Joseph Laycock holds a Masters of Theological Studies from Harvard Divinity School and is now a doctoral candidate at Boston University. He is the author of several academic journal articles as well as the book Vampires Today: The Truth About Modern Vampirism. Laycock spent approximately two years doing ethnographic research with the Atlanta Vampire Alliance and has produced ground-breaking research on a community of self-identified vampires. He argues that so-called "real vampires" are neither mentally ill nor practicing a strange religion. Instead, they appear to be an identity group that we do not ready-made category for.