History and Team

A Brief History

Established in 2015 by Danny Graydon and Dr Barbara Brownie in collaboration with Inter-Disciplinary.Newt, The Superhero Project was the first academic conference solely dedicated to the superhero genre, initially run at Mansfield College in Oxford. Following the demise of I-D.net, The Superhero Project became a collaboration between Graydon - an academic with University of Hertfordshire, UK - and Dr Torsten Caeners of University of Duisburg-Essen, Germany, who was a delegate at the first edition of the conference. The Superhero Project was revived in late 2019 with its third edition in Mulheim an Der Ruhr in Germany, where it continues to run.

The Superhero Project has quickly distinguished itself as an invigoratingly diverse showcase of critical coverage of the superhero genre, amply demonstrating the scope of potential thereby illuminating what is a truly vibrant area of pop culture scholarship. The project is currently gearing up for it's fifth global conference, to be held between 10th and 12th September, 2021

Previous Delegates

  • Laura Antola

  • Kristin Aubel

  • Rafael Alves Azevedo

  • Matteo Barbagello

  • Kirsten Baumgartner

  • Rory Bines-Morris

  • Anke Bock

  • Barbara Brownie

  • Torsten Caenars

  • Daniel J. Connell

  • Matthew Costello

  • Laura Crossley

  • Esther De Dauw

  • Jean-Guy P. Ducreux

  • Stefanie Dullisch

  • Randy Duncon

  • Sara K. Ellis

  • Owen Farrington

  • Marco Favaro

  • Teresa Forde

  • Vincent M. Gaine

  • Nicolas Gaspers

  • Danny Graydon

  • John Harnett

  • Mark Hibbett

  • Jessica Hoffmann

  • Tiffany Hong

  • Robert Hyland

  • Nicholas T. James

  • Matthias Keidel

  • Martine Klein

  • Svenja Kolpack

  • Mikayla J. Laird

  • Freyja Alice McCreery

  • Johnny McGuire

  • Dan O’Rourke

  • Derya Ozkan

  • Ashika Paramita

  • Yago Paris

  • Bruno Porto

  • Richard Reynolds

  • Irene Zarza Rubio

  • Ranhild Salzer

  • Karen Sugrue

  • Joao Senna Teixeira

  • James C. Taylor

  • Eva M. Thury

  • Rabeb Touihri

  • Daniel Trottier

  • Caleb Turner

  • Alex Van Ommen

  • Carl Wilson

  • Sarah Young