Elena Furlanetto earned her doctorate in American Literary and Cultural Studies from the Technical University of Dortmund in July 2015 and currently works as a researcher at the University of Duisburg-Essen. She is the author of Towards Turkish American Literature: Narratives of Multiculturalism in Post-Imperial Turkey (2017) and a co-editor of two essay collections: A Poetics of Neurosis: Narratives of Normalcy and Disorder in Cultural and Literary Texts (with Dietmar Meinel, 2018) and Media Agoras: Islamophobia and Inter/Multimedial Dissensus (with Frank Mehring, 2020). She has published on the influences of Islamic mystic poetry on American romanticism, on Islamophobia and Orientalism in film and media, and on the captivity narrative. 

Elena Furlanetto is writing her postdoctoral thesis in the framework of the DFG Research Unit #2600 "Ambiguität und Unterscheidung: Historisch-kulturelle Dynamiken" (Ambiguity and Difference: Historical and Cultural Dynamics). Her focus are dynamics of 'ambiguation' in the early and nineteenth-century Americas. 

Ilka Brasch is an assistant professor (Wissenschaftliche Mitarbeiterin) in American Studies at Leibniz University of Hannover in Germany. Her current research brings together the history of the book, the study of material texts, and their intersection with settler colonialism and nation formation in post-Revolutionary America. She connects these impulses with critical reflections on the form and function of archives, historically and today. She is interested particularly in sprawling texts such as Hugh Henry Brackenridge's Modern Chivalry or Judith Sargent Murray's The Gleaner. 

Her article on "Modern Chivalry's Colonialism" is currently under review with Early American Studies, and she is preparing a forum section about current methodologies in American Studies for Amerikastudien/American Studies. 

Alanna Bossle is the research assistant for Voices & Agencies. Her research interests lie in early American as well as 19th century British literature. She wrote her BA thesis on "Postcolonial Aspects in the Works of Harper Lee," which led to her position as research assistant for the V&A network. Her MA thesis “Ignorance is not Bliss: Restricting Black Voices in American Education and Literature” engages book bans in the US alongside historical practices of silencing Black voices. 

Alanna Bossle is currently finishing her Master's in Education while deciding whether to continue her studies and write a PhD.