Professor Ellis Cashmore
Ellis Cashmore is the author of Beckham (2004) and Tyson: Nurture of the Beast (2005). He has held positions in sociology at the universities of Hong Kong and Tampa and is currently professor of culture, media and sport at Staffordshire University. His next book Celebrity Culture will be published by Routledge next year..

Professor Garry Whannel
Professor of Media Cultures and Director of the Centre for International Media Analysis at the University of Luton. He has pioneered research in media sport, television studies and leisure cultures, co-founding the Centre for Sport Development Research at University of Surrey Roehampton (now the Centre for Cultural Research in Sport). His recent publications include Media Sport Stars: Masculinities and Moralities (2002) and Understanding Television, amongst many others.

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Professor Gary Gumpert
Professor Gary Gumpert (Ph.D., Wayne State University) is Professor Emeritus of Communication Arts and Sciences at Queens College, City University of New York. His work over the past thirty years has addressed the many nuances in our growing dependency upon mediated communication. Formerly a radio and television producer/director, he is widely published in a variety of journals and books which examine the intricate interconnection of social interaction, urbanization and media technology. He is the author of Talking Tombstones and Other Tales of the Media Age (Oxford University Press). He is the co-editor (with Robert Cathcart) of three editions of Inter/Media: Interpersonal Communication in a Media World. Most recently he has co-edited Voices in the Street: Gender, Media and Public Space and The Huddled Masses: Communication and Immigration and Real Law @ Virtual Space (Hampton Press). His current research focuses on the relationship of new communication technologies and the use of public spaces. He is the sec'y and Vice President of the U.S. chapter of the International Institute of Communication.

Professor Susan Drucker
Susan Drucker, Professor, Journalism and Mass Media Studies, (J.D., St. John's University School of Law, M.A., Queens College CUNY, Media Studies) teaches courses in communication law, communication theory and interpersonal communication. She is a practicing attorney who specializes in communication and law, cross-cultural communication, and the relationship of communication technologies and public space. Professor Drucker has published widely on the emerging laws of cyberspace, communication and conflict resolution in international disputes, wired cities, cameras in the courtroom, technology and legal communication, and the rhetorical functions of Holocaust memorials. Her most recent books include American Heroes in a Media Age (co-edited with Robert S. Cathcart) (Hampton Press, 1994), Voices in the Street: Gender, Media and Public Space (Hampton Press, 1997) and The Huddled Masses: Immigration and Communication (Hampton Press, 1998), Real Law @ Virtual Space: The Regulation of Cyberspace, 2nd Edition (Hampton Press, 1999) and Take Me Out to the Ballgame: Communicating Baseball (Hampton Press, 2002), all co-edited with Gary Gumpert.

Dr. Barry King
Barry is Associate Professor and Head of the School of Communications Studies, Auckland University of Technology, New Zealand. He was trained as a sociologist at City University, London and received his doctorate from the London School of Economics. His research interests lie in the areas of communications and cultural theory. His publications encompass popular photography, the sociology of acting and performance, American media culture, stardom and celebrity, violence and the media and visual semiotics.

He was a member of the editorial board of Screen for several years and a reviewer for Critical Studies in Mass Communications. He is currently on the Editorial board of the Pacific Journalism Review and is co-editor of Lord of the Rings: Studying the Event Film, Manchester University Press (2004). Barry has undertaken consultancy work for British Actor’s Equity Association on the labour market for actors and is currently extending this research to encompass the New Zealand context. During 2003, he was Associate Director on the Television and Violence Project, commissioned by the Ministry of Culture and Heritage. He has just completed a book-length study of stardom in the American cinema.

Professor P. David Marshall
P. David Marshall is Professor and Chair of the Department of Communication Studies at Northeastern University in Boston.
He is the author of many articles on media, new media, popular culture and public personalities and two books, Celebrity and Power: Fame in Contemporary Culture (Minnesota, 1997) and New Media Cultures (Arnold, 2004). He is the co-author of Web Theory (Routledge, 2003, with Robert Burnett) and Fame Games: the Production of Celebrity in Australia (Cambridge, 2000/01 with Graeme Turner and Francis Bonner), his current work includes a forthcoming edited collection on celebrity for Routledge.

He is also the founder of the Internet journal M/C- a Journal of Media and Culture and regularly contributes through interviews to major radio and television networks in the USA and internationally.

Dr. Paul McDonald
Reader in Film & Television Studies, Director of the Centre for Research in Film and Audiovisual Cultures at Roehampton University. Author of The Star System: Hollywood’s production of popular identifies (2000) and joint editor of the British Film Institute’s International Screen Industries series. He also contributed to the updated edition of Richard Dyer's seminal book Stars (1998) and is author of many articles on stardom and celebrity. He is currently completing an edited book (with Janet Wasko) on the contemporary Hollywood film industry.

Dr. Diane Negra
Senior Lecturer and Director of the PhD Program, School of Film & Television Studies. Dr. Negra is author, editor or co-editor of five published or forthcoming books including: Off-White Hollywood: American Culture and Ethnic Female Stardom (Routledge, 2001), A Feminist Reader in Early Cinema (Duke, 2002 with Jennifer Bean), The Irish in Us: Irishness, Performativity and Popular Culture (forthcoming, Duke, 2005) and Interrogating Postfeminism: Gender and the Politics of Popular Culture (forthcoming, Duke, 2006, with Yvonne Tasker). Her current project is entitled Perils and Pleasures: Postfeminism and Contemporary Culture.

In addition, Dr. Negra's essays have appeared in journals including Camera Obscura , Genders, Cultural Studies , Irish Studies Review and The Velvet Light Trap . Her work has also been published in a number of edited collections including Keyframes: Popular Cinema and Cultural Studies , Contemporary American Film: From the Margins to the Mainstream , Keeping It Real: Issues and Directions in Modern Irish Film and Television , American Silent Film: Discovering Marginalized Voices , Small Screens/Big Ideas: Television in the 1950s and Visual Media and the Humanities: A Pedagogy of Representation. She has served as special issue co-editor for Camera Obscura on early female stars and co-editor of a Cinema Journal In Focus section on postfeminism and media studies. In 2004 she was co-organizer of an international conference held at UEA entitled Interrogating Postfeminism: Gender and the Politics of Contemporary Culture