Members of the Executive Board include nine officers: President, First Vice-President, Second Vice-President, Treasurer, Public Information Officer, Conference Chair, Immediate Past President, BIPOC Caucus Representative, Registration and Membership Coordinator, and Student Caucus Representative.
Other positions are are appointed by the President with the advice and consent of the Executive Board. You can find Other IAFA Officials here. Prequisites received by board members, other officers, as well as division heads associated with the conferences are listed here.
PresidentDavid M. Higgins Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, Worldwide, Daytona Beach, FL, USA iafa.president@fantastic-arts.org
David is the author of Reverse Colonization: Science Fiction, Imperial Fantasy, and Alt-Victimhood, which won the 2021 Science Fiction Research Association Book Award. He has also published a critical monograph examining Ann Leckie’s SF masterwork Ancillary Justice, and his research has been published in journals such as American Literature, Science Fiction Studies, Paradoxa, and Extrapolation. David serves as a senior editor for the Los Angeles Review of Books and as an editor for Climate Lit, an open-access compendium of environmental literacy resources for educators. In the public sphere, David has been a featured speaker on NPR’s radio show On Point, and his literary journalism has been published in the Los Angeles Review of Books and The Guardian. |
First Vice-PresidentNovella Brooks de Vita
Novella Brooks de Vita has adored her involvement with IAFA since she attended her first ICFA conference in 2008. Her doctoral studies focus on teaching and learning, particularly in higher education, and on educational administration. Novella has made extensive presentations on literature including comics, film, theatre, literacy, and pedagogy. She has published scholarly book chapters, academic essays, poetry, and short fiction. In addition to teaching, administrative educational support roles and behind-the-scenes work in various creative productions throughout the years, she has engaged in research, planning, logistics, outreach, and event management for a range of scholarly and creative engagements. Novella has worked on making experiences accessible and relevant to those she has served in previous roles and hopes to support such goals' success in her current role. |
Second Vice-PresidentCarrie J. Cole Indiana University of Pennsylvania, Pennsylvania, USA
Carrie J. Cole (she/they) is associate professor of Theatre in the Department of Music, Theatre, and Dance at Indiana University of Pennsylvania. Carrie’s research focuses on current and future trends in US theatre, performance and popular culture, (specifically staging science fiction and the fantastic). Some of her work on science fiction audiences has been published by the American Chemical Society and Transformative Works and Cultures. As a Creative Artist, Carrie’s role in performance work has been as an actor, adapter, deviser, director, dramaturg, fight director, house manager, intimacy choreographer, producer, and props artisan. As a Creative Scholar, Carrie has presented work at regional and ensemble-based theatres as well as US and international conferences. |
TreasurerSean Nixon iafa.treasurer@fantastic-arts.org
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Public Information OfficerBE Allatt
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Virtual Conference DirectorOghenechovwe Donald Ekpeki
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Immediate Past PresidentDale Knickerbocker iafa.pastpres@fantastic-arts.org
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BIPOC Caucus RepresentativeJoy Sanchez-TaylorLaGuardia Community College, New York City, New York, USA
Joy Sanchez-Taylor is a Professor of English at LaGuardia Community College (CUNY) whose research specialty is intersections between science fiction, fantasy, and critical race studies. Her book Diverse Futures: Science Fiction and Authors of Color (2021) examines the contributions of late twentieth and twenty-first century U.S. and Canadian science fiction authors of color to the genre. She is currently working on a book forthcoming from Ohio State University Press in July 2025 titled Dispelling Fantasies: Authors of Color Reimagine a Genre.
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Student Caucus RepresentativeAylin Walder iafa.studentcaucus@fantastic-arts.org
Aylin Dilek Walder (she/her) is a research assistant and lecturer at the University of Cologne (Germany). Her research focuses on speculative fiction in film studies, queer studies as well as in ecocriticism and postcolonial studies. She has published on cultural appropriation, (Polish) fantasy and the ecoGothic. Her work has appeared in edited volumes such as The Palgrave Handbook of Global Fantasy. She is co-editor for the annual proceedings of the Inklings Society e.V. and an assistant editor for Anglistik: International Journal of English Studies. |
David M. Higgins (he/they) is associate professor of English and American Studies and chair of the Department of Humanities and Communication at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, Worldwide. He is also the president of the International Association for the Fantastic in the Arts, and he serves as a senior editor for the Los Angeles Review of Books.
Sean Nixon holds a PhD in Applied Mathematics from the University of Colorado where he currently works as a researcher in nonlinear waves and optics. Research topics range from topological insulators and parity-time symmetry to perturbation theory and asymptotic techniques. Beyond his scientific work, Sean is also the author of several semi-academic articles that explore the connections between math and pop culture such as "Fractal Characterization in Pixar's Inside Out" and "The Rick-est Rick, the Multiverse, and P-hacking". Sean is the artist of the webcomic Hollow Oak University, the author of short plays performed at the Paragon Play Festival (and at ICFA), and long-time ICFA attendees may be vaguely aware of his presence as the conference A/V monkey from 2010-2021.
BE Allatt is an independent scholar, author, occasional film crew member, and freelance editor and proofreader who regularly contracts for a hybrid press. They hold an M.A. in Literature with a concentration in science fiction studies from Texas State University, which they earned by writing a thesis on Frank Herbert's Dune. BE introduced the social sciences concept of mononormativity as a critical lens through which to view SFF in a chapter in the critical anthology Exploring the Fantastic: Genre, Ideology, and Popular Culture (eds. Batzke et al.), and BE's academic track presentation on "Heinleinian Non-Monogamies" at the Worldcon 76 was awarded a prize by The Heinlein Society. Currently, BE serves as Public Information Officer for the International Association for the Fantastic in the Arts (IAFA) and as Lead Editor for At-Con Publications for Seattle Worldcon 2025, as well as Editor-in-Chief for Seattle Worldcon's Yesterday, Today, & Tomorrow blog. Most importantly, at least as far as the cat is concerned, BE is a dedicated servant to a bossy tuxedo cat named Eimear.
Oghenechovwe Donald Ekpeki is an African speculative fiction writer, editor and publisher from Nigeria. He has won the Nebula, Otherwise, Nommo, Locus, Asimov reader's award, British and World Fantasy awards and is a multiple Hugo, Sturgeon, British Science Fiction,
Dale Knickerbocker is Linda E. McMahon Distinguished Professor of Foreign Languages and Literatures at East Carolina University, where he teaches Hispanic languages, literatures, and cultures. He is an associate editor of the Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts and Alambique, and a member of the editorial advisory boards of Extrapolation, Brumal (Spain), and Abusões (Brazil).
Registration and Membership Coordinator
