Ghent University
Andrew Bricker
Andrew Bricker is Project Coordinator for DELIAH, an Associate Professor of English Literature in the Department of Literary Studies at Ghent University in Belgium, and a Senior Fellow at the Andrew W. Mellon Society of Fellows in Critical Bibliography at the Rare Book School at the University of Virginia. He is the author of Libel and Lampoon: Satire in the Courts, 1670-1792 (Oxford University Press, 2022); and, with Eric Smith, of We the Raptors: Thirty Players, Thirty Stories, Thirty Years (Simon & Schuster, 2025).
Jeroen Vandaele
Jeroen Vandaele (PhD Leuven) teaches literary translation (Spanish-Dutch) and Hispanic literatures at Ghent University. From 2008 to 2017, he was professor at the University of Oslo (Norway), where he taught translation theory and discourse analysis. He is the author of Estados de Gracia. Billy Wilder y la censura franquista (Brill, Leiden, 2015), a monograph studying the relative power of humor in Franco’s Spain, and of Translation and Big Details (Routledge, New York, 2024), which connects the societal meaning of translations to details of formulation. He has theorized the concept of narrative humor in a two-part, book-length essay—“Narrative Humor I: Enter Perspective” (2010) and “Narrative Humor II: Exit Perspective” (2012).
Amber Kempynck
Amber Kempynck is a PhD researcher in English Literature at Ghent University. Within the project, she examines how women and non-cisgender comedians have created new venues for and new forms of stand-up comedy in the 21st-century Anglophone world and how they have, in the process, shaped new spaces, forms, and practices of democratic participation. She holds a master’s degree in Literature and Linguistics (English and Dutch) and Gender and Diversity.
Olsen (Oğuzhan) Zobar
Olsen (Oğuzhan) Zobar is a Doctoral Researcher at the Faculty of Arts and Philosophy at Ghent University. He is affiliated with the Department of Translation, Interpreting and Communication and a member of the Language and Translation Technology Team (LT3) as well as Translation and Culture (TRACE) research groups at the same department. Olsen holds a master’s degree in Translation and Interpreting Technologies from Ghent University (Belgium) on “Aspect Based Sentiment Analysis in Turkish” (2024). Before joining the Ghent University, Olsen was a Fulbright Fellow at Yale University (2022) teaching Turkish as a foreign language. Olsen has a research interest in humor studies, political science, sentiment analysis, deep learning, neural networks and natural language processing in the age of artificial intelligence. In addition, Olsen is part of the Democratic Literacy and Humor (DELIAH) project by funded by Horizon Europe, examining the role of translation in international laughter scandals.
University of Groningen
Alberto Godioli
Alberto Godioli is Associate Professor at the University of Groningen. He is principal investigator of a five-year project on humor and free speech adjudication (‘Humor in Court’, NWO Vidi, 2022-2027), and co-founder of ForHum: Forum for Humor and the Law. His publications on the topic include Humor and Free Speech: A Comparative Analysis of Global Case Law (Columbia Global Freedom of Expression, 2023) and the toolkit What’s in a Joke? Assessing Humor in Free Speech Jurisprudence, written in dialogue with experts from UNESCO, the African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights and the European Court of Human Rights among others (2025).
Luisa F. Isaza-Ibarra
Luisa F. Isaza-Ibarra is a lawyer and PhD researcher on humour and free speech adjudication at the University of Groningen. Within the project, she studies how judges and social media companies handle decisions concerning humour. For over twelve years, she has researched and defended the right to free speech with a focus on digital issues at organisations like Colombia’s Fundación para la Libertad de Prensa – FLIP (Foundation for Press Freedom), where she supported journalists, comedians, and cartoon artists facing violence and censorship. During her career, she also taught the Law and Journalism course at the Law Faculty of Pontificia Universidad Javeriana. She holds a master’s degree in Public Policy from the University of Oxford.
University of Tartu
Anastasiya Astapova
Anastasiya Astapova is an Associate Professor of Folkloristics at the University of Tartu and a member of the Estonian Young Academy of Sciences. Her primarily ethnographic research focuses on political humour, rumor, and conspiracy theories, particularly in (post-)authoritarian and post-socialist contexts, culminating in her monograph Humor and Rumor in the Post-Soviet Authoritarian State (Rowman and Littlefield, 2021). She has also co-edited Conspiracy Theories in Eastern Europe: Tropes and Trends and co-authored Conspiracy Theories and the Nordic Countries (both Routledge, 2020). Currently, Astapova leads the Estonian Science Foundation project on COVID-19 conspiracy theories and contributes to several international research networks, including the ERC-funded Conspirations. In DELIAH, Astapova will mostly focus on research of humour in enhancing public diplomacy, undermining the Russian propaganda, and enacting democratic reforms as exemplified by the case of Ukraine.
Ismet Suleimanov
Ismet Suleimanov is a PhD researcher of Folkloristics at the University of Tartu. As the member of the project, his project studies the role and forms of humor in the experience of adjustment of Ukrainian refugees in Belgium and Estonia online and via interviews; and the ways it is transmitted as well as the role of gender in humor use. Also, he explores the role of humor in the cross-cultural interaction between the refugees and the host-country and the ethnic minorities there. He holds a master’s degree in Contemporary Asian and Middle Eastern Studies from the University of Tartu.
Comenius University Bratislava
Nina Cingerová
Nina Cingerová is an associate professor in Slavonic languages and literatures at the Faculty of Arts, Comenius University in Bratislava. Her primary research interests lie in the pragmatic aspects of media/political discourse concerning socially sensitive topics. She is the author of the monograph Blushing Words (in Slovak, 2018), and co-author of the monographs on language and conflict (in Slovak, 2019) and language and security (2024).
Katarína Motyková
Katarína Motyková is an associate professor at the Department of German, Dutch and Scandinavian Studies at the Faculty of Arts, Comenius University in Bratislava, where she has been employed since 2001. Her specialisations include the Swedish language, Scandinavian cultures, and translation from Swedish. Her research focuses on heterostereotypes of Scandinavian countries in Central Europe, culture-oriented linguistics, and discourse analysis.
Irina Dulebová
Irina Dulebová is an associate professor in Slavonic languages and literatures at the Faculty of Arts, Comenius University in Bratislava. Her research is primarily focused on the forms and functions of intertextuality in the media discourse, and political linguistics. She is the co-author of monographs on language and politics (in Slovak, 2017), language and conflict (in Slovak, 2019) and language and security (2024).
Anna Sámelová
Anna Sámelová is an Associate Professor and journalist with 33 years of experience in the field. As the former News Director of the Radio and Television of Slovakia, she is also a scholar who authored a trilogy of monographs on this public broadcaster (2016, 2018, 2019). Her research focuses on the (anti)democratic potential of presented truths in offline versus online media (including hoaxes, fake news, and disinformation), media ethics, media CSR, and editorial responsibility within the context of the “mediatization” of the world. Additionally, she examines changes in human cognition and media-mediated communication following the rise of online media.
University of the Basque Country
Carmelo Moreno del Río
Carmelo Moreno del Río is an Associate Professor of Political Science at the Universidad of Basque Country, Spain. His main research interest are political theory, political identities and nationalism, critical discourse analysis and, in last years, humour studies. He was in charge of a research project financed by the Spanish government called Political Humour as a Factor of Social Cohesion in Spain, in which studies the relationship between humor appreciation in Spain, the uses of the stereotypes and their political consequences. Among his most recent works connected with humour studies: “Can ethnic humour appreciation be influenced by political reason? A comparative study of the Basque Country and Catalonia”, European Journal of Humor Research, vol. 1 (2), pp. 24-42; “Effects of Political Satire in Infotainment Television Programs in Spain. Is Humor Only for Laughing, or is there Something else at Stake?”, Papeles del CEIC, vol. 2022/2, papel 272, pp. 1-22.
Aitor Castañeda-Zumeta
Aitor Castañeda-Zumeta is a Lecturer in Journalism at the University of the Basque Country (Spain), specialising in visual data, cartoons, and media discourse. PhD in Social Communication since 2018, his research focuses on the intersection of humour and democratic culture, with notable publications in international journals. He also publishes cartoons in local digital press.
Marcos Engelken-Jorge
Marcos Engelken-Jorge is a postdoctoral researcher in the DELIAH project at the University of the Basque Country. His research focuses on the sociology of the public sphere and democratic theory, and it has been published in journals such as Distinktion, Political Studies and European Journal of Social Theory. In DELIAH, Marcos explores social groups’ discourses on humour and how humour practices are used at different stages of the democratic process.
University of Göttingen
Julia Fleischhack
Julia Fleischhack is a Postdoc in Cultural Anthropology at the Georg-August-University in Göttingen. Her research focuses on digital literacy, technology, environmental issues, and methodology. She is the author of the monograph Eine Welt im Datenrausch (Chronos 2016) and co-editor of Störungen (Reimer-Verlag 2011). Currently, she is writing-up her second monograph (Habilitation) entitled Ethnography of an infinite literacy. In the context of DELIAH, she will explore ‘counter-humour’ as a bottom-up response to harmful harassment and anti-democratic behaviour in the digital domain.
Cartoon Movement
Tjeerd Royaards
Tjeerd Royaards is an award-winning editorial cartoonist for Dutch daily newspaper Trouw and Editor-in-Chief of Cartoon Movement, a global platform for editorial cartoons and comics journalism. He is also on the Board of Advisors of Cartoonists Rights and a member of Cartooning for Peace.
External Advisory Board
Villy Tsakona
Villy Tsakona is Professor of Social and Educational Approaches to Language at the Department of Early Childhood Education of the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Greece. Her main research interests involve humor research, narrative analysis, political and media discourse analysis, as well as critical literacy theory and applications. She recently co-edited The Dynamics of Interactional Humor: Creating and Negotiating Humor in Everyday Encounters (John Benjamins, 2018 – in collaboration with Jan Chovanec) and authored Recontextualizing Humor: Rethinking the Analysis and Teaching of Humor (De Gruyter Mouton, 2020) and Exploring the Sociopragmatics of Online Humor (John Benjamins, 2024). She is also co-editor of the European Journal of Humor Research.
Ariadna Matamoros-Fernández
Dr Ariadna Matamoros-Fernández researches social media cultures, platform governance, online harms, harmful humour, and algorithmic systems. In January 2025, she joined University College Dublin (UCD) as an Associate Professor in the School of Information & Communication Studies.
She is an adjunct at the Queensland University of Technology, a Chief Investigator at the Digital Media Research Centre (DMRC), member of the UCD Centre for Digital Policy and Affiliate Investigator at the national Australian Research Council (ARC) Centre of Excellence for Automated Decision-Making and Society. She is also an ARC Discovery Early Career Research (DECRA) Fellow (2023-2025) (DE230101558).
Her research has been published in New Media & Society, Information, Communication & Society, Feminist Media Studies, Internet Policy Review and other international, peer-reviewed journals. She is co-author of a book on WhatsApp (Polity, with Amelia Johns and Emma Baulch).
Dennis Meyhoff Brink
Dennis Meyhoff Brink is a postdoctoral researcher at the Center of Art and Mental Health at the University of Copenhagen in Denmark. The primary focus of his research is the examination of religious and political comedy and satire in Europe from the 16th century to the present day, with a particular emphasis on interactions between these forms of art and the surrounding societies. He is the founder of the Scandinavian research network European Cultures of Laughter and a board member of The Satire Research Network.
Raúl Pérez
Raúl Pérez is Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of La Verne. His research examines the role of racist humor on social and political inequality, conflict, and violence. He is author of The Souls of White Jokes: How Racist Humor Fuels White Supremacy (Stanford University Press, 2022), with scholarship also published in journals such as American Behavioral Scientist, Discourse & Society, Ethnicities, Social Semiotics, and Sociological Perspectives. His writing and commentary also appear in venues like The Washington Post, TIME, NBC, and Harper’s Bazaar, and he was featured in the 2024 documentary XCLD: The Story of Cancel Culture, for the MSNBC documentary series “The Turning Point” executive produced by comedian Trevor Noah. He is a founding member of the Critical Humor Studies Association.
Natalie Alkiviadou