Marie-Luise (Mel) Kohlke works in the inter-disciplinary fields of neo-Victorianism, narratives of trauma and trauma theory, with particular interest in gender and sexuality, historical and cultural memory, and representations of violence. She is the founder of the peer-reviewed Neo-Victorian Studies(www.neovictorianstudies.com), the first international journal specifically dedicated to the subject. Current projects include compiling an on-line database of neo-Victorian novels and setting up a Neo-Victorian Network to promote international collaboration in this field of critical enquiry. She is the co-editor (with Christian Gutleben) of the Neo-Victorian Series (Rodopi), which includes Neo-Victorian Tropes of Trauma: The Politics of Bearing After-Witness to Nineteenth-Century Suffering (Rodopi, 2010) and Neo-Victorian Families; Gender, Sexuality and Cultural Politics (Rodopi, 2011), with Neo-Victorian Gothic: Horror, Violence, and Degeneration in the Re-Imagined Nineteenth Century forthcoming in 2012. Besides neo-Victorian Gothic, Mel is presently researching sexuality, Pre-Raphaelitism and the artist trope in neo-Victorian fiction, as well as bodily figuration in trauma narratives.