Dr Nik Taylor is Director of Teaching and Learning for the School of Arts and Humanities at the University of Huddersfield. He is co-editor of The Journal of Performance Magic. He has worked as a performer, writer, and director; numerous projects in the UK, Germany, and France including Discurs’96 and the Festival of Contemporary European Plays. He has designed for Performance City, FestCEP, and Sapajou, produced a low budget feature, and performed as a dancing penguin. As a research magician, he is coordinator of the Magic Research Group and has recently completed a research project on Performing Real Magic(K): The Conjurer and Audience in Bizarre Magick. He is currently writing a monograph examining the cultural history of performance magic. As a performer, Nik specializes in Bizarre Magic, Sideshow, Séance and Divination. Nik co-curates Mr Punch’s Cabinet of Curiosities, a dark museum of weird and haunted artefacts and is currently working on a short film capturing on the Victorian Parlour Séance. He recently advised on the Thackray Medical Museum’s “The Magic of Medicine” exhibition and Proper Job Theatre’s Nosferatu and performed in Hester Reeve’s YMEDACA at the Yorkshire Sculpture Park. He is a member of the International Brotherhood of Magicians and The British Society of Mystery Entertainers.