Project Team

CSAReps Project Team

Dr. Ailise Bulfin is a literary and cultural scholar whose research ranges from nineteenth-century to contemporary culture, focusing on cultural representations of major social issues and their reception. She has publications on child abuse, sexual violence, xenophobia, war, catastrophe and climate change, including the monograph, Gothic Invasions: Imperialism, War and Fin-de-Siècle Popular Fiction. She is Assistant Professor in Literature and the Medical Humanities in the School of English, Drama and Film, University College Dublin and PI of the European Research Council Starting Grant project entitled ‘Investigating Fictional Representations of Child Sexual Abuse in Contemporary Culture: Myths and Understanding (CSAReps)’ 2024-28. The project examines how child sexual abuse is represented in fictional works, such as novels, films, and television series, and investigates how these works affect readers and viewers, including survivors of abuse.

Caroline has a degree in Tourism Management, Diplomas in Business Studies, Event Management and Digital Marketing. She has many years of experience in administration, budget and financial management, managing social media platforms, relocation services both at home and abroad and in renewable energy and tourism sectors. Caroline co-ordinates the project calendar and organises all project meetings. She makes arrangements for project travel (for team members and collaborators). Caroline assists with all aspects of recruitment throughout the project. She also assists in the organization and storage of research data and outputs, including maintaining a file management system that is GDPR compliant in cases where personal data is processed. Caroline also assists with the organization of academic and public engagement events and project dissemination, including web site and social media communications and project-related report writing for media.

R. L. Victoria Pöhls has a background in philosophy, linguistics, literary studies (M.A. from University of Hamburg) and cognitive science (M.A. from UCD), which reflects her interest in studying narratives and their impact on audiences using both hermeneutic and empirical methods. To foster interdisciplinary collaboration at the frontiers of these disciplines, she co-founded the Powerful-Literary-Fiction-Texts-Network in 2019 and published the edited collection Powerful Prose. How Textual Features Impact Readers (2021). As a researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Empirical Aesthetics she focused on narratives’ (alleged) potential to counteract stereotypical expectancies about refugees. Since then, she has been working at the LitLab of TU Darmstadt, a laboratory that studies reading experiences with eye-tracking and psychophysiological measures (e.g., EDA, EEG, facial EMG). 

Giulia Scapin has a Bachelor’s degree in Psychology and Cognitive Sciences, a Master’s degree in Neuroscience, a specialization in technologies for education, and a first-hand experience in the publishing business. She is currently finishing her PhD dissertation in Empirical Literary Studies on the effects of literariness on empathy towards people living with depression. Her PhD is a joint degree between the Department of Communication Science at the VU Amsterdam and the University of Haifa (UH). She is part of the Empirical Study of Literature Network (ELIT, funded by the Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation program, N. 860516) and an active member of the International Society for the Empirical Study of Literature (IGEL).

Maria Olivia Susilo is a Research Assistant with the CSAReps Project. She holds a Bachelor’s degree in Psychology from Universitas Katolik Atma Jaya (BSD, Indonesia) and a Master’s in Applied Psychology (Positive and Coaching Psychology) from University College Cork.

Her interests lie at the intersection of psychology and the arts. Following secondary school, she founded Studio Djiwa, a mental health organisation that uses art to deliver mental health education to children and adolescents in Indonesia. The organisation has grown to over 100,000 Instagram followers and is supported by a team of more than 25 university student volunteers, with features in outlets including TEDx UAJ.

In Ireland, she has worked with a mental health startup providing ADHD assessment and aftercare services for children. She is also a recipient of the UCC Puttnam Scholarship, where she was a scriptwriter for a short film screened at the Cork International Film Festival.