by Unknown
Dr. Anna Chilewska was born in Poland and lives in Edmonton, Canada. She has a Master of Arts degree in Slavic Linguistics and a PhD in Translation Studies from the University of Alberta. She specializes in the translation of children’s literature, with a focus on the influences of politics and ideologies on the translation processes of children’s books. Her other interests include animal rights, the role of women in horror films, Aboriginal literature, and Death Metal music. She currently teaches English literature and Writing Studies and is working on a book about images of Lucifer in Death Metal music. Dr. Chilewska is a member of Slytherin House and Severus Snape was her mentor. Her boggart is a leech (any kind, they all make her scream). Her favourite Harry Potter character is Ron, but she is far too old to be thinking about him.
Katie Christie is a graduate from the College of Charleston in South Carolina where she studied Sociology and African Studies. She is currently working towards her Master’s degree in Social Work from the University of South Carolina. Her professional research interests include narrative therapy with adolescents, Native Americans and grief, rural poverty, social network analysis, and the sociology of literature. Katie has traveled extensively and her research and work interests have taken her to such places as eastern Montana, where she collaborated with the Rocky Mountain Tribal Epidemiology Center on a study of women’s health issues on the Crow Reservation. Her favorite Beedle the Bard tale is “The Wizard and the Hopping Pot.” Katie is a Gryffindor and enjoys chats with Hagrid and eating chocolate frogs.
Tanya Cook is an advanced graduate student in the department of Sociology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. A Wisconsin native, Tanya was thrilled to be sorted into Hufflepuff House with its badger mascot. Tanya participated in the U.S. National Science Foundation’s Summer Institute in Japan for graduate students where she gained access to a survey about the nuclear power accident in 1999 at Tokai-mura. She used this data to develop her Master’s thesis titled “The Symbolic Politics Spiral: Transcending the Divide between Sociological Approaches to the Study of Risk,” which compared the accidents at Tokai-mura and Three Mile Island. For her dissertation, currently titled “Exploring Childbirth Outcomes: An Analysis of Mother-Birth Professional Interaction,” Tanya is interviewing expecting mothers and their doctors or midwives as well as observing interactions between mothers and birth professionals at prenatal visits. According to her three children, her boggart would be a particularly messy kid’s room; but in truth it is similar to Molly Weasley’s vision of dead family members. Known to channel Mrs. Weasley’s “howler voice” on occasion, Tanya’s patronus is a rabbit.
Dr. Justyna Deszcz-Tryhubczak is an Assistant Professor of Literature and member of the Center for Young People’s Literature and Culture at the Institute of English Studies, University of Wrocław, Poland, where she teaches British literature, contemporary children’s and young adult fantasy, ecocriticism, and theory or literature. She is the author of Rushdie in Wonderland: “Fairytaleness” in Salman Rushdie’s Fiction (Peter Lang 2004). With Marek Oziewicz she co-edited Towards or Back to Human Values: Spiritual and Moral Dimension of Contemporary Fantasy (Cambridge Scholars Press 2006), Considering Fantasy: Ethical, Didactic and Therapeutic Aspects of Fantasy in Literature and Film (Atut 2007) and Relevant Across Cultures: Visions of Interconnectedness and World Citizenship in Modern Fantasy for Young Readers (Atut 2009). Her current research interests include interventions of a utopian problematic in recent fantasy for children and young adults. Dr. Deszcz-Tryhubczak is a member of Ravenclaw House and her patronus is a dolphin.
Shruti Devgan is a PhD candidate in the department of Sociology at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey. She also has degrees in Sociology and Social Anthropology from Lady Shriram College and Jawaharlal Nehru University, both in New Delhi, India. Shruti is interested in collective memories, commemoration, trauma and violence. She focuses on Sikhs in the United States in her research. She has won awards from the Sociology department at Rutgers and the Sikh Studies Program at U.C. Berkeley for her papers on India’s partition and Sikh religious symbols. She teaches courses in the Sociology department including Contemporary Theory and Sociology of Women. She has also been involved in S.P.E.W. since her time at Hogwarts and is working in close association with Hermione Granger to fight for equal rights for house-elves. Together, Hermione and Shruti have extended S.P.E.W. from the confines of Hogwarts to the wizarding world at large. S.P.E.W. currently has 25 active members and is recruiting and growing in strength consistently. In a recent interview to the Daily Prophet Shruti revealed that she shares Hermione’s passion for knitting socks for house-elves in addition to Ancient Runes being her favorite subject while she was at Hogwarts.
Mya Fisher is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Sociology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She received her BA in Sociology and Psychology from Williams College in 2000, and her MA in International Education from New York University in 2006. Her research is on student pathways and study abroad, and her dissertation focuses on the factors that influence study abroad decision-making for African-American students. Additionally, Mya speaks Japanese and was the recipient of a U.S. Department of Education Foreign Language Area Studies grant to study in Japan. As an exchange student at Hogwarts, she was sorted into Hufflepuff House. Her patronus is a penguin and her boggart is a black hole, which represents her fear of emptiness swallowing her whole. Mya loves to travel, cook and host dinner parties and always says no when offered some Bertie Bots Every Flavor Beans. Upon completion of her Muggle PhD, she aspires to teach a Foreign Language Charms class at Hogwarts in which students will learn to recognize and use charms in different languages.
Ty Hayes is a doctoral researcher at the University of Warwick, dissertating on a topic of Negotiating Stigmatized Identities with Cyborg Subjectivities. His main topics of interest are the sociology of the internet and sexuality, queer and gender studies. While at Hogwarts, he was in Ravenclaw House after the Sorting Hat gave him the choice between there and Hufflepuff. He could often be seen sporting wacky coloured hair after experimenting with hair-dyeing potions as part of his N.E.W.T. studies which could have landed him many galleons in fines had the Ludicrous Patents Office not acknowledged his priority over a deceitful Slytherin contemporary who stole his recipe and made minor adjustments. After completing his Muggle PhD he hopes to get a job in the Ministry, researching love in the Department of Mysteries.
Dr. Marcia Hernandez is an Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of the Pacific. Her scholarship interests include Black Greek-Letter organizations, higher education, popular culture and media studies in sociology. A member of Gryffindor House, she learned to produce her lion patronus from her favorite professor, Remus Lupin. Dr. Hernandez is currently working on projects that focus on the intersection of social class, body politics and images of beauty within African American communities. Other projects include assessing service-learning pedagogy, and community based research examining social cohesion and civic engagement in California’s Central Valley. Her research is featured in the Journal for Civic Commitment, Social Indicators Research and the anthology Black Greek Letter Organizations in the Twenty First Century: Our Fight Has Just Begun.
Kristen Kalz is an Adjunct Professor of Sociology in the St Louis Metro Area. She earned her Master’s Degree in Sociology at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville. She attended Hogwarts, taking her black cat Gonzo with her, and was sorted into Gryffindor House. While at school she once checked out a library book that, unbeknownst to her, Madam Pince had put a spell on to cause the book to write on her when she tried to write in it. Kristen’s research interests include gender studies and social movements/change, and Minerva McGonagall is her favorite professor.
Dr. Dustin Kidd serves as Associate Professor of Sociology at Temple University in Philadelphia where he teaches courses on popular culture and social theory. He is a member of Ravenclaw House and his favorite class at Hogwarts was History of Magic. He has p
ublished on the Harry Potter phenomenon in the Journal of Popular Culture. In addition, he has published articles on W.E.B. Du Bois’ theories about art, the Robert Mapplethorpe photography controversy, and management practices in the non-profit arts. His book Legislating Creativity (Routledge 2010) examines the intersections of art and politics in the arts controversies of the late 1980s, centering on the National Endowment for the Arts. He holds a bachelor’s degree in religious studies from James Madison University, an MA in English from the University of Virginia and a PhD in sociology, also from the University of Virginia. Dr. Kidd’s Patronus is an otter and his boggart is a pile of rubbish because he fears clutter.
Rachel LaBozetta resides in Baltimore, Maryland with her husband, Nick. She graduated from Towson University with a Bachelor of Science degree in Anthropology, where her main focus was on cultural anthropology, sociology, and archaeology. Rachel also has a previous degree in biology. While at Towson University, she was the vice president of their Anthropological Society in 2009. Her academic interests are quite varied from environmental conservation to issues of racism and researching Southwestern Native Americans and the Inuit. She has written editorials for mugglenet.com titled “Sociology of Harry Potter 101” (2008) and “Severus Snape in Love?” (2005). Rachel was sorted into Gryffindor House.
Dr. Florence C. Maätita is an Associate Professor of Sociology at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville. She earned her doctorate at the University of Connecticut. Her research and teaching interests include motherhood, gender, race-ethnicity, social psychology and family. Currently, she is conducting research on homophobia and anti-gay sentiments among undergraduate Sociology majors and the status/inclusion of issues related to gays and lesbians throughout Sociology curricula. A Gryffindor, Dr. Maätita’s patronus is a monkey, which she learned to produce in her favorite class, Defense against the Dark Arts, with her favorite professor, Remus Lupin. In that class, she also learned how to turn her boggart, a snake, into a slinky.
Jelena Marić is an elementary school teacher in Sisak, Croatia. In 2008 she received her Masters degree in Elementary Education and Information and Communication Technology in Zagreb. Her professional interests are educational software and children’s literature and she has written several articles for Croatian Magazines. During her schooling at Hogwarts, she was a proud member of Slytherin House, though she was never a pure blood fanatic, and Severus Snape was her favourite teacher. Jelena was a book worm, not an athlete, and she found Quidditch to be a childish game. She also absolutely adores all products from Weasleys’ Wizard Wheezes.
Alice Nuttall of Ravenclaw House is a part time PhD student in English Literature at Oxford Brookes University. She is studying how American Indian characters are represented in children’s literature particularly in fantasy and sci-fi. She has presented papers at the Global Youth Culture conference held at the University of Kent in 2009, and the Worlds of Violence conference at the University of Essex in 2010. She is also involved in the Oxford Children’s Literature and Youth Culture Colloquium. Alice is quite fond of Acid Pops, despite the risk of burns. Her wand is birch and unicorn hair, and Charms is her favourite class.
Grainne O’Brien is a hardcore Slytherin who’s on a mission to rid the wizarding world of the propaganda that Harry Potter was a saint. She is a graduate of University of Limerick with a BA in English and History and has studied the history of medieval restorative architecture, with a focus on Bunratty Castle, an Irish monument, and its reconstruction, as part of her undergraduate program. She is currently undertaking a Masters program in Gender Culture and Society at the same university. She is interested in the topic of “messaging” as it has been transmitted over time through the medium of utopian and alternative worlds in children’s writing. She has chosen the topic of Queer Theory within the Harry Potter series as the principle focus of her thesis and expects to pursue a career in children’s literature. She argues that Voldemort, or more specifically the child Tom Riddle Jr., is a “queer child,” in her paper “Queering the Half Blood Prince” presented at The Age of Sex Event conference in Prato, Italy. Her patronus is a snow leopard and her boggart would be a giant mushroom that would try to eat her. Grainne was Head Girl in her 7th year but turned down a chance to work at the Ministry of Magic to become an academic.
Meredith Railton of Ravenclaw House is an undergraduate student at the University of Louisville, Kentucky. She is majoring in History, with a concentration in the Social Sciences, with a minor in Women’s & Gender Studies. Upon graduation she plans to pursue her Master’s in History with the hopes of becoming a high school History teacher. She worked as writer at accio-potter.com, a fan-run website devoted to Harry Potter, from 2009 until it closed in 2011. In July 2010 she presented an informal paper (expanded from one of her editorials on the site) entitled “The Sociology of Harry Potter: Gender Issues in Early Childhood Socialization” at the Harry Potter Symposium Infinitus 2010 in Orlando, Florida. Harry is her favorite character and her patronus is an albatross.
Sheruni “Sher” Ratnabalasuriar is a doctoral student at Arizona State University in the School of Social Transformation. Her current dissertation research focuses on examining the experiences of non-traditional students, specifically educational trajectories of women of color in various higher education computer science programs in both traditional face-to-face and primarily online and distance learning contexts. As a Ravenclaw, she tends to spend her time sneaking around the restricted section more than the Quidditch field, looking up new charms and spells, though she enjoys a good butterbeer at the Hogshead when she gets the chance. Sher has been known to write a column or two for the Quibbler on the many uses of dirigible plums and the garden gnome conspiracy connection. Her patronus is a Squirrel Monkey.
Dr. Leo Ruickbie is a scientist who has been investigating and writing about the darker side of life - from magic to haunted houses - for most of his professional career. What began as a philosophical discussion on re-enchantment (MA with distinction, Lancaster University) led to his being awarded a PhD from King’s College, London, for his research into modern witchcraft and magic. As well as being a regular contributor to Paranormal magazine, amongst others, he is also the author ofseveral academic books such as Witchcraft Out of the Shadows (Robert Hale, 2004, 2011), Faustus: The Life and Times of a Renaissance Magician (The History Press, 2009) and A Brief Guide to the Supernatural (Constable & Robinson, 2012). Other scholarly work includes a chapter on black magic and cryptography for Science and the Occult (Cambridge Scholars Press, forthcoming) and spirit communication in the Golden Dawn for The Spiritualist Movement (Praeger, forthcoming). He is a member of Societas Magica, the European Society for the Study of Western Esotericism, the Society for Psychical Research and the Ghost Club. Currently, he lives in a small village in Germany, overlooked by a castle suspiciously reminiscent of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, where, over a glass of beer (non-dairy variety), he might be heard discussing defence against the dark arts. To read more about Leo’s research, log on to www.ruickbie.com
Jenn Sims is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Sociology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She has a BA in Sociology with a minor in Spanish from Hampton University, and an MA in Sociology from Vanderbilt University. Her research focuses on race/ethnicity, identity, human transfiguration and charms. Her dissertation explores the role that ambiguous physical appearance, and its alteration, plays in mixed race Muggles’ lives with regard to racial identity and the micro-politics of social interactions. Jenn was an exchange student at the University of Seville in Spain and at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. At the latter, she was sorted into Ravenclaw House and received a Time-Turner so that she could take concurrent classes (though she also sometimes used it to squeeze in an evening run at the end of a particularly busy day). Her patronus alternates between a seahorse and a peacock depending on whether she is conjuring it for communication or protection respectively. Upon completion of her PhD she plans to mo
ve to the UK and hopes to find a post teaching sociology at a Muggle university in London.
Dr. Ravindra Pratap Singh teaches English in the Department of English and Modern European Languages, University of Lucknow in India. He specializes in Canadian Literature, Translation Studies and Technical Communication. His other areas of interest are Children’s Literature, folk and Indology. He has contributed more than 30 papers to journals and magazines and presented 42 papers in different national and international seminars and conferences besides working on different projects/ fellowships / and programmes of the University Grants Commission, Indian Council of Cultural Relations, Indian Council for Social Science Research, Indian Council for Philosophical Research, and Indian Institute of Advanced Studies. Dr. Singh has 7 published books, including two anthologies: An Anthology of English Essays (2000) and An Anthology of English Short Stories (2000) and two books: Professional Communication (2001) and Functional Skills in Language and Literature (2005). He is also a creative writer and has one collection of English poems, Banjaran and other Poems, four Hindi plays, Shakespeare ki Saat Raatein ,Dugdhika aur anya naatak, Adrishya and Samvedna and one travelogue Patheya to his credit. Currently he is giving finishing touches to his collections of one act plays, Five Virgins and Curtain Raisers. Dr. Singh is a member of Gryffindor House and his patronus is a tiger.