keynote speakers
KEYNOTE SPEAKERS
lYMAN TOWER SARGENT
​
American academic, professor emeritus of political science at the University of Missouri-St. Louis. Sargent's main academic interests are in utopian studies, political theory, American studies and bibliography. He is one of the world's foremost scholars on utopian studies, founding editor of Utopian Studies, serving in that post for the journal's first fifteen years, and recipient of the Distinguished Scholar Award from the Society for Utopian Studies.
​
IAN WATSON
​
Born in England in 1943, Ian Watson graduated from Balliol College, Oxford, in 1963 with a first class Honours degree in English Literature, followed in 1965 by a research degree in English and French 19th Century literature. After lecturing in literature at universities in Tanzania and Tokyo, and in Futures Studies (including Science Fiction) in Birmingham, England, he became a full-time writer in 1976 following the success of his first novel, The Embedding(1973) which won the John W. Campbell Memorial Award and in France the Prix Apollo, and The Jonah Kit (1975) which won the British Science Fiction Association Award and the Orbit Award.
Cristina Macía
Cristina Macía is translator of many SF and Fantasy authors (such as George RR Martin and Terry Pratchett) into Spanish as well as of cookbooks, which she herself also writes. Recent titles are the UK bestseller The Angry Chef and New Art of Cookery: A Spanish Friar's Kitchen Notebook. In 2012 She and Ian Watson collaborated on 50 Recetas con nombre ('50 meals named after people') for Spain's biggest book club. Portugal is representated by Cod Gomes de Sá, from Porto.
PATRICK PARRINDER
Professor Parrinder retired from the Department of English in 2008, having been Head of Department (1986-94) and Dean of the Faculty of Letters and Social Sciences (1991-4). He also held a Leverhulme Major Research Fellowship (2001-4) and an AHRC Research Grant (2008-12).
Professor Parrinder's main research interests are in English literature since 1880, especially science fiction and utopian studies, and in the history of the novel more widely. He is general editor of the 12-volume Oxford History of the Novel in English currently in production, and was general editor of the 17 H. G. Wells titles published by Penguin Classics (2005-7).
Luís Filipe Silva
Luís Filipe Silva is a Portuguese science fiction writer, who has published stories in various Portuguese magazines and newspapers. His work has also been published in Spain, Brazil and Serbia.
João barreiros
​
João Manuel Rosado Barreiros, also known by the pseudonym José de Barros, is a Portuguese science fiction writer, editor, translator and critic.
​
He graduated in Philosophy from the University of Lisbon in 1977, and became a high school Philosophy teacher in 1975. His experiences in education eventually led him to write a semi-autobiographical satire titled "The Test" in 2000. Some of his work has been translated into English, Spanish, French, Italian and Serbian.
​
