Tansy Barton is an academic librarian at Senate House Library, University of London. She is responsible for collections in palaeography and manuscript studies, book studies, and the paranormal, occult and magical. She has worked on previous library exhibitions on magic and Dickens and Victorian childhood. Her research interests include books of magic tricks, print surfaces and seals (the wax kind). With Katrina H. and Emily Chu, Tansy has created a display of cat-themed items drawn from across Senate House Library’s collections to coincide with the conference.

The photo is of Tansy’s late cat Jellybean.

Bianca is a Customer Services Officer at Senate House Library. She is helping to promote the Cats in Culture & Society exhibition. She is part of the Document Supply Services team and also enjoys helping to repair library books. She loves vintage sewing patterns and researching historic sewing techniques.

The photo features Bianca’s favourite cat Frankie.

Emily Chu is a library customer services officer at Senate House Library, University of London. She is part of the Special Collections team and is responsible for delivering service in the Special Collections Reading Room. She has worked with Tansy Barton and Katrina H. to organise a display of cat-themed items to support the conference.

The photo features Poppy, the cat Emily cat-sits regularly.

Charlotte recently finished her PhD in the adaptation of the Kalevala and other folk poetry in Finnish metal music at UCL, SSEES. She currently works as a post-graduate teaching assistant at UCL, having taught sociology, history and Finnish culture. She has presented her work at various international conferences and published on the adaptation of Baltic-Finnish folk poetry in the journal Metal Music Studies (2021). She has co-authored a forthcoming article for the Electronic Journal of Folklore (2023) and is the co-editor of the edited volume Multilingual Metal: Sociocultural, Linguistic and Literary Perspectives on Heavy Metal (2020) published by Emerald. Together with Riitta, Charlotte organises the academic side of the conference.

The photo is of Charlotte’s cat Keiju (Finnish for ‘fairie/pixie’).

Katrina is a “cat”-aloguer at Senate House Library. She is organising the Cats in Culture & Society online gallery. She has always loved cats but has become especially rabid in her middle-age/since handsome Rockingham came into her life. Her interests include middlebrow literature, Moomins and mystery dramas.

The photo features Katrina’s cat Rockingham.

Andrea Meyer Ludowisy is the Academic Librarian for European Art and Culture at Senate House Library at the University of London. She is also a research fellow in the School of Languages, Linguistics and Film at Queen Mary University London. Her initial training was in art history and curatorial studies at University College London and she enjoys showcasing the rich and diverse collections of Senate House Library. Her publications range from a chapter on the sixteenth century iconography of the witch to the showcasing of the archive of the British Germanist William Rose in the context of psychoanalysis, translation and code breaking, to themes such as music and migration or the multiple meanings of hair in library collections, or most recently, the analysis of Germanic collections as politicized spaces in the University of London.

The photo shows Andrea’s cat Lina in repose.

Riitta Valijarvi is Associate Professor at University College London and Uppsala University, Sweden. Her research interests include endangered and minority languages, language pedagogy and revitalisation, language textbooks, Finnish, Meänkieli, Greenlandic, Sámi, non-binary language, translation studies, and music. She adores cats, and is interested in studying connections between cats, language, and society. Together with Charlotte, Riitta is responsible for the conference and the subsequent edited volume.

The photo features Riitta’s cats Chloe and Ripley.