Elisabetta Di Minico is a UNA4CAREER postdoctoral researcher at the Faculty of Political Science and Sociology of the Complutense University of Madrid, with a project on “The Enemity of Otherness”. She works on the relations between fiction and history. Her research primarily focuses on dystopia, control, otherness, and violence (racial and gendered). Elisabetta uses novels, comics, movies, and TV series to provocatively analyze the real “bad places” of contemporary society from a historical and sociological point of view. Ph.D. Cum Laude in Contemporary History from the University of Barcelona, she also teaches Comic History at IULM-Free University of Language and Communication of Milan and is part of the HISTOPIA research group (Autonomous University of Madrid).

Stefano Locati is a post-doc research fellow in cinema at IULM University in Milan where he teaches “Asian Visual Cultures: Cinema, Comics, TV Series” and "Languages of cinema". His research focuses on Japanese, Chinese, Korean cinemas, media studies, adaptation studies, and periodical studies. He holds a PhD in Literatures and Media. He authored, among others, the book "Sistema media mix. Cinema e sottoculture giovanili del Giappone contemporaneo" (lit. 'Media Mix System. Cinema and youth subcultures in contemporary Japan', 2022). He is the director of Sognielettrici (Electricdreams) International Film Festival in Milan and the curator of the special section East Asia Now at the Ca’Foscari Short Film Festival in Venice.