptation Studies since 2018 and has served as the Association’s Membership Secretary and Webmaster from 2022 to the present. She is also a member of the Adaptation editorial board 2023, guest-editing the journal’s Special Issue on Adaptation and Childhood and currently serves as of one of the journal’s associate editors. As a trustee, she would look forward to continuing to develop the association’s infrastructure and continuing to internationalise its membership and offerings.
Colleen Kennedy-Karpat
I teach adaptation studies in the Department of Communication and Design (COMD) at Bilkent University in Ankara, Türkiye, where I now hold the rank of Associate Professor. This affiliation, however, does not reflect my field of origin, having earned my PhD in French from Rutgers University before pivoting to adaptation as a way of leveraging my training in literary and cultural studies to serve a media and comms-focused curriculum. My publications include articles in the journal Adaptation; chapters in several volumes of the Palgrave series Adaptation in Visual Culture; and, in the same series, the co-edited volume Adaptation, Awards Culture and the Value of Prestige (2017). My current projects include work on director Agnès Varda and her approaches to intertextuality, especially self-adaptation.
The Association of Adaptation Studies has been my primary professional organization for several years. I have served as Associate Editor at the journal Adaptation and as part of the organizing committee for the 2025 AAS conference in Istanbul. My first term on the AAS Board of Trustees is now concluding, and it would be my honor to be reelected for a second.
If re-elected, I would encourage AAS to continue pursuing an interdisciplinary vision of adaptation studies, both in the academy and in the culture industries. The AAS 2025 conference amply demonstrated that many of our colleagues are already engaged in innovative research and creative practice that relates to adaptation studies, but for whatever reason may not openly situate their work within the field. Strategic outreach could fortify existing connections and build new ones, advancing AAS not only as a meeting point between disciplines, but as a forum that spurs conversation among scholars and practitioners at all career stages. I especially value our work as an internationally minded organization, with active members hailing from around the world, and as part of the Board I would endeavor to support and develop online events and other internationally accessible exchanges above and beyond the annual conference. Finally, I want to expand the Association’s online presence, especially in video formats, with the goal of opening the field to the full range of peer-reviewed research and creative practice that scholars have embraced in media studies.
Seda Öz
I am a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of English at the University of Delaware, where I teach courses on writing, world literature, and cinema. I hold both an MA and PhD in adaptation studies. I earned my MA in British Cultural Studies, with my thesis, A Bakhtinian Analysis of Robinsonades: Literary and Cinematic Adaptations of Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe. I completed my PhD in 2022 with a dissertation titled Politics of Transnational Film Remakes: Turkish and German National Cinemas. My latest edited collection, Adaptation in Turkish Literature, Cinema, and Media, is published by Palgrave Macmillan as part of their Palgrave Studies in Adaptation and Visual Culture series in 2025.
In addition to my academic work, detailed in my CV, I serve as the secretary of the Literature/Film Association, the media reviews editor for Adaptation, and the founding editor of Adaptation Today. My role at LFA has allowed me to cultivate a broad network of scholars and practitioners in the field. I was part of the organizing committee for the Third and Fourth Virtual Joint Conferences of the Association of Adaptation Studies (AAS) and the Literature/Film Association (LFA) in 2024 and 2025. I also organized the last three LFA conferences and am currently working on bringing the next AAS Conference to Istanbul in 2025.
As media reviews editor at Adaptation, I closely follow emerging conversations in the field and the scholars and practitioners shaping them. I am also among the founding editors of Adaptation Today, a platform rapidly becoming a central hub in our field. Through this initiative, I am especially involved in mentoring, developing a program that provides accessible and meaningful guidance through workshops, talks, and Q&A sessions.
I believe my deep familiarity with the field, along with the connections I have built, allows me to assess both its needs and gaps, making me well-suited for this role.
Allen Redmon
Allen H. Redmon is Professor of English and Film Studies at Texas A&M University Central Texas. He is the author of Rewatching on the Point of the Cinematic Index (University Press of Mississippi, 2022) and Constructing the Coens: from Blood Simple to Inside Llewyn Davis (Rowman & Littlefield, 2015). He also is the editor of Next Generation Adaptation: Spectatorship and Process (University Press of Mississippi, 2021) and co-editor of Clint Eastwood’s Cinema of Trauma (McFarland, 2017). He is a past president of The Literature Film Association and a current trustee for The Association of Adaptation Studies. He was delighted to be part of the group that established the adaptation forum for the Modern Association of Literature.
Eric Sandberg
I am an Associate Professor at City University of Hong Kong, and hold a Docentship at the University of Oulu. My research is eclectic, with particular interests in adaptation, crime fiction, nostalgia studies, Pynchon studies, and work that inhabits the borderlands between high and popular culture. I co-edited Adaptation, Awards Culture, and the Value of Prestige (Palgrave, 2017) with Collee Kennedy-Karpat, and have published pieces in Adaptation on Amis/Glazer’s The Zone of Interest and Pynchon/Anderson’s Inherent Vice (2019 and 2014); an essay on Rian Johnson’s Knives Out as a Golden Age adaptation in Crime Fiction Studies (2020); and a chapter on prize culture and transnational adaptation in The Routledge Companion to Global Literary Adaptations in the Twenty-First Century (2023). I was an assistant/co-editor at Crime Fiction Studies for a number of years, and am currently on the editorial board at Adaptation and an Associate Editor at English Studies.
John Sanders
I am an established scholar who has been working in adaptation studies at every stage of my academic career. My book project — Literary Game Adaptations, forthcoming from Palgrave MacMillian — was built from my dissertation, and involves bridging adaptation studies and game scholarship. I have also published in and served as a reviewer for Adaptation and have a forthcoming chapter in the collection Eco-Adaptation. In addition to attending AAS in 2023 and helping to organize the AAS/LFA joint conference, I have been attending and presenting at the Literature/Film Association Conference every year since 2017, and I have held the position of board member and webmaster since 2022. If elected as Trustee, I would hope to utilize this experience to expand the Adaptation Studies community.
Christina Wilkins
Christina Wilkins is firmly entrenched in adaptation studies, convening the British Association for Television and Screen Studies (BAFTSS) Adaptation SIG, working as (temporary) Associate Editor and Media Reviews Editor for Adaptation journal and researching and writing in the field. She was editor for the recent Authenticity and Adaptation (2025), wrote Embodying Adaptation (2022) and has published a range of chapters and articles related to adaptation. She currently teaches at the University of Birmingham.
