Rusty Hatchell is a doctoral candidate in media studies at the University of Texas at Austin. He earned his M.A. in media studies from the University of Texas at Austin and his B.A. in English from Georgia Gwinnett College. His current research focuses on contemporary superhero television universes, particularly on the efforts to cultivate narrative continuity as well as the industrial production logics that help shape superhero television into its own distinct genre. His scholarly work has appeared in Middle West Review, the Australasian Journal of Popular Culture, Flow: A Critical Forum on Media and Culture, In Media Res, and the edited collection After Midnight: Watchmen after Watchmen. He is currently working on his doctoral dissertation, “Mapping the Multiverse: Narrative Continuity and Industrial Logics in the Shared Television Universes of DC’s Superheroes, 1992-2022,” which uses a longitudinal study of DC Comics’ expansion into television from 1992 to 2022 to examine how shared universes are emerging as a guiding principle of the media industries, influencing television production and distribution strategies.

Laura C. Brown is a Media Studies PhD candidate in the Department of Radio-Television-Film. Her research interests include American broadcast media history, audiences, taste cultures, critical industry studies, music on television, and media failures. She is currently a co-lead editor of The Velvet Light Trap journal, and she holds a position on the graduate student council of the Library of Congress’ Radio Preservation Task Force. Laura received a bachelor’s degree in History and a master’s degree in Film and Television Studies, both from Boston University.

Cindy McCreery was a Walt Disney/ABC Feature Writing Fellow and has since sold feature projects to New Line Cinema, Walt Disney Studios, Paramount Pictures, Nickelodeon, National Geographic Films, Warner Brothers, MGM, Branded Entertainment and Lionsgate. She also writes for television and has sold projects to SyFy Channel, Disney Channel, NBC, TNT, Televisa USA, Universal Television and AMC’s Shudder. Cindy has been teaching screenwriting and television writing since 2004 at UCLA, UC Santa Barbara and is currently an Associate Professor at The University of Texas at Austin in The Department of Radio-TV-Film.

Dr. Willard was a lecturer in the Department of Radio-TV-Film at the University of Texas at Austin. She was also the RTF Internship Director. Her research and teaching interests include fan studies, platform studies, and media industry studies; in all of these arenas, she focuses on labor and professionalization. She completed her Ph.D. in media studies here at UT Austin, where she served as a teaching assistant and assistant instructor for RTF courses. In 2017, she was recognized as UT Austin’s top teaching assistant, receiving the William S. Livingstone Outstanding Graduate Student Teaching Assistant award. She has also taught at the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute (OLLI) and Salt Lake Community College (SLCC). She is an external affiliate with and the Assistant Director of Moody College’s Center for Entertainment and Media Industries (CEMI). She is also a co-founder of the annual Fan Studies Network-North America (FSN-NA) conference. Previously, she has coordinated the Flow Conference and UT’s Women & Gender Studies Emerging Scholarship Conference. She has served in an editorial capacity with Big Data & Society, The Velvet Light Trap, and Flow: A Critical Forum on Television and Media Culture. She has also served as the Director of UT’s Queer Graduate Student Alliance (QGSA) and the Graduate Student Representative for the Fan and Audience Studies Scholarly Interest Group for the Society of Cinema and Media Studies (SCMS).

Kristina Brüning is a PhD Student in the Radio-Television-Film Department at UT Austin. She holds an MA in American Studies from Freie Universität Berlin and an MA in German Studies from the University of Michigan. In her doctoral work, Kristina combines media industry studies and feminist media studies. Her dissertation explores the working conditions, affective experiences, and creative agency of actors in the post-#MeToo streaming era. She has published articles in Feminist Media Studies, Television & New Media, and Media Industries Journal.

Peter Arne Johnson is a Ph.D. student in media studies at the University of Texas at Austin. His research focuses on critical media industry studies, critical political economy, U.S. film and television history, and media finance. Pete’s work considers how financial structures and discursive constructions in financial markets can shape the range and nature of media texts. He has been published in Democratic Communiqué, The New Review of Film and Television Studies, and Media Industries Journal.