Melanie Kreitler is postdoctoral researcher and MSCA fellow at Ghent University. Previsouly, she worked at the University of Giessen, Germany, at the Department of Anglophone Literary, Cultural, and Media Studies. Her research interests are in the intersections of cognitive and cultural approaches to film, television, and videogames, and critical approaches to empathy afforded through narrative fiction. She is the author of Mental Illness and Narrative Complexity: An Experiential Approach to Puzzle Films and Complex Television (Edinburgh University Press, 2025) and co-editor of the volume Diversity Issues in the USA (with Greta Olson, transcript, 2024) and the special issues “Illness, Narrated” (with with Silvia Boide, Benjamin Brendel, and Maaike Hommes, On_Culture, 2021), “Queer Politics in Media and Legal Cultures” (with Laura Borchert, Amerikastudien/American Studies, 2024), and “Mental TV” (with Marta Lopera-Mármol, Series, 2025).