Jan Alber is Professor and Chair of New English and American Literature at JLU Giessen University (Germany) and Past President of the International Society for the Study of Narrative (ISSN). He is the author of Narrating the Prison (Cambria Press, 2007) and Unnatural Narrative: Impossible Worlds in Fiction and Drama (University of Nebraska Press, 2016). Alber's articles have been published in journals such as European Journal of English Studies, Journal of Narrative Theory, Literature Compass, Narrative, Poetics Today, Scientific Study of Literature, Storyworlds, and Style. He is the editor (or co-editor) of 13 edited collections, the most recent one being Pandemic Storytelling (with Deborah de Muijnck and Jessica Jumpertz) (Brill, 2025). Alber is currently working on a UKRI project (funded by AHRC and the German Research Foundation) on post-postmodernist fictions of the digital (PPFDs) with Alice Bell.

Ralf Schneider is Professor and Chair of English Literature at RWTH Aachen University, where he is also co-founder and director of the Aachen Center for Cognitive and Empirical Literary Studies (ACCELS). He has worked and published on various aspects of British literary and cultural history. However, his research focus has been on cognitive approaches to literary reading, in particular the reception of literary characters. A monograph on character constellations and the cognitive and empirical study of literature, to be published with Routledge, is in preparation.