Nicole Kay
Nicole recently completed her Masters in English Literature, specialising in the Gothic on-screen. For now, she is taking a little sabbatical from the world of academia and working at the University of Sheffield in the Arts and Humanities events team – hoping to spread the word and inspire young and upcoming Goths to begin their studies.
Her background is in film – having completed a Bachelors degree in film and working at indie film festivals she is inspired by adaptations of novel to screen and loves nothing more than to read the book then watch the film and completely obsess over the details.
As a child she fell head-over-heels in love with the Gothic through Lemony Snicket’s “A Series of Unfortunate Events” – she just didn’t realise it was Gothic yet. Now, she loves to explore traditional Gothic novels and unearth new ones – her favourite book is Thin Air by Michelle Paver.
Other hobbies include cross-stitch, aerial circus, painting and of course, reading a good book in the sunshine. You’ll often find her with a beaten-up paperback in her bag, whilst the shiny hardback edition of her favourite novels sit proudly on a shelf. Please don’t ask her how much they cost.
Zhengxin Lin
Zhengxin is a third-year postgraduate research student at the University of Sheffield, focusing on Contemporary British Gothic and the theme of doubling in her thesis.
Her passion for the Gothic genre began in her teenage years, inspired by reading Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights. The imagery of the red room that confines Jane and the decaying grandeur of the Heights sparked her imagination, and Wuthering Heights remains one of her favourite novels, which she enjoys rereading endlessly.
Outside of her research, Zhengxin loves travelling, particularly to haunted houses and ruins. She also leads the Sheffield Gothic reading group.
Ro Novak
Ro is a part-time PhD candidate researching monstrous plants in fiction from the late nineteenth and early twentieth century.
His love for spooky and weird stories started with German-language children’s book series like Der kleine Vampir (The Little Vampire) by Angela Sommer-Bodenburg and Alle meine Monster by Thomas Brezina. When he moved on to authors like R.L. Stine and Paul van Loon he started to get scared of his own courage, but bravely continued to explore the world of horror. Nowadays, he is especially fond of fin de siècle weird fiction, for example by Algernon Blackwood and Arthur Machen. Tropes and themes he likes are retro horror set in the latter decades of the twentieth century, haunted hotels, and everything that could as well be an episode from the golden era of Supernatural (seasons 1-5).
Outside of his existence as a Sheffield Goth, he enjoys cooking and baking, knitting, board games (especially Go and chess), book clubs, and spending time outside.
Ellesse Patterson
Ellesse Patterson recently began her second year as a PhD student at the University of Sheffield. She is AHRC funded through the White Rose College of the Arts & Humanities (WRoCAH). Her thesis, ‘Monstrous Reproduction and Nation in the Long Nineteenth-Century British Gothic’, examines the intersection of life, death, and national terror embedded within Gothic reproduction narratives. As of 2024, she has previously published her research in Gothic Studies and regularly presents her research on the Gothic at conferences in the UK and internationally.
Her passion for the Gothic was ignited when she read Angela Carter’s anthology of dark fairy-tales, The Bloody Chamber and Other Tales, during her BA in English and History, sparking a deep interest in weird fiction and the macabre. After falling in love with Carter, Ellesse began to voraciously read the works of authors such as Ann Radcliffe, Matthew Gregory Lewis, Mary Shelley, and Bram Stoker.
Outside of her PhD, Ellesse enjoys creative writing, spoiling her cats, baking, exploring new places, and taking long walks (usually with a coffee in hand). She loves learning strange historical facts and thinks the best conversation starter opens with, “Did you know …?”
Sheffield Gothic 