Johan Callens holds degrees from the University of Texas at Austin and the Vrije Universiteit Brussel, where he is a professor of English.  He has participated in an Erasmus exchange with the University of Kent at Canterbury and taught a doctoral seminar at the University of Zaragoza.  He is a CRB Fellow of the Belgian American Educational Foundation, a Salzburg Seminar Fellow, and as a Fulbright Fellow took part in a Traveling Summer Institute in American Studies for University Teachers devoted to 20th century American Literature, taking place at UCLA, Vanderbilt University, and the headquarters of USIA in Washington DC.  He was also a visiting scholar at the Mugar Memorial Library of Boston University.  He has served terms on the boards of the Belgian Luxembourg American Studies Association (as President) and the Belgian Association for Anglicists in Higher Education (as President & Vice-President) as well as sat on the boards of the American Theatre and Drama Society, the European Society for the Study of English and the European Association for American Studies.  In 2012-2013 he was a Fulbright Hays Research Scholar at the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center and in 2015 he ended a seven-year term serving on several expertpanels advising the Research Foundation Flanders, as member (2009), vice-chair (2010-2012) and chair (2013-2015).  He has published on American drama and performance, with contributions ranging from Eugene O'Neill and T.S. Eliot to Gertrude Stein and Jane Bowles, from The Builders Association and The Wooster Group to Big Art Group and Joji Inc.  He has been a member of the editorial and/or advisory boards of the Dramaturgies series published by the Presses Interuniversitaires Européennes-Peter Lang, the European Journal of American Culture, Miscelánea: Journal of English and American Studies, the Journal of American Drama and Theatre, the Journal of Contemporary Drama in English, and the theatre studies journal Documenta.  Essays of his have appeared, amongst others, inAmerican Studies/Amerikastudien, The Journal for Dramatic Theory and Criticism, Modern Drama, Theatre Research International, Text and Performance Quarterly, The Drama Review, Theatre Journal, PAJ: A Journal of Performance & Art, and the Yearbook of Research in English and American Literature.  Recent books of his areDis/Figuring Sam Shepard (2007), Crossings: David Mamet's Work in Different Genres and Media (2009), andDramaturgies in the New Millenium: Relationality, Performativity, and Potentiality (2014).

 Study of English