MoMA R&D

Video Contributors

MoMA Research & Development was established with the goal of exploring the potential and responsibility of museums – MoMA in particular – as public actors, with the vision of establishing our institutions as the R&D departments of society. Part of this initiative is a series of intimate salons that tackle themes relevant both within and beyond the museum walls, and whose goal it is to generate a lively discussion that will not only inform the museums and its program, but also the wider conversation in the world outside. To do justice to this ambitious goal, we invite experts from fields as diverse as science, philosophy, literature, music, film, journalism, and politics to contribute their perspective to the issue at stake.

  • #EatTogether

    S27: Gastrodiplomacy

    EatTogether is a concept developed by President’s Choice® (PC), a Canadian brand which includes a wide range of grocery and household products. Developed in the mid-80s their idea has been to provide unique high quality products to Canadians. President’s Choice® (PC) developed #EatTogether to celebrate joining communities, friends, and families for a simple meal that sparks the values of healthy eating and togetherness.

  • Mohammed Ahmed & Syed Khalid Wasim

    S39: The Store and the Street

    Mohammed Ahmed and Syed Khalid Wasim, who goes by Ali, are the respective founder and assistant manager of Casa Magazines. Stocking some 2,000 titles, the West Village storefront has remained a stalwart of print magazine culture in New York City since Ahmed purchased the space in 1994. Still open today, Casa Magazines continues its tradition of supporting physical magazines, as well as the convivial spirit of the neighborhood.

  • Sarah Andelman

    S39: The Store and the Street

    Sarah Andelman was the co-founder and creative director of the boutique Colette, alongside her mother Colette Roussaux, after whom the store is named. Colette was a Parisian concept store located on the city’s Rue Saint Honoré from 1997-2017. Drawn to an eclectic mix of high fashion and edgy streetwear, Andelman regularly showcased designs from up-and-coming designers, and was one of the first to stock collections by Proenza Schouler, Mary Katrantzou, and Rodarte. Colette has since inspired cult concept stores around the world. Andelman recently launched consulting and curating company Just An Idea, connecting people from various disciplines.

  • David J. Anderson

    S34: Anger

    David J. Anderson, Ph.D., is Seymour Benzer Professor of Biology at the California Institute of Technology where he has been on the faculty since 1986. Dr. Anderson is also an Investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. Anderson’s research has focused on the neural circuits underlying innate behaviors that are associated with emotional states, including defensive behaviors and inter-male aggression.

  • Brock Bastian

    S26: Friction

    Brock Bastian is an Associate Professor in the School of Psychological Sciences at the University of Melbourne. He is trained as a social psychologist and his research broadly focuses on the topics of ethics and well-being, often focusing on questions such as why promoting happiness may have a downside, the cultural factors leading to depression, and why valuing our negative and painful experiences in life is a critical pathway to achieving happiness. His work has been featured in outlets such as The Economist, The New Yorker, TIME, New Scientist, Scientific American, Harvard Business Review, and The Huffington Post, among many others. He has been the recipient of the Wegner Theoretical Innovation Prize, and his contribution to psychology has been recognized by the Australian Psychological Society and Society of Australasian Social Psychologists early career researcher awards. His first book, The Other Side of Happiness, was published in January 2018.

  • Danielle Belgrave

    S24: AI - Artificial Imperfection

    Danielle Belgrave is a machine learning researcher in the Healthcare Research Group at Microsoft Research, in Cambridge (UK). Her research focuses on integrating medical domain knowledge to develop statistical machine learning models to understand disease progression and heterogeneity. She obtained a BSc in Mathematics and Statistics from London School of Economics, an MSc in Statistics from University College London and a PhD in the area of machine learning in health applications from the University of Manchester. Prior to joining Microsoft, she was a Medical Research Council Fellow at Imperial College London.

  • Homi K. Bhabha

    S30: White Male

    Homi K. Bhabha is the Anne F. Rothenberg Professor of the Humanities and Director of the Mahindra Humanities Center at Harvard University. He is also Senior Advisor on the Humanities to the University President and Provost. A prominent literary and cultural critic, Homi is the author of numerous works exploring colonial and postcolonial theory, cultural change and power, and cosmopolitanism, among other themes. Born in Bombay, Homi was educated and taught in British universities, before moving to the University of Chicago and ultimately Harvard. Developing the work of psychoanalytic and post-structuralist thinkers, Homi has been a profoundly original voice in the study of globalized cultures.

  • Tim Birkhead

    S45: Egg

    Tim Birkhead is a zoologist whose research focuses on populations of birds and their reproduction. Tim has made important contributions to the field of behavioural ecology—the study of how animal behaviour evolves under the influence of environmental pressures. He also studies the competitive actions of male birds’ sperm.He showed that extrapair paternity—where the offspring raised by a pair are the result of the female mating with an outsider male — is common amongst birds. Tim also demonstrated the existence of ‘guarding techniques’, which are carried out by the male bird in a pair. In studies of the zebra finch, he revealed that the sperm of the last male to mate with a female took precedence for fertilising her eggs. Tim is the author of Bird Sense: What it’s Like to be a Bird (2012), a popular science book that discusses life as a bird and was shortlisted for the Royal Society’s Winton Prize for Science Books in 2013. His TED talk, The Early Birdwatchers, has received over 100,000 views.

  • Sara Bodinson

    S25: Why Words Matter

    Sara Bodinson is Director, Interpretation, Research & Digital Learning at The Museum of Modern Art. She joined the Museum in 2000, coordinating internships for college and graduate students as well as programs and web initiatives for teens. In 2009, she began to oversee the Museum’s interpretive planning process and the development of resources including labels, audio, apps, games, and participatory spaces, as well as qualitative visitor research and evaluation. In 2015, her responsibilities expanded to oversee digital learning initiatives, including online courses and podcasts. Bodinson holds a BA in art history and film studies from Smith College and an MA in art history from Hunter College, where she wrote her thesis about the Arab Image Foundation. She is a member of the executive committee of the Professional Organization of Women in the Arts and the Smith College Museum of Art Visiting Committee.

  • Yarimar Bonilla

    S29: Dependency

    Yarimar Bonilla is Associate Professor, Anthropology and Caribbean Studies at Rutgers University. An accomplished scholar and a prominent public intellectual, Yarimar is a leading voice on questions of Caribbean and Latinx politics. Her second book project American Disaster — for which she was named a 2018 Carnegie Fellow — examines the politics of recovery in Puerto Rico after hurricane Maria and the forms of political and social trauma that the storm revealed. She is developing a multi-media political atlas of the Caribbean entitled, Visualizing Sovereignty and is a principal collaborator in the #PuertoRicoSyllabus project. She has been the recipient of multiple grants and awards from the National Science Foundation, the Wenner Gren Foundation, the Carnegie Foundation, the Russell Sage Foundation, the Chateaubriand Fellowship Program, the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, the Carter G. Woodson Institute for Afro-American and African Studies at the University of Virginia, and the W.E.B. Dubois Institute at Harvard University. She is currently Section Editor of Public Anthropologies for the journal American Anthropologist, and serves on the editorial committee for Small Axe: A Caribbean Platform for Criticism.

  • Gregg Bordowitz

    S34: Anger

    Gregg Bordowitz is an artist and writer, currently a professor and director of the Low-Residency MFA program at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Bordowitz was an early participant in New York’s ACT UP (AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power), where he co-founded various video collectives, including Testing the Limits, an advocacy group within ACT UP, and DIVA (Damn Interfering Video Activists).

  • James Boyle

    S38: IP: Imperious Property

    James Boyle is William Neal Reynolds Professor of Law at Duke Law School and founder of the Center for the Study of the Public Domain. He was one of the founding board members of Creative Commons, which works to facilitate the free availability of art, scholarship, and cultural materials by developing innovative, machine-readable licenses that individuals and institutions can attach to their work.

  • Hillary Brenhouse

    S23: On Protest

    Hillary Brenhouse is a Montreal-born writer focused on women, religion and culture, and alternative living arrangements. She is also the co-editor-in-chief of Guernica, a magazine of global art and politics, and curates its special themed issues. She is also a senior editor for The Guardian. She’s published in The New Yorker online, The Oxford American, TIME, the New York Times, and elsewhere. And she’s edited for The Guardian, Topic, and The Nation, among others. She edits nonfiction manuscripts on a freelance basis, too.

  • Kerry Brodie

    S27: Gastrodiplomacy

    Kerry Brodie is the Founder and Executive Director of Emma’s Torch. Founded in 2016, Emma’s Torch provides refugees with culinary training, ESL classes and interview preparation, setting them up for successful employment in an industry in which their cultural heritage and cuisine can be celebrated. Kerry is a graduate of the Institute of Culinary Education, where she won the Wusthof Award for Leadership and was named ACCSC Graduate of the Year. She holds a Masters in Government from Johns Hopkins University and a Bachelors in Near Eastern Studies from Princeton University. She was named one of City & State’s 40 Under 40 in 2018.

  • Andrew Brown

    S29: Dependency

    Andrew Brown is Associate Director of Research at the Van Alen Institute in New York. A researcher trained in empirical analysis of programs and public policy, Andrew oversees projects that explore the relationship between mental well-being and cities, and develops workshops that convene stakeholders to design strategies to urgent problems. In 2017, Andrew coordinated a workshop on potential mental health impacts of the impending shutdown of one of New York’s busiest subway lines, convening academic institutions, public health professionals, issue advocacy groups, community boards and other organizations of concerned citizens. Insights from the workshop were worked into a health impact assessment conducted by students at Cornell University, which provided recommendations for addressing health concerns during the subway disruption. Andrew received his Master of Public Administration from the Robert F. Wagner School of Public Service at New York University.

  • Afua Bruce

    S40: The Third Web

    Afua Bruce is a leading public interest technologist who has spent her career working at the intersection of technology, policy, and society. She has worked in and across the government, non-profit, private, and academic sectors. Along with Amy Sample Ward, she is the co-author of the recently released book, The Tech That Comes Next: How Changemakers, Philanthropists, and Technologists Can Build an Equitable World.

  • D. Graham Burnett

    S46: Scale

    Born in France, based in New York City, D. Graham Burnett trained in the History and Philosophy of Science at Cambridge University and teaches at Princeton. He works at the intersection of historical inquiry and artistic practice, and his writing and collaborations focus on experimental/experiential approaches to textual material, pedagogical modes, and hermeneutic activities traditionally associated with the research humanities. Recent projects include THE THIRD, MEANING at the Frye Art Museum (Seattle, WA).

  • Susan Burton

    S28: Angels

    Susan Burton is the Founder and Executive Director of A New Way of Life Reentry Project, an award-winning organization that has transformed the lives of more than one thousand formerly incarcerated women. Her memoir, Becoming Ms. Burton: From Prison to Recovery to Leading the Fight for Incarcerated Women (2017), included a foreword by Michelle Alexander, was the winner of an NAACP Image Award, and was named a “Best Book of 2017” by the Chicago Public Library. Susan has received the Citizen Activist Award from the Harvard University Kennedy School of Government (2010), and was named a CNN Hero (2010) and a Purpose Prize winner (2012). Most recently she was chosen by the National Women’s History Project as one of its honorees for Women’s History Month in the United States (2018).

  • Ben Carrington

    S44: Team Sports

    Ben Carrington is widely regarded as one of the world’s leading authorities on the sociology of race, politics and popular culture. Prior to joining USC Annenberg, Carrington taught in the Department of Sociology at the University of Texas at Austin for 13 years, and before that he worked at the University of Brighton in England. He is also a visiting Carnegie research fellow at Leeds Beckett University. Outside of USC Annenberg, Carrington holds courtesy appointments with USC’s Department of Sociology and the Department of American Studies and Ethnicity.

  • Dipesh Chakrabarty

    S46: Scale

    Dipesh Chakrabarty holds a BSc (physics honors) degree from Presidency College, University of Calcutta, a postgraduate Diploma in management (considered equivalent to MBA) from the Indian Institute of Management, Calcutta, and a PhD (history) from the Australian National University. He is currently the Lawrence A. Kimpton Distinguished Service Professor in History, South Asian Languages and Civilizations, and the College at the University of Chicago. He is the Faculty Director of the University of Chicago Center in Delhi, a faculty fellow of the Chicago Center for Contemporary Theory, an associate of the Departments of English, Comparative Literature, and Cinema and Media Studies, and, by courtesy, a faculty member in the Law School.He is a founding member of the editorial collective of Subaltern Studies, a consulting editor of Critical Inquiry, and a founding editor of Postcolonial Studies. He has also served on the editorial boards of the American Historical Review and Public Culture.

  • Chow and Lin

    S45: Egg

    The crux of Chow and Lin’s practice lies in their methodology of statistical, mathematical, and computational techniques to address global issues since 2010. Chow and Lin’s projects are driven by the discursive backgrounds in economics, public policy, media, and these are further augmented by enduring exchanges with specialists from those fields. Their projects have been exhibited at Arles Les Rencontres De La Photographie, Art Museum of Guangzhou Academy of Fine Art, Venice Arte Laguna, Houston FotoFest Biennial, National University of Singapore Museum and were invited to present at the United Nations Conference Centre in Bangkok. Their works are in the permanent collections of Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) and China Central Academy of Fine Arts Museum. They are authors of The Poverty Line (published by Actes Sud and Lars Müller Publishers, 2021) which is in the collections of the MoMA library and Centre Pompidou Bibliothèque publique d'information. Stefen Chow and Huiyi Lin currently reside in Beijing, China.

  • Amander Clark

    S45: Egg

    Amander Clark PhD is a stem cell scientist, geneticist and developmental biologist who is internationally recognized for her work on the germline and in vitro gametogenesis. Professor Clark has authored over one hundred research articles, and is regularly invited to speak on the use of stem cells to understand fertility and infertility. Professor Clark’s work has been recognized by Awards from the International Society for Stem Cell Research, STOP Cancer, the Lance Armstrong Foundation, and the Concern Foundation. More recently, she was awarded the prestigious Founders Medal from the Australian and New Zealand Society for Reproductive Biology, and was selected to serve on the National Academies of Science Engineering and Medicine Board of Health Sciences Policy. Professor Clark was recruited to UCLA in 2006, awarded tenure in 2012 and advanced to Full Professor in 2015. From 2017, Professor Clark served as Department Chair of the UCLA Department of Molecular Cell and Developmental Biology and is currently the inaugural Director of the UCLA Center for Reproductive Science, Health and Education. As of July 2023, Professor Clark advances to President of the International Society for Stem Cell Research, a global non-profit that promotes excellence in stem cell science and applications to human health.

  • Revital Cohen

    S35: Dogs

    Revital Cohen is a designer and researcher. She develops critical objects and provocative scenarios exploring the juxtaposition of the natural with the artificial. Her work spans across various media and includes collaborations with scientists, animal breeders and medical consultants.

  • MJ Corey

    S41: Performance in Reality

    MJ Corey is a Brooklyn-based psychotherapist and writer. She earned graduate degrees in Creative Nonfiction and Counseling Psychology from Columbia University in 2014 and 2016, respectively. She is best known for authoring Kardashian Kolloquium on TikTok and Instagram, where she applies media theory and postmodern frameworks to the Kardashian family. Her Kar-Jenner culture writing has been featured by Refinery29, Paper Magazine, and The New Yorker, among many others. She also maintains a recap column about the family’s reality show with Vogue Magazine, and a personal substack called “DeKonstructing the Kardashians.” mj has been interviewed by Vulture, NPR, The Daily Dot, The Hollywood Reporter, Slate, Nylon, i-D, Polyester Zine, ABC Radio Sydney, and Rolling Stone, and she has spoken about her academic approach to pop culture at Parsons School of Design, George Washington University, and University of Pennsylvania. In addition to her Kardashian work, she collaborates on a blog called Infinity of Lists with her friend Nimay Ndolo, and a web series called Between Two Salads with her sister, Marie.

  • Hilary Cottam

    S36: Renaissance or Revolution?

    Hilary Cottam is a social entrepreneur working with communities and governments around the world to design collaborative, affordable solutions to big social challenges, with an emphasis on human relationships supported by technology. Hilary’s current work focuses on the need for a “fifth social revolution” to enable widespread flourishing in this century as work, society and our economies go through deep structural change.

  • Maureen Craig

    S30: White Male

    Maureen Craig is Assistant Professor of Psychology at New York University. Her work focuses on understanding social and political attitudes among members of different social groups (e.g., groups based on race, gender, sexuality) from dual perspectives: those of traditionally-stigmatized groups as well as societally-dominant groups. For example, some of her research explores the conditions under which members of one stigmatized group perceive other stigmatized groups as potential allies, as potential competitors, or as any other outgroup. Another line of work examines how exposure to information about diversity affects majority and minority group members’ intergroup attitudes, social categorization, and political attitudes. She also has interests in how category and feature-based stereotyping may operate independently or in combination to affect downstream judgments of other people.

  • Kade Crockford

    S35: Dogs

    Kade Crockford is the Director of the Technology for Liberty Program at the ACLU of Massachusetts. Crockford works to protect and expand core First and Fourth Amendment rights and civil liberties in the digital 21st century, focusing on how systems of surveillance and control impact not just the society in general but their primary targets—people of color, Muslims, immigrants, and dissidents.

  • Dapper Dan

    S38: IP: Imperious Property

    Dapper Dan is a Harlem couturier known as the “king of knock-offs.” He made his name in the late ’80s and ’90s as the tailor who provided rap culture with its signature style, reworking traditional luxury-house products to outfit a slew of emerging hip-hop stars, athletes and gamblers. His work was included in the MoMA exhibition ITEMS: Is Fashion Modern? In 2017.

  • Maneesha Deckha

    S35: Dogs

    Maneesha Deckha is Professor and Lansdowne Chair in Law at the University of Victoria. Her research interests include critical animal studies, animal law, critical food studies, postcolonial theory, feminist theory, health law, and reproductive law and policy.

  • Simon Denny

    S46: Scale

    Simon Denny was born in 1982 in Auckland, New Zealand and now lives and works in Berlin. He makes exhibitions and projects that unpack the stories technologists tell us about the world using a variety of media including installation, sculpture, print, painting, video, and NFTs. Denny studied at the Elam School of Fine Arts, University of Auckland and at the Städelschule, Frankfurt. In 2023, the Kunstverein Hannover and the Frans Masereel Centrum in Kasterlee, Belgium will exhibit his Metaverse Landscape paintings.

  • Prajna Desai

    S31: Workspheres

    Prajna Desai is an art historian, poet, and independent curator. She writes about visual politics, print culture, and built form at the intersection of cultural history and histories of science. She has a Masters in English Literature from the University of Mumbai and a PhD in History of Art and Architecture from Yale University. Currently the Asia Research Fellow in the global research initiative at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, she was previously Visiting Professor at Stern College for Women, New York; College of Staten Island, CUNY, New York; University of Southern California, Los Angeles. Her writing has appeared in a number of publications including Artforum, Frieze, Aperture, Art India, Guernica, and Open Democracy. She has led self-initiated curatorial projects across various media at Project 88, Mumbai (2013, 2016, 2017); Delfina Foundation London (2014) Dharavi Biennale, Mumbai (2014-15), and Focus Photography Festival (2017).

  • Karthik Dinakar

    S25: Why Words Matter

    Karthik Dinakar is a research scientist and Reid Hoffman Fellow at MIT who started the Applied Machine Learning and the Cambridge Computational Clinical Psychology Org interest groups at MIT and Harvard. He is interested in large scale bayesian data science - scalable machine learning, probabilistic graphical models, human-in-the-loop computation and fail-soft computing. Before his work at MIT he ‘machine learnified’ large scale query-entity relationships for the Bing search engine’s knowledge graph Satori. He has previously held positions at Deustche Bank and at Yahoo R&D, where he worked with a team on the Enthusiast Platform. At Carnegie Mellon University he studied human-computer interaction and machine learning.

  • Olafur Eliasson

    S46: Scale

    The works of artist Olafur Eliasson explore the relevance of art in the world at large. Born in 1967, Eliasson grew up in Iceland and Denmark, where he studied from 1989 to 1995 at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts. In 1995, he moved to Berlin and founded Studio Olafur Eliasson, which today comprises a large team of craftsmen, architects, archivists, researchers, administrators, cooks, programmers, art historians, and specialised technicians.

  • Brenda Elsey

    S44: Team Sports

    Brenda Elsey is an American historian commonly known for researching about topics of History of Latin America such as politics, football or gender roles. Since 2008, she has been the co-director of the Latin American and Caribbean Studies program at Hofstra University.

  • Marit Gundersen Engeset

    S26: Friction

    Marit Gundersen Engeset is Associate Professor, School of Business, Department of Business, Strategy and Political Sciences Campus Kongsberg, The University of South-Eastern Norway. Her research interests are in consumer behavior, focusing on consumer value and consumer creativity. She has had several research projects focusing on the tourism in cooperation with travel companies in Norway and Canada.

  • Dragan Espenschied

    S43: Traces

    Dragan Espenschied is Preservation Director at Rhizome, stewarding ArtBase, a collection of more than 2200 works of digital art and net art. With a background in net activism, net art, and electronic music, Espenschied’s activities as a conservator are mostly focused on infrastructure and field-wide action concerning web archiving, emulation, and linked open data, rather than singular artworks.

  • Domenic Esposito

    S29: Dependency

    Domenic Esposito is a visual artist and activist who has gained recent attention for his Purdue Spoon (2018) sculptural protest work. In June 2018 the artist and his gallerist Fernando Luis Alvarez delivered an 800-pound “heroin” spoon outside the headquarters of Purdue Pharma, the makers of OxyContin. The intervention followed public outrage amidst the opioid crisis and the role of the Sackler family, as well as Dominic’s personal experience of his brother’s struggle with heroin addiction.

  • Teman Evans

    S45: Egg

    Teman Evans is global head of design at General Mills and a faculty member of Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design, where he teaches courses in design thinking, branding, and strategic innovation. Prior to this, he was the global director of brand design and customer experience design at PepsiCo. Previously, Evans was vice president of branding and strategy at Foote, Cone, and Belding and worked with architects David Rockwell in New York and Rem Koolhaas in Europe and Asia, where he created innovation strategies for global brands from Prada to the Beijing Olympics. Teman also co-founded DIOSCURI design and brand consulting agency, where he was chief creative officer.

  • Extinction Rebellion

    S34: Anger

    Extinction Rebellion is an international movement that uses non-violent civil disobedience in an attempt to halt mass extinction and minimize the risk of social collapse. Its vision is a politics of kindness rendered consistently and unapologetically. Its vision depends on values that are the most ordinary and therefore the most precious: human decency, dignity, responsibility, fairness, duty, honesty, morality and care. With Citizens’ Assemblies, it believes that when people are given good information, they make good decisions.

  • Mark Fettes

    S25: Why Words Matter

    Mark Fettes is Associate Professor, Faculty of Education and Associate Director, Imaginative Education Research Group (IERG). He is also the President of the World Esperanto Association, an organization that works to promote the Esperanto language while also stimulating discussion of the world language problem and to call attention to the necessity of equality among languages. He has previously worked with First Nations organizations around issues of language maintenance and revitalization. This in turn is related to his long-term interest in cultural diversity and intercultural communication, and particularly the management of multilingualism in a globalized world.

  • Willem Frankenhuis

    S26: Friction

    Willem Frankenhuis is Associate Professor of Developmental Psychology, Behavioural Science Institute at Radboud University, The Netherlands. He studies how individuals tailor their cognition and behavior to local environmental conditions. His core activity is the development of a research program designed to discover and leverage the social-cognitive skills and abilities that might be enhanced in harsh and unpredictable environments. He has previously held research positions the Central European University, Budapest, Hungary and was the co-director for the Research Network on Adaptations to Childhood Stress (with support from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation).

  • Ulrich Furbach

    S24: AI - Artificial Imperfection

    Ulrich Furbach is a retired Professor of Artificial Intelligence at the University of Koblenz and Adjunct Professor at Vellore Institute of Technology in India. He is co-owner of wizAI solutions GmbH. His research interests include knowledge management, automated reasoning, multiagent systems, and cognitive science. Ulrich obtained his Diploma and Habilitation in informatics from the Technical University of Munich and his PhD from the University of Bundeswehr. He directed the Automated Reasoning Group at the TU Munich from 1987 to 1990 and the Institute for Knowledge Media in Koblenz from 2000 to 2003. He was president of CADE Inc., he was a board member of the European Coordinating Committee for Artificial Intelligence and he was speaker of the German AI Society. He is co-founder and owner of the spin-off company wizAI (www.wizai.com), which develops knowledge management systems, information systems and solutions for digital signage.

  • Sergio Galaz-García

    S44: Team Sports

    Sergio Galaz-García is a Juan de la Cierva postdoctoral fellow in the Social Sciences Department at Universidad Carlos III de Madrid (UC3M) and a member of the Juan March Institute for social research. He received his PhD in Sociology from Princeton University. Prior to joining UC3M, he held visiting professor and postdoctoral fellowships at Collegio Carlo Alberto, the Centro de Investigación y Docencia Económicas (CIDE), in Mexico City, and the University of Lisbon. Before finishing his Ph.D., he studied a Masters in Architecture at MIT and a BA in Political Science at Centro de Investigación y Docencia Económicas (CIDE) in Mexico City.

  • Beth Gardiner

    S37: Breath

    Beth Gardiner is a journalist and author of Choked: The Age of Air Pollution and the Fight for a Cleaner Future. She was awarded grants from both the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting and the Society of Environmental Journalists to complete the project. Over the course of her more than 20-year career, Gardiner’s work has been published in the New York Times, the Guardian, National Geographic and the Washington Post, and she has appeared on the BBC, Sky News, ITV.

  • Katherine Gibson

    S41: Performance in Reality

    Katherine Gibson is internationally known for her research on rethinking economies as sites of ethical action. She trained as a human geographer with expertise in political economy and, with her collaborator for over 30 years, the late Professor Julie Graham, developed a distinctive approach to economic geography drawing on feminism, post-structuralism and action research. The diverse economies research program they initiated has become a vibrant sub-field of study within the social sciences. In the late 1990s the collective authorial voice of J.K. Gibson-Graham led the critique of capitalocentric thinking that was blocking the emergence of economic possibility.

  • Lori Gruen

    S35: Dogs

    Lori Gruen is the William Griffin Professor of Philosophy at Wesleyan University where she coordinates Wesleyan Animal Studies. She is also Professor of Feminist, Gender and Sexuality Studies and Science in Society. Her research lies at the intersection of ethical theory, political philosophy, and social practice.

  • Guerrilla Girls

    S23: On Protest

    The Guerrilla Girls are feminist activist artists. They wear gorilla masks in public and use facts, humor and outrageous visuals to expose gender and ethnic bias as well as corruption in politics, art, film, and pop culture. Their anonymity keeps the focus on the issues, and away from who they might be: they could be anyone and they are everywhere. They believe in an intersectional feminism that fights discrimination and supports human rights for all people and all genders. They undermine the idea of a mainstream narrative by revealing the understory, the subtext, the overlooked, and the downright unfair. They have done hundreds of projects (posters, actions, books, videos, stickers) all over the world. They also do interventions and exhibitions at museums, blasting them on their own walls for their bad behavior and discriminatory practices, including their 2015 stealth projection on the façade of the Whitney Museum about income inequality and the super rich hijacking art.

  • HAIR CLUB

    S33: Hair

    HAIR CLUB is a collaborative, research-based initiative exploring the multivalent subject of Hair in our wider culture. HAIR CLUB was founded by three graduate students at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago: Suzanne Gold, Kelly Lloyd, and Michal Lynn Shumate.

  • Lawrence Abu Hamdan

    S43: Traces

    Lawrence Abu Hamdan is a Private Ear, listening to, with and on behalf of people affected by corporate, state, and environmental violence. Abu Hamdan’s work has been presented in the form of forensic reports, lectures and live performances, films, publications, and exhibitions all over the world. He received his PhD in 2017 and has held fellowships and professorships at the University of Chicago, the New School, New York and most recently at the Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz where he developed his research. Abu Hamdan’s audio investigations have been used as evidence at the UK Asylum and Immigration Tribunal and been a key part of advocacy campaigns for organisations such as Amnesty International, Defence for Children International and Forensic Architecture. His projects that reflect on the political and cultural context of sound and listening have been presented at the 22nd Biennale of Sydney, the 58th Venice Biennale, the 11th Gwangju Biennale, the 13th and 14th Sharjah Biennial, Witte De With, Rotterdam, Tate Modern Tanks, Chisenhale Gallery, Hammer Museum L.A and the Portikus Frankfurt. These works are part of collections at Reina Sofia, MoMA, Guggenheim, Hamburger Bahnhof, Van AbbeMuseum, Centre Pompidou and Tate Modern.

  • Dorita Hannah

    S41: Performance in Reality

    Dorita Hannah is an architect and trans-disciplinary performance practitioner/scholar who focuses on spatial performativity and performance design with an expertise in contemporary cultural environments: researching the dynamics and fabrications of theatre architecture and urban scenography. She collaborates with artists, designers and cultural organisations to co-conceive, design and direct events, installations, exhibits, objects and constructed environments. Hannah also focuses on postgraduate research centred on performance practices and socio-political design, principally through the concept of ‘event-space’: demonstrating via design work and scholarly publications that the built environment housing an event or performance is itself an event and an integral driver of experience. Her formulation of Performance Design led a global change in thinking and practice around performing arts design specifically as well as design performativity generally.

  • Michael Hardt

    S23: On Protest

    Michael Hardt is an American philosopher and a Professor of Literature at Duke University. His writings explore the new forms of domination in the contemporary world as well as the social movements and other forces of liberation that resist them. In the Empire trilogy – Empire (2000), Multitude (2004), and Commonwealth (2009) – he and Antonio Negri investigate the political, legal, economic, and social aspects of globalization. They also study the political and economic alternatives that could lead to a more democratic world. Their pamphlet Declaration (2012) attempts to articulate the significance of the encampments and occupations that began in 2011, from Tahrir Square to Zuccotti Park, and to recognize the primary challenges faced by emerging democratic social movements today.

  • Hawa Hassan

    S27: Gastrodiplomacy

    Hawa Hassan is the Founder and CEO of Basbaas, a unique line of Somali hot sauces and chutneys available in the U.S. Born in Mogadishu, Somalia, Hawa escaped the civil war by going with her mother and four siblings to a U.N. refugee camp in Kenya. After a year in the camp, her mother was eventually able to get an apartment and launch a small business. When Hawa turned seven, her mother seized an opportunity to send her to Seattle, Washington, to live with a family friend. It would be fifteen years before they saw each other again. When they eventually reunited, the two rediscovered their shared love of cooking. Basbaas reflects Hawa’s personal passion for her culture and her entrepreneurial streak. And of course, it’s an homage to her mother.

  • Katja Heitmann

    S43: Traces

    Katja Heitmann investigates in her visual-choreographic work what moves humankind in the current era. Katja Heitmann’s choreographic work consists of extreme aesthetics, in sharp contrast to human fallibility. Her minimalistic and minutely designed imagery confronts viewers with a frantic flood of insights. This distinct, perceptible tension returns in all her work. As a choreographic sculptor, Katja is constantly searching for the core of her material. By means of radical concepts and well-considered forms of performance, she strips her artistic material of any noise. Only that what really matters is shown with astonishing sharpness. In every detail of her work lies the grand gesture. Katja Heitmann wants to move her audience. Through her work she constantly seeks interaction with society, with the city, with people. The universal character of her work makes it possible for anyone who wants to find their own entrance to the work. Katja Heitmann creates unique performance installations and theatrical exhibitions that appeal to an astonishingly varied audience and regularly brings them to tears. In 2016 Katja was awarded the Prize of the Dutch Dance Festival. In 2020 she was honoured with the prestigious Gieskes Strijbis Podium-award.

  • Pablo Helguera

    S23: On Protest

    Pablo Helguera has been Director of Adult and Education Programs at The Museum of Modern Art since 2007. Previously, he was Senior Manager of Adult Programs at The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum (1998–2005), and Manager of Public Programs at The Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago (1996–98), among other positions. Over the course of a 20-year career in museums, Helguera has conceptualized or directed more than 700 public programs for over 150 exhibitions. As an artist, Helguera has exhibited and performed widely in international museums and biennials. He has received a Guggenheim Fellowship, Creative Capital and Franklin Furnace grants, and was the first recipient of the International Award of Participatory Art of the Emilia Romagna Region in Italy (2011). He obtained his PhD from Kingston University, London, where he has been visiting professor since 2004.

  • Stefan Helmreich

    S43: Traces

    Stefan Helmreich is an anthropologist who studies how scientists in oceanography, biology, acoustics, and computer science define and theorize their objects of study, particularly as these objects — waves, life, sound, code — reach their conceptual limits. A Book of Waves (Duke University Press, 2023) details how scientists at sea and in the lab monitor and model ocean waves, seeking to capture in technical language these forces of nature at once periodic and irreversible, wild and pacific, ephemeral and eternal. The book includes reflections on waves in mythology, surf culture, feminist and queer theory, film, Indigenous Pacific activisms, Black Atlantic history, and cosmology. Helmreich’s previous ethnography, Alien Ocean: Anthropological Voyages in Microbial Seas (University of California Press, 2009), is a study of marine biologists working in realms usually out of sight and reach: the microscopic world, the deep sea, and oceans outside national sovereignty.

  • Yasmin Hernandez

    S23: On Protest

    Yasmin Hernandez is a Brooklyn-born and Puerto Rico-based artist and writer whose work is rooted in individual and collective liberation practices. Yasmin studied art at Cornell University and served as an artist educator with Taller Puertorriqueño, Philadelphia; El Museo del Barrio, East Harlem; Studio Museum, Harlem. She has also taught art to Pre K-12th grade students in Aguadilla. In 2017 she was invited to exhibit as part of Occupy Museum’s Debt Fair installation at The Whitney Biennial, with a segment focused on the Puerto Rico debt crisis. She has subsequently used her art in aid efforts following the twin hurricanes of Irma and María.

  • Dafna Hirsch

    S27: Gastrodiplomacy

    Dafna Hirsch is a Professor of Sociology at the Open University of Israel. An expert on Jewish society and culture in Mandate Palestine, her research includes aspects of culture from everyday life in addition to cultural theory, food studies, gender and ethnic relations, racism and racial thought, and historical anthropology. Additionally, she is the author of ‘Hummus: The making of an Israeli culinary cult.’

  • Arthur Huang

    S32: Plastics

    Arthur Huang is the founder and CEO of Miniwiz, a company dedicated to upcycling and consumer trash and industrial waste reuse innovation. With a background as a structural engineer and an architect, he is an innovator of loop economy building material solutions. Under Arthur’s leadership, Miniwiz has been awarded the Financial Times’ Earth Award (2010), The Wall Street Journal’s Asian Innovation Award (2011), and the Technology Pioneers title by the World Economic Forum (2015). Personally, Arthur has been named Emerging Explorer, National Geographic (2016); Technology Pioneer, World Economic Forum (2015); IDEA GOLD Award, Chicago (2013); Mayor Bloomberg’s New York Venture Fellowship, New York (2012); Wall Street Journal Innovation Award, Hong Kong (2011); 40 under 40 Design Talent Award, Perspective, Asia (2011), amongst others. Arthur holds a B.A., Architecture from Cornell University and an M.A., Architecture from Harvard University, Graduate School of Design.

  • Mike Hulme

    S46: Scale

    Mike Hulme is Professor of Human Geography in the Department of Geography at the University of Cambridge, UK, and Fellow of Pembroke College. The focus of his research career has been the analysis and explanation of the idea of climate change and his work has been published extensively across the natural sciences, social sciences, and humanities. He is the author of nine books on climate change, including Contemporary Climate Change Debates: A Student Primer (Routledge, 2020). From 2000 to 2007 he was Founding Director of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research, based at the University of East Anglia.

  • Keith Humphreys

    S29: Dependency

    Keith Humphreys is the Esther Ting Memorial Professor, Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University. A member of the Wu Tsai Neurosciences Institute at Stanford University, he is also a CIGH Fellow at the Stanford Center for Innovation in Global Health, and an affiliated faculty member at Stanford Law School. He has formerly held positions Acting Director, VA Center for Health Care Evaluation (2010 - 2011), Senior Policy Advisor, White House Office of National Drug Control Policy (2009 - 2010), Chairman, Faculty Advisory Committee, Stanford Health Policy Forum (2007 - Present), Affiliate, Center for Health Policy, Stanford University (2003 - Present), and Director, VA Program Evaluation and Resource Center (2001 - 2009). His honors include Distinguished Contribution to the Public Interest, American Psychological Association (2009); Honorary Member, Psychiatry Journal Club, Ibn Rushd Hospital, Baghdad (2008); Public Health Book of the Year, British Medical Association (2010); Honorary Professor of Psychiatry, Institute of Psychiatry at the Maudsley, King’s College London (2009-).

  • INFRINGE

    S33: Hair

    INFRINGE is a platform dedicated to hair culture. Created by Anthony and Pat Mascolo, INFRINGE explores the world of hair across creative disciplines.

  • Aki Inomata

    S35: Dogs

    Aki Inomata is an artist and designer. Focusing on how the act of “making” is not exclusive to mankind, Aki Inomata develops the process of collaboration with living creatures into artworks. She presents what is born out of her interactions with living creatures as well as the relationship between humans and animals.

  • Leon James

    S26: Friction

    Dr. Leon James is Professor, Department of Psychology, College of Social Sciences, University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa. He is interested in driving psychology, information literacy, discourse analysis, substantive dualism, and theistic psychology. His recent work includes the development of taxonomic inventories of driver behaviors in the affective, cognitive, and sensorimotor domains in addition to systems suitable for driver assessment and driver education. He maintains two personal websites where he publishes study materials and research reports for scholars, students, safety officials, driving school instructors, and government agencies relating to transportation and traffic safety and education. He received his PhD, Psychology at McGill University in 1962.

  • Verna Kale

    S47: Grace under Pressure

    Verna Kale earned her PhD from Penn State in 2010 with specializations in 19th- and 20th-century American literature and textual scholarship. She is co-editor with Sandra Spanier and Miriam B. Mandel of The Letters of Ernest Hemingway Volume 6 (1934-1936); the author of a biography of Hemingway (Ernest Hemingway, part of the Critical Lives series published by Reaktion Books/The University of Chicago Press, 2016); and editor of Teaching Hemingway and Gender (part of the Teaching Hemingway series published by Kent State UP, 2016).

  • Janice Kamrin

    S25: Why Words Matter

    Janice Kamrin is an Associate Curator at The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Janice holds a BA from Bryn Mawr College and a PhD from the University of Pennsylvania. Her research interests include Middle Kingdom tomb art and the archaeology of Thebes. Before coming to The Met, Janice lived in Egypt, where she directed several projects at the Egyptian Museum, Cairo, and worked with the head of the Antiquities Service.

  • Masamichi Katayama

    S39: The Store and the Street

    Masamichi Katayama is an interior designer based in Japan. In 2000 he founded the interior design firm Wonderwall Inc. where he continues to serve as the Principal Designer and Director. He is internationally acclaimed for his sense of balance, which incorporates contemporary elements while paying respect to free-thinking, tradition, and style in embodying a concept. His major projects include Uniqlo’s flagship shops (including those in New York, Paris, Ginza, and Shanghai) and Emporium Melbourne, named one of the 9 most beautiful malls in the world by Architectural Digest. In 2020, Katayama received a Frame Lifetime Achievement Award. Additionally, he teaches at Musashino Art University as a professor in the Department of Scenography, Space, and Fashion Design.

  • L.A. Kauffman

    S29: Dependency

    L.A. Kauffman has spent more than thirty-five years as an activist, journalist, historian, strategist, grassroots organizer. Most recently L.A. is the author of Direct Action: Protest and the Reinvention of American Radicalism (2017). L.A.’s writings on organizing and social movement history have been published in The Guardian, The Nation, The Progressive, Mother Jones, Village Voice, n+1, The Baffler, and many other outlets. L.A. was a central strategist of the two-year direct action campaign that saved more than 100 New York City community gardens from bulldozing in 1999. L.A. was the mobilizing coordinator for the massive anti-war protests of 2003 and 2004, which remain some of the largest demonstrations in U.S. history. More recently, L.A. was a key organizer of successful campaigns to save two iconic New York City public libraries from being demolished and replaced by luxury towers. L.A. is currently involved in a range of organizing projects to oppose the Trump presidency.

  • Claire Jean Kim

    S35: Dogs

    Claire Jean Kim is Professor of Political Science and Asian American Studies. Kim is the author of the book, Dangerous Crossings: Race, Species, and Nature in a Multicultural Age, and her research interests are comparative race studies, race theory and politics, social movements, human-animal studies.

  • Eduardo Kohn

    S47: Grace under Pressure

    Eduardo Kohn is an Associate Professor and Anthropology for the Ecozoic Lead at McGill University. He was awarded the 2014 Gregory Bateson Prize in Anthropology for How Forests Think. His lifework is dedicated to developing the conceptual equipment–the ideas, methods, and theories–to prepare us to live in this age of unprecedented anthropogenic climate change. Centrally, this involves imagining better ways to live with the living world, in ways that can allow that world to orient our conduct. It involves, that is, a fundamental rethinking of anthropology and “the human” so that we can learn to “ecologize” our ethics.

  • Priti Krishtel

    S37: Breath

    Priti Krishtel is a health justice lawyer and co-founder of the Initiative for Medicines, Access, and Knowledge (I-MAK), a nonprofit organization that challenges systemic injustice and advocates for health equity in drug development and access. For two decades, Krishtel’s work has exposed structural inequalities in vaccine and medical access in the United States, and across the globe. She is a TED speaker, Presidential Leadership Scholar, and Ashoka Fellow, as well as a frequent contributor to leading international and national news outlets on issues of domestic and global health equity.

  • Shigetaka Kurita

    S25: Why Words Matter

    Shigetaka Kurita is an artist and designer who created the first emoji in 1999 for the Japanese telecom giant NTT DoCoMo. While the system offered emails, they were restricted to 250 characters, so emoji were a way to say more in a limited space. While emoji were immediately copied by other Japanese telecoms companies, the symbols were not standardized, meaning they could not be used across different networks. Additionally, they stayed fairly limited to Japan until 2010 when they were incorporated into Unicode, the standard that governs the software coding of text. That year, 722 emoji were released on both iPhone and Android. In 2016, the Museum of Modern Art in New York acquired 176 miniature drawings of faces, objects, and abstract places, etc.

  • Hannah Landecker

    S46: Scale

    Hannah Landecker is a historian and sociologist of the life sciences. She holds a joint appointment in the Life and Social Sciences at UCLA, where she is a Professor in the Sociology Department, and the Institute for Society and Genetics, an interdisciplinary unit at UCLA committed to cultivating research and pedagogy at the interface of the life and human sciences. Landecker is the author of Culturing Life: How Cells Became Technologies (Harvard UP, 2007), and has written widely on biotechnology and society in work funded by the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation, The American Council of Learned Societies, and the National Endowment for the Humanities. She is co-director of the UCLA Center for Reproductive Science, Health and Education at UCLA, and a member of the Senior Editorial team of BioSocieties.

  • Lina Lapelyte

    S41: Performance in Reality

    Lina Lapelyte is an artist who lives and works in London and Vilnius. She holds a BA in classical violin, a BA in Sound Arts and an MA in Sculpture from the Royal College of Art, London. Her performance-based practice is rooted in music and flirts with pop culture, gender stereotypes, aging and nostalgia. Throughout her artistic career, Lapelytė has explored various forms of performativity, crossing genre boundaries while entwining folk rituals with popular music and opera formats, frequently using stylized expression, grotesque and conceptual musicality. Her collaborative work with Rugilė Barzdžiukaitė and Vaiva Grainytė, opera ​Have a Good Day!​​ holds several awards, its libretto is translated into nine languages and its been touring extensively. Their newest durational performance work,​ ​Sun and Sea (Marina)​, r​epresented Lithuania at the Venice Biennale of Art in 2019 and received the Golden Lion award for the best national participation.

  • Greger Larson

    S35: Dogs

    Dr. Greger Larson is the Director of Palaeogenomics & Bio-Archaeology Research Network at the University of Oxford. His research interests include evolutionary genomics, ancient DNA, domestication, human & animal dispersal, and phylogenetics.

  • Matthias Laschke

    S26: Friction

    Dr. Matthias Laschke is a postdoctoral fellow in Professor Dr. Marc Hassenzahl’s Ubiquitous Design working group at the University of Siegen. Matthias studied Industrial Design at the University of Duisburg Essen and completed his doctorate at the Folkwang University of the Arts with a focus on Human-Computer Interaction. His research focuses on the design of transformational objects (ie, pleasurable troublemakers) and persuasive technologies in the areas of sustainability, procrastination, willpower, adherence to the theory, or prudence in traffic. He also deals with the field of experience design and the socio-cultural influence of technology in everyday life. He has participated on a number of research projects, that have addressed themes such as mobility (BMW Research and Technology), travel (Deutsche Bahn AG), health (Siemens), and sustainable consumption and behavioral change (Wuppertal Institute for Climate, Environment and Energy).

  • Tina Lasisi

    S33: Hair

    Tina Lasisi is a PhD Student in the Jablonski Lab at Penn State University. Tina is interested in the evolution of human phenotypic variation among populations. Her doctoral research will focus on the evolution of human hair variation. She completed her Bachelor of Arts in Archaeology & Anthropology at the University of Cambridge where she wrote a thesis entitled “Human Hair Diversity: Quantitative Variation in Hair Fibre Shape & Pigmentation”.

  • Lausan Collective

    S34: Anger

    Lausan is a collective of writers, researchers, translators, organizers and artists from Hong Kong. Through editorial and community outreach projects, it aims to build solidarity on the international left with Hong Kongers’ ongoing struggle. Lausan’s visual culture team produces curatorial, archival and studio collaborations in critical engagement with unfolding histories of resistance in and beyond Hong Kong.

  • Amanda Lawrence

    S28: Angels

    Amanda Lawrence is an English actress who has received acclaim for her recent role as the Angel in Tony Kushner’s Angels in America on New York’s Broadway at The Neil Simon Theatre and in London’s West End at the National Theatre. She has appeared in more than fifteen films, including titles such as Pan (2015) and Suffragette (2015), in addition to work on a number of television shows.

  • David van der Leer

    S29: Dependency

    David van der Leer is the Executive Director of the Van Alen Institute in New York. As the Executive Director of a 124-year-old design nonprofit that develops cross-disciplinary research, David oversee provocative public programs and inventive design competitions to make cities better places. Prior to repositioning Van Alen Institute, David created and curated the Architecture and Urban Studies program for the Guggenheim Museum from 2008 to 2013. David has created, chaired, and led nearly 30 design competitions, and he has commissioned numerous design and art projects. He enjoys rethinking conventional design competition and commissioning processes and actively promotes new practices in events like the Design Competition Conference he developed and co-chaired at Harvard University in 2015. Born and raised in The Netherlands, David is a graduate of Erasmus University Rotterdam, and of the High Impact Leadership program at Columbia University’s Business School.

  • Jordyn Lexton

    S27: Gastrodiplomacy

    Jordyn Lexton is the CEO and Founder of Drive Change, a food truck business that would be a platform for a paid fellowships for young adults returning home from jail. Founded in 2014, Drive Change was created in response to the racial and class injustice in the criminal justice system that Jordyn witnessed first hand as an English teacher at Rikers Island High School. Understanding food as a unifier, Jordyn believed that food and food workplaces could connect people and provide pathways to employment.

  • Hugo Liu

    S24: AI - Artificial Imperfection

    Hugo Liu, Ph.D. is the founder of Artadvisor, a tech startup building the world’s leading art valuation technology. There are hundreds of factors that influence an artist’s market, from auction results and critical reception to the reputation of an artist’s gallery. Artadvisor applies machine learning and taste-based AI to distill these hundreds of factors down into a concise and actionable snapshot of over 50,000 artists.

  • Cannupa Hanska Luger

    S41: Performance in Reality

    Cannupa Hanska Luger is a New Mexico based multidisciplinary artist creating monumental installations, sculpture and performance to communicate urgent stories about 21st Century Indigeneity. Incorporating ceramics, steel, fiber, video and repurposed materials, Luger activates speculative fiction, engages in land-based actions of repair and practices empathetic response through social collaboration. Born on the Standing Rock Reservation in North Dakota, Luger is an enrolled member of the Three Affiliated Tribes of Fort Berthold. Luger’s work has been exhibited at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Gardiner Museum, Toronto and the National Center for Civil and Human Rights, Georgia. Luger has been awarded fellowships from Guggenheim, United States Artists, Creative Capital, Smithsonian and Joan Mitchell Foundation.

  • Alec MacGillis

    S39: The Store and the Street

    Alec MacGillis covers politics and government for ProPublica. MacGillis previously reported for The New Republic, The Washington Post, and the Baltimore Sun. He won the 2016 Robin Toner Prize for Excellence in Political Reporting, the 2017 Polk Award for National Reporting, and the 2017 Elijah Parish Lovejoy Award. His work has appeared in the New Yorker, The Atlantic, New York Magazine, Harper’s, and New York Times Magazine, among other publications. In 2021, MacGillis published his second book, Fulfillment: Winning and Losing in One-Click America, which examines the impact of Amazon in the United States.

  • Graham MacIndoe

    S29: Dependency

    Graham MacIndoe is a photographer and an adjunct Professor of Photography at Parsons, The New School. A former heroin addict, Graham has spoken about art and media depictions of addiction at TEDx Stanford, Aperture, The New School, and Columbia University. His photographs have been published and written about in The New York Times, The Guardian, The Financial Times Magazine, Harpers, Fast Company, Rolling Stone, I.D., Vice, and Esquire. His work is also in the collections of The Scottish National Galleries, The New York Public Library, The British Council, The V&A Museum, The Museum of Fine Arts Florida, The British Museum of Film and Television and various private collections. Born in Scotland, Graham holds at BFA in painting from the Edinburgh College of Art and an MFA in photography from the Royal College of Art in London.

  • Laura U. Marks

    S46: Scale

    Laura U. Marks is a philosopher and scholar of new media and film. She is the Grant Strate University Professor at Simon Fraser University. Previously, she was the Dana Wosk University Professor of Art and Cultural Studies at SFU.

  • Linsey Marr

    S37: Breath

    Linsey Marr is the Charles B. Lunsford Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Virginia Tech. Her pioneering research on aerosol science made her one of the world’s leading experts on airborne viruses and their transmission, and an invaluable resource for understanding the behavior of the COVID-19 virus. Her writing has appeared in both scientific and popular publications, from the American Journal of Infection Control to the New York Times. In 2020, she was appointed to the board of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine.

  • James Keir Cecil Martin

    S29: Dependency

    James Keir Cecil Martin is Associate Professor, Department of Social Anthropology at the University of Oslo. He is the author of a number of academic and media publications on Papua New Guinea and the global economy. He was formerly a Lecturer in Social Anthropology at the University of Manchester and is a recipient of the Royal Anthropological Institute’s Sutasoma Award for work likely to make an outstanding contribution to social anthropology. He is currently working on the growth of psychotherapy among new middle class populations globally and is a practicing member of the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy.

  • Sarah Mayorga- Gallo

    S35: Dogs

    Sarah Mayorga is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of Massachusetts Boston. Her research interests are racial and ethnic inequality, urban neighborhoods, and Latinx migration. Her current research agenda focuses on whiteness and power within multiracial spaces.

  • Mariana Mazzucato

    S42: Good

    Mariana Mazzucato (PhD) is Professor at University College London (UCL), where she is Founding Director of the UCL Institute for Innovation & Public Purpose (IIPP). She advises policy makers around the world on innovation-led inclusive and sustainable growth. Her current roles include being Chair of the World Health Organization’s Council on the Economics of Health for All, Co-Chair of the Global Commission on the Economics of Water, Co-Chair on the Council on Urban Initiatives, member of the South African President’s Economic Advisory Council, the UN High Level Advisory Board for Economic and Social Affairs, the European Space Agency’s High-Level Advisory Group on Human and Robotic Space Exploration for Europe, Argentina’s Economic and Social Council and Vinnova’s Advisory Panel in Sweden and the OECD High-Level Advisory Panel on Climate and Economic Resilience. She is winner of international prizes including the Grande Ufficiale Ordine al Merito della Repubblica Italiana in 2021, Italy’s highest civilian honour, the 2020 John von Neumann Award, the 2019 All European Academies Madame de Staël Prize for Cultural Values, and the 2018 Leontief Prize for Advancing the Frontiers of Economic Thought. She was named as one of the ‘3 most important thinkers about innovation‘ by The New Republic, one of the 50 most creative people in business in 2020 by Fast Company, and one of the 25 leaders shaping the future of capitalism by WIRED. Most recently, Pope Francis appointed her to the Pontifical Academy for Life for bringing “more humanity” to the world. She is the author of four highly-acclaimed books: The Entrepreneurial State (2013), The Value of Everything (2018), Mission Economy (2021), and The Big Con (2023).

  • John McGeehan

    S32: Plastics

    John McGeehan is a British research scientist and Professor of Structural Biology at the University of Portsmouth. As a Co-Director of the Institute of Biomedical & Biomolecular Sciences he leads a research team on enzyme engineering, with a recent focus on manufacturing an enzyme to break down plastic. He holds a BSc (Hons) degree in Microbiology from the University of Glasgow, a PhD in Virology from the Medical Research Council Virology Unit, Glasgow, and obtained a Postdoctoral Fellowship with the European Molecular Biology Laboratory, Grenoble, France in the group of Dr Raimond Ravelli. He has previously held a position in the Structural Biology Laboratories at the University of York.

  • Mark McLaughlin

    S47: Grace under Pressure

    Mark McLaughlin, MD, FACS, FAANS is a practicing board-certified neurosurgeon, a national media commentator, author of the book Cognitive Dominance: A Brain Surgeon’s Quest to Out-Think Fear, and acclaimed keynote speaker. He is the founder of Princeton Brain and Spine Care where he practices surgery focusing on trigeminal neuralgia and cervical spine surgery. McLaughlin is also a thought leader in performance enhancement and physician hospital relations.

  • Walter Mignolo

    S36: Renaissance or Revolution?

    Walter Mignolo is the William Hane Wannamaker Distinguished Professor of Romance Studies at Duke University. His research and teaching have been devoted to understanding and unraveling the historical foundation of the modern/colonial world system and imaginary since 1500. Mignolo was awarded the Katherine Singer Kovaks prize for his book The Darker Side of the Renaissance: Literacy, Territoriality and Colonization (1996) and the Frantz Fanon Prize for The Idea of Latin America (2006).

  • Raffaele Mollica

    S33: Hair

    Raffaele Mollica is a master wig-maker whose flagship hand-crafted wig, now known as the “Ralf,” has been celebrated in publications such as Vogue, The New York Times, and People, among others, and on television on both HBO and PBS. Having emigrated from Sicily in 1956, he attended the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York. He subsequently broke into the fashion scene and became the in-house wig-maker for Vidal Sassoon, Kenneth and then Elizabeth Arden. In 1975 he founded Raffaele Mollica, Inc., a small, family-oriented business dedicated to making hand-crafted custom wigs and hairpieces for both local customers as well as serving a global clientele.

  • Enrique Morones

    S28: Angels

    Enrique Morones is the Founder of Border Angels, an all volunteer, non profit 501©(3) organization that advocates for human rights, humane immigration reform, and social justice with a special focus on the US-Mexican border. Border Angels works to dispel the various myths surrounding immigration in the United States, in addition to providing education and migrant outreach including water drops in the desert, food distribution, and free consulting to migrant families in both Spanish and English, amongst other initiatives. Enrique was honored with Mexico’s Othli’s Award and in 2009 received the Mexican Human Rights Award from President Felipe Calderon. Additionally, he has been named one of Hispanic Business Magazine’s “most influential” Latinos in the United States of America as well as one of San Diego Magazine’s “50 People to Watch.”

  • Timothy Morton

    S42: Good

    Timothy Morton is Rita Shea Guffey Chair in English at Rice University. He has collaborated with Björk, Laurie Anderson, Jennifer Walshe, Hrafnhildur Arnadottir, Sabrina Scott, Adam McKay, Jeff Bridges, Justin Guariglia, Olafur Eliasson, and Pharrell Williams. Morton co-wrote and appears in Living in the Future’s Past, a 2018 film about global warming with Jeff Bridges. He is the author of the libretto for the opera Time Time Time by Jennifer Walshe. He is the author of Being Ecological (2018), Humankind: Solidarity with Nonhuman People ( 2017), Dark Ecology: For a Logic of Future Coexistence (2016), Nothing: Three Inquiries in Buddhism (2015), Hyperobjects: Philosophy and Ecology after the End of the World (2013), Realist Magic: Objects, Ontology, Causality (2013), The Ecological Thought (2010), Ecology without Nature (2007), eight other books and 250 essays on philosophy, ecology, literature, music, art, architecture, design and food. Morton’s work has been translated into 10 languages.

  • Therese Nelson

    S27: Gastrodiplomacy

    Therese Nelson is the Founder and culinary curator of Black Culinary History. Founded in 2008, Therese created the organization to connect chefs of color, to preserve black heritage throughout the African culinary diaspora, to promote and share the work of her colleagues, and to preserve the legacy being constructed by black chefs for this next generation. Throughout her culinary career, Therese has worked her way through the kitchens of major hotel groups from Hilton and Marriott to Orient Express and Four Seasons. As a recipe consultant for Get Em’ Girl Inc. brands she helped create the cookbooks The Get Em’ Girl’s Guide to the Power of Cuisine and The Get Em Girl’s Guide to the Perfect Get Together.

  • Hawk Newsome

    S23: On Protest

    Hawk Newsome is an activist and a prominent leader of New Civil Rights Movement. In 2013, Hawk joined the Justice League NYC and has engaged in their national campaign to fix the broken criminal justice system. Previously to his work with the Black Lives Matter Movement, he was a County Committee Member of New York’s District 79. He has previously worked as a paralegal and later as Special Projects Coordinator for the office of the Honorable Robert T. Johnson at the Bronx County Office of the District Attorney. As the DA’s liaison to the community, he worked with N.Y.C.H.A tenants’ associations and social service organizations throughout the Bronx. Hawk attended Howard University Law School, Washington, DC. and completed his Jurist Doctorate at Touro Law School, Long Island, NY.

  • Natalia Oberti Noguera

    S28: Angels

    Natalia Oberti Noguera is the Founder and CEO of Pipeline Angels, a network of women investors that is changing the face of angel investing and creating capital for women and non-binary femme social entrepreneurs. Natalia is also Creator & Host of Pitch Makeover, a podcast on startups, pitching, investing, and #morevoices (women, non-binary people, and men of color). She holds a BA in Comparative Literature & Economics from Yale, as well as an MA in Organizational Psychology from Teachers College, Columbia University. She serves on the boards of Walker’s Legacy, Women 2.0, and iRelaunch. Inc. Magazine selected Natalia as one of “The Most Impressive Women Entrepreneurs of 2016,” Latina.com included her in their list of “25 Latinas Who Shine in Tech,” and Women’s eNews recognized her as one of 21 Leaders for the 21st Century for 2012. StartOut, a network of LGBTQ entrepreneurs, honored Natalia with the 2017 Nixon Peabody Trailblazer Award.“

  • Christopher K. Ober

    S32: Plastics

    Christopher K. Ober is an American/Canadian materials scientist and engineer. As of 2018, he is Francis Norwood Bard Professor of Materials Engineering at Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, Cornell University and Director of the Cornell NanoScale Science and Technology Facility. As an expert in the synthesis of precision functional polymers, his current research focuses on biology-materials interface, including the fabrication of 2D and 3D nanostructures, high resolution lithography, and anti-fouling materials. Amongst his many distinctions, he has been named an American Chemical Society Fellow; Society of Polymer Science Japan, International Prize; American Chemical Society, Polymeric Materials Science, and Engineering Division Fellow.

  • John Oswald

    S38: IP: Imperious Property

    John Oswald is a composer, saxophonist, and media artist from Canada. In the 1980’s he pioneered a genre of music which he titled “Plunderphonics,” that’s defined by the practice of making new music out of previously existing recordings. Oswald is the research director for Toronto’s Mystery Laboratory experimental studio, and NorthAmerican Experience’s music director. He has produced a number of recordings and has his own releases on the Swell and Musicworks labels, among others.

  • Amanda Palmer

    S29: Dependency

    Amanda Palmer is an American singer, songwriter, musician, author, performance artist, and former member of the acclaimed punk cabaret duo The Dresden Dolls. In 2008, she released her debut solo album, Who Killed Amanda Palmer. She left her record label in 2010, and self-released Amanda Palmer Performs The Popular Hits of Radiohead On Her Magical Ukelele and Amanda Palmer Goes Down Under, amongst other projects. She is known as “The Social Media Queen of Rock-N-Roll” for her intimate engagement with her fans via her blog, Tumblr, and Twitter (800,000+ followers), and has been at the vanguard of using both “direct to fan” and “pay what you want” (patronage) business models to build and run her business. Her book The Art of Asking (2014), was developed from her acclaimed TED Talk and subsequently became a New York Times Best Seller.

  • Jussi Parikka

    S46: Scale

    Jussi Parikka is Professor in Digital Aesthetics and Culture at Aarhus University where he leads the Digital Aesthetics Research Centre (DARC).He is also visiting professor of at Winchester School of Art (University of Southampton) and at FAMU at the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague where he leads the project Operational Images and Visual Culture (2019-2023, funded by the Czech Science Foundation). In 2021 he was elected as member of Academia Europaea. Parikka was awarded a PhD at University of Turku in 2007. His dissertation was on computer viruses and network accidents.

  • Tim Parks

    S36: Renaissance or Revolution?

    Tim Parks is a novelist, translator, author, and professor of literature. He has written eighteen novels, including Europa (1997), which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize. Since the 1990s, Parks has written frequently for both the London Review of Books and The New York Review of Books, as well as published various works of non-fiction, including Medici Money (2005).

  • Mary Jo Pham

    S27: Gastrodiplomacy

    Mary Jo Pham is a former U.S. diplomat, who was involved in several successful gastrodiplomacy campaigns. In particular, she has written extensively on South Korean gastrodiplomacy as a case study. She has also handled corporate and policy communications across APAC for 10+ countries. Additionally, she is a two-time winner of U.S. national journalism awards, as well as the recipient of The Franklin Award (2016) and The Glenn Munro Award for Outstanding Potential and Leadership (2013) by the U.S. Department of State.

  • Christopher J. Phillips

    S44: Team Sports

    Christopher J. Phillips is a historian of science and of twentieth-century America, currently teaching as Associate Professor in Carnegie Mellon’s History Department. He is also the Director of Graduate Studies for the doctoral program. His research focuses on the history of science, particularly statistics and mathematics. He is interested in the authority and expertise claimed for scientific practices and mathematical methods across modern U.S. history and most of his projects involve the spread of mathematical and numerical methods into new domains.

  • Perc Pineda

    S32: Plastics

    Perc Pineda is the Chief Economist of Plastics Industry Association, where he serves as the organization’s primary staff expert on economics, statistics and industry research. Perc received his Doctor of Philosophy and Master of Philosophy in Economics from the New School of Social Research in New York. He also holds a Master of Arts in Economics from the American University in Washington, D.C. and a Master in International Management from the University of Maryland. Before joining PLASTICS, Perc was the Senior Economist of the Credit Union National Association, where he tracked macroeconomic trends, conducted economic research, wrote articles for industry publications, and interfaced with the media.

  • Steven Pinker

    S42: Good

    Steven Pinker is the Johnstone Family Professor of Psychology at Harvard University. He is an experimental cognitive psychologist and a popular writer on language, mind, and human nature. A native of Montreal, he earned his bachelor’s degree at McGill University in 1976, his PhD from Harvard in 1979, and taught at Harvard, Stanford, and MIT before returning to Harvard in 2003. Pinker’s research on vision, language, and social relations has won prizes from the National Academy of Sciences, the Royal Institution of Great Britain, the Cognitive Neuroscience Society, the American Psychological Association, and the Association for Psychological Science. He has also received eight honorary doctorates, several teaching awards at MIT and Harvard, and numerous prizes for his books The Language Instinct, How the Mind Works, The Blank Slate, The Better Angels of Our Nature, and The Sense of Style. He is Chair of the Usage Panel of the American Heritage Dictionary, and often writes for The New York Times, Time, and other publications. He has been named Humanist of the Year, Foreign Policy’s “100 Global Thinkers,” and Time magazine’s “100 Most Influential People in the World Today.” He is currently doing research on a diverse array of topics in psychology, including the role of common knowledge (where two or more people know that the others know what they know) in language and other social phenomena; historical and recent trends in violence and their explanation; the psycho-linguistics of good writing; the nature of the critical period for acquiring language; the neurobiology and genetics of language; and the nature of regular and irregular phenomena in grammar.

  • Andrea Polli

    S37: Breath

    Andrea Polli is a professor in both the College of Fine Arts and the School of Engineering at the University of New Mexico. As an artist, she works at the intersection of art, science, and technology and her practice includes media installation, public art, community projects, and writing. In 2015, she created the large-scale, public installation “Particle Falls,” a real-time, environmentally reactive projection that allows viewers to see current levels of fine particulates projected on surrounding buildings. For her work, she has been awarded the NYFA Artist’s Fellowship, the Fulbright Specialist Award and the UNESCO Digital Arts Award.

  • Maggie L. Popkin

    S44: Team Sports

    Maggie Popkin is Robson Junior Professor and Associate Professor of Art History in the Department of Art History and Art at Case Western Reserve University. She is the author of The Architecture of the Roman Triumph: Monuments, Memory, and Identity (Cambridge, 2016) and numerous articles on Greek and Roman art and architecture. She has received fellowships from the Fulbright Organization and the National Endowment for the Humanities, and is a Fellow of the American Academy in Rome.

  • Sheetal Prajapati

    S30: White Male

    Sheetal Prajapati is a creative practitioner working across the field of art and public engagement as an educator, artist, curator and administrator. She is current on faculty at the School of Visual Arts, New York in the MFA Fine Arts program. Previously, Sheetal served as the first Director of Public Engagement at Pioneer Works in Red Hook, Brooklyn. She has also held positions at The Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Mary and Leigh Block Museum of Art at Northwestern University, Evanston, IL; Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago. As an artist, Sheetal has held residencies at the Wassaic Project, Haystack Mountain School of Craft, and the The Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts, among others. She received a Bachelor of Arts in History and Gender Studies from Northwestern University and a Master of Arts in Arts Administration and Policy from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

  • Michael Preysman

    S32: Plastics

    Michael Preysman is the founder and CEO of Everlane, a direct-to-consumer design brand based in San Francisco, California. Inspired by the lack of affordable options for quality basics, Preysman founded Everlane in 2011 to provide consumers with well-designed, high-quality clothing and accessories at an approachable price point while simultaneously encouraging them to stay informed and educated on product origins. By cutting out the middleman and openly sharing the costs behind each product, Preysman has become a distinguished leader in the transparent retail space, and a disruptor of the luxury clothing industry. Prior to starting Everlane, Preysman was an investor at Elevation Partners for both their New York and Menlo Park offices investing in media and entertainment companies.

  • Ravi Ragbir

    S28: Angels

    Ravi Ragbir is a community activist and a nationally recognized leader in the immigrant rights movement. Originally from Trinidad and Tobago, Ravi’s personal struggle with the immigration system, inspired him to become a dedicated community educator, spokesperson, and advocate. A former volunteer for the Families for Freedom, he went on to serve as Chair of the Board of Directors for the organization where he trained other community organizers and elected officials about immigration issues and how to reform the deportation system. In 2010, Ravi became a full-time organizer for the New Sanctuary Coalition of New York City, one of the largest coalitions in the city focused on immigrant rights, with over 20 faith-based and supporting organizations, representing over 3,000 New Yorkers.

  • Shirin M. Rai

    S41: Performance in Reality

    Shirin M. Rai is the Distinguished Research Professor in the Department of Politics and International Studies SOAS, University of London. She is a Fellow of the British Academy. She is the Founding Director of Warwick Interdisciplinary Research Centre for International Development (WICID)at the University of Warwick. Shirin Rai is an interdisciplinary scholar and has written extensively on issues of gender, governance and development and politics and performance. In particular, she has been working on issues of gendered care and work and the costs of this carework, and on developing a framework of politics and performance across the social sciences/humanities boundaries. Her recent books include Performing Representation, a commentary on women MPs in the Indian Parliament as well as co-edited the OUP Handbook of Politics and Performance. Her teaching and research build on this work at both theoretical and empirical levels. After securing her BA at Hindu College, Delhi University and MA in the Department of Political Science, Delhi University, India, Shirin Rai carried out her doctoral research at Christ’s College and Faculty of Social and Political Sciences, University of Cambridge. She joined the Department of Politics and International Studies, University of Warwick in 1989 and left to take up her current position at SOAS in 2022.

  • Emma Ramadan

    S25: Why Words Matter

    Emma Ramadan is a literary translator based in Providence, Rhode Island. She attended Brown University and later earned her Master’s degree in Cultural Translation at the American University of Paris. She specializes in translating French to English, and has received various honors and awards for her work, having been the recipient of an NEA Translation Fellowship, a PEN/Heim grant, and a Fulbright scholarship. In 2015 she completed a Fulbright Fellowship in Marrakech, Morocco, where she catalogued and translated the archives of the late Moroccan author Ahmed Bouanani.

  • Ocean Ramsey

    S47: Grace under Pressure

    Ocean Ramsey is a shark and marine conservationist as well as a marine biologist specializing in shark ethology.

  • Ashanté Reese

    S45: Egg

    Dr. Ashanté M. Reese earned a PhD in Anthropology from American University. Broadly speaking, Dr. Reese works at the intersection of critical food studies and Black geographies, examining the ways Black people produce and navigate food-related spaces. Animated by the question, who and what survives?, Dr. Reese’s work has focused on the everyday strategies Black people employ while navigating inequity. Her first book, Black Food Geographies: Race, Self-Reliance, and Food Access in Washington, D.C., takes up these themes through an ethnographic exploration of antiblackness and food access. Black Food Geographies won the 2020 Best Monograph Award from the Association for the Study of Food and Society and 2020 Margaret Mead Award jointly awarded by the American Anthropological Association and the Society for Applied Anthropology. Her second book, Black Food Matters: Racial Justice in the Wake of Food Justice, is a collection co-edited with Hanna Garth that explores the geographic, social, and cultural dimensions of food in Black life across the U.S. Currently, Dr. Reese is working on a cultural history of sugar and Sugar Land, Texas in which she explores the spatial, economic, and carceral implications of sugar and the sometimes contradictory and deadly sweetness that marks Black life. A committed teacher, Dr. Reese was the recipient of the 2020-21 Friar Centennial Teaching Fellowship.

  • Ajay Revels

    S24: AI - Artificial Imperfection

    Ajay Revels is a strategic design researcher who loves great questions. She works at the intersection of biology, anthropology, product design and systems thinking to create products that are pleasant to use, profitable and, when possible, pro-environment. As a user experience (UX) consultant with 17 years of experience turning insights into actionable maps and mockups for new online products, services, or go-to-market plans, she has worked with design agencies like Razorfish, HUGE and Flow Interactive and corporate clients like Panasonic, CNN, Merrill Lynch, TD Ameritrade and Barclays.

  • Jennifer Robinson

    S28: Angels

    Jennifer Robinson is an Australian human rights lawyer and barrister at Doughty Street Chambers in London. She has acted in key free speech and human rights cases before courts and tribunals around the world, including the European Court of Human Rights and UN special mechanisms, and has conducted human rights missions for the International Bar Association. She founded the Bertha Justice Initiative, a global fellowship program supporting the next generation of human rights lawyers, and International Lawyers for West Papua, which advises the West Papuan movement for self-determination. Robinson is a founding board member of the Grata Fund, Australia’s first independent public interest litigation fund, and serves on the boards of Article 19, the Bureau for Investigative Journalism and the Commonwealth Lawyers Association.

  • Paul Rockower

    S27: Gastrodiplomacy

    Paul Rockower is the Executive Director of Levantine Public Diplomacy, an independent public diplomacy organization. Paul has over ten years experience in the field of communications and public diplomacy, with a vast and varied career in both the academic and practitioner domains. A leading expert in the burgeoning field of gastrodiplomacy, he previously served as a Press Officer for the Israeli Foreign Ministry, directing the media and public diplomacy of the Consulate General of Israel to the Southwest. Amongst other roles, he has also been a Visiting Fellow at the Taiwan Foundation for Democracy, where he researched Taiwan’s public diplomacy outreach.

  • Noliwe Rooks

    S33: Hair

    Noliwe Rooks, is an author and professor at Cornell University whose work explores race and gender. An interdisciplinary scholar, her work explores how race and gender both impact and are impacted by popular culture, social history and political life in the United States. The author of four books, numerous articles, essays and OpEd’s.

  • Michael Rossi

    S42: Good

    Michael Rossi is an Associate Professor of the History of Medicine and Chair of the Conceptual and Historical Studies of Science at the University of Chicago. He is a historian of medicine and science in the United States from the nineteenth century to the present. His work focuses on the historical and cultural metaphysics of the body: how different people at different times understood questions of beauty, truth, falsehood, pain, pleasure, goodness, and reality vis-à-vis their corporeal selves and those of others. His first book manuscript traces the origins of color science—the physiology, psychology, and physics of color—in the late-nineteenth-century United States to a series of questions about what modern America ought to be: about the scope of medical, scientific, and political authority over the sensing body; about the nature of aesthetic, physiological, and cultural development between individual and civilization; about the relationship between aesthetic harmony, physiological balance, and social order. His second project looks at how linguists, anatomists, and speech pathologists moved, over the course of the twentieth century, from viewing language as a function of sound-producing organs (tongue, lips, palate, larynx, etc.) to searching for a notional “language organ” within the brains of all human beings. Such interpretative shifts in understanding human anatomy are neither an ancient phenomenon nor one limited to extreme medical specialization, but rather are ongoing issues, providing a window on the social, political, and philosophical understanding of modern bodies, medicine, and science.

  • Emelyn Rude

    S45: Egg

    Emelyn Rude’s work sits at the intersection of economic, environmental, and culinary history and is broadly focused on the development of the food system in the United States in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. She is particularly interested in the history of eating animals and previously studied the factors driving the growth of American chicken consumption and the impact of marine species declines on the production and consumption of food. Her current research project aims to understand how species declines and extinctions events changed American eating habits more broadly, with the ultimate goal of retelling the story of the American food system through the lens of this type of environmental degradation. She received her PhD in History from the University of Cambridge in 2022, her MPhil in Economic and Social History from Cambridge in 2018, and her Bachelor’s in Social Studies from Harvard University in 2012. Her interest in food is not purely academic, however. Prior to going to graduate school she helped run high-end restaurants in New York, worked as a pastry cook and recipe tester, and helped to write and edit various cookbooks. These days she publishes an independent magazine focused on food history called EATEN and is also a trained and certified sommelier.

  • Jeffrey Sachs

    S29: Dependency

    Jeffrey Sachs is a world-renowned professor of economics, leader in sustainable development, senior UN advisor, bestselling author, and syndicated columnist whose monthly newspaper columns appear in more than 100 countries. He is the co-recipient of the 2015 Blue Planet Prize, the leading global prize for environmental leadership, and has twice been named among Time Magazine’s 100 most influential world leaders. He is currently Professor, School of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University, and previously served as the Director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University from 2002 to 2016. Prior to Columbia, he spent over twenty years as a professor at Harvard University, where he served as the Director of the Center for International Development and the Galen L. Stone Professor of International Trade. His work on ending poverty, overcoming macroeconomic instability, promoting economic growth, fighting hunger and disease, and promoting sustainable environmental practices has taken him to more than 125 countries.

  • Elaine Scarry

    S46: Scale

    Elaine Scarry is an American essayist and professor of English and American Literature and Language. She is the Walter M. Cabot Professor of Aesthetics and the General Theory of Value at Harvard University.

  • Susan Schuppli

    S43: Traces

    Susan Schuppli is a researcher and artist based in the UK whose work examines material evidence from war and conflict to environmental disasters and climate change. Current work is focused on learning from ice and the politics of cold. Creative projects have been exhibited throughout Europe, Asia, Canada, and the US. She has published widely within the context of media and politics and is author of the book, Material Witness published by MIT Press in 2020. Schuppli is Professor and Director of the Centre for Research Architecture, Goldsmiths University of London where she is also an affiliate artist-researcher and Board Chair of Forensic Architecture. Previously she was Senior Research Fellow and Project Co-ordinator of Forensic Architecture. Prior to working in the UK she was an Associate Professor in visual/media arts in Canada. Schuppli received her PhD from Goldsmiths and participated in the Whitney Independent Study Program after completing her MFA at the University of California San Diego. She is the recipient of the 2016 ICP Infinity Award.

  • Brett Scott

    S40: The Third Web

    Brett Scott is an author, journalist and financial hacker exploring the intersections between money systems, finance and digital technology. In 2013 he published The Heretic’s Guide to Global Finance: Hacking the Future of Money with Pluto Press. In 2022, his second book, Cloudmoney, was published.

  • Deborah Scott

    S41: Performance in Reality

    Deborah Scott is a costume designer and set designer, best known for her work in James Cameron’s directorial venture Titanic (1997) which won her the Academy Award for Best Costume Design.Her first movie as a costume designer was Don’t Answer the Phone (1979). Some of her other movies are E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982), Back to the Future (1985), Legends of the Fall (1994), Wild Wild West (1999), The Patriot (2000), Transformers (2007), Avatar (2009), and Love & Other Drugs (2010).

  • Dread Scott

    S36: Renaissance or Revolution?

    Dread Scott is a visual artist making revolutionary work to propel history forward. His work has been included in exhibitions at MoMA PS1, the Walker Art Center, and Gallery MOMO in Cape Town, South Africa, and is in the collection of the Whitney Museum and the Brooklyn Museum. He is a 2021 John Simon Guggenheim Fellow and has also received fellowships from Open Society Foundations and United States Artists, as well as a Creative Capital grant.

  • Mindy Seu

    S40: The Third Web

    Mindy Seu is a designer and researcher. As a fellow at the Berkman Klein Center for the Internet and Society at Harvard Law School, she created an archive of cyberfeminism, The Cyberfeminism Index, which was displayed at the New Museum and published into a book in 2022. Formerly she was a designer on 24’s Interactive Media team and the Museum of Modern Art’s in-house design studio.

  • Anwar Shaikh

    S31: Workspheres

    Anwar Shaikh is Professor of Economics at the Graduate Faculty of Political and Social Science at the New School University, New York. He is an Associate Editor of the Cambridge Journal of Economics, and was a Senior Scholar and member of the Macro Modeling Team at the Levy Economics Institute at Bard College from 2000-2005. In 2014 he was awarded the NordSud International Prize for Literature and Science from Italy’s Fondazione Pescarabruzzo. His intellectual biography appears in the most recent edition of the book Eminent Economists II published by Cambridge University Press (2014). His most recent book is Capitalism: Competition, Conflict, Crises (Oxford University Press, 2016). He has written on international trade, finance theory, political economy, econophysics, U.S. macroeconomic policy, the welfare state, growth theory, inflation theory, crisis theory, national and global inequality, and past and current global economic crises.

  • Salil Shetty

    S23: On Protest

    Salil Shetty joined Amnesty International as the organization’s eighth Secretary General in 2010. A long-term activist on poverty and justice, Salil Shetty leads the movement’s worldwide work to end human rights violations and has spearheaded a significant move of Amnesty International’s work to the global south. Before joining Amnesty International, he was Director of the United Nations Millennium Campaign from 2003 to 2010, credited with significantly increasing awareness of and accountability for the Millennium Development Goals across the world. From 1998 to 2003, Salil Shetty was Chief Executive of ActionAid, a leading international development NGO. Salil Shetty studied at the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad and at the London School of Economics.

  • Aomawa Shields

    S37: Breath

    Aomawa Shields is an associate professor of physics and astronomy at the University of California, Irvine. Her research focuses on exploring the possible climates and potential habitability of extrasolar planets, particularly those orbiting low-mass stars. A frequent writer and podcaster, Shields is deeply committed to opening up the field of astronomy to underrepresented groups, particularly young women and people of color.

  • Sayuri Guthrie Shimizu

    S44: Team Sports

    Sayuri Guthrie Shimizu is a historian of the United States’ relations with the wider world, with a particular emphasis on US-East Asian relations since the mid 19th century. My research interests, cutting across historiographical and national boundaries, include the history of U.S.-Japanese relations, comparative colonialism, the transpacific world, sports in international relations, and global governance. My current book project examines the rise and transformation of international ocean resource (particularly fisheries) management regimes in the North Pacific in the first half of the 20th century.

  • Simon Skinner

    S33: Hair

    Swedish product designer Simon Skinner has created a collection of afro hair combs that explore the effect of migration on Swedish identity. Called Afropicks, the collection of eight different combs was on show as part of the Hemma Gone Wild exhibition by Swedish Design Moves during this year’s Milan design week.

  • Anne-Marie Slaughter

    S36: Renaissance or Revolution?

    Anne-Marie Slaughter is the CEO of New America and the author of eight books including, most recently, Renewal: From Crisis to Transformation in Our Lives, Work, and Politics (2021). She was previously the director of policy planning for the U.S. State Department and the dean of the School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University.

  • Lindsey Snell

    S34: Anger

    Lindsey Snell is a print and video journalist specializing in conflict and humanitarian crises. She has produced documentary-style videos for MSNBC, VICE, Vocativ, ABC News, Ozy, Yahoo News, and Discovery Digital Networks. Her print work has appeared in Foreign Policy, the Daily Beast, al Araby and others. One of her pieces, on Aleppo schools hit by airstrikes, won an Edward R. Murrow award in 2016. In 2016 on one of her trips to film in Syria she was kidnapped by al-Qaeda and later detained in Turkey.

  • Jonas Staal

    S46: Scale

    Jonas Staal is a visual artist whose work deals with the relation between art, democracy, and propaganda. He is the founder of the artistic and political organization New World Summit (2012–ongoing). Together with Florian Malzacher he co-directs the training camp Training for the Future (2018-ongoing), and with human rights lawyer Jan Fermon he initiated the collective action lawsuit Collectivize Facebook (2020-ongoing). With writer and lawyer Radha D’Souza he founded the Court for Intergenerational Climate Crimes (2021-ongoing) and with Laure Prouvost he is co-administrator of the Obscure Union.

  • Mary Caswell Stoddard

    S45: Egg

    Mary Caswell Stoddard is an Associate Professor in the Princeton Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology. She joined the department in 2016. She is an Associated Faculty member in the High Meadows Environmental Institute, the Princeton Bioengineering Initiative and the Lewis-Sigler Institute for Integrative Genomics. Cassie received her undergraduate degree from Yale University, where she researched avian vision and plumage color evolution at the Peabody Museum of Natural History. She received a Marshall Scholarship and an NSF Graduate Research Fellowship to study at the University of Cambridge, where she completed her PhD research. Cassie joined the Harvard Society of Fellows in 2012 as a Junior Fellow and was named a 2013 L’Oréal USA For Women in Science Fellow. She received a 2018 Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship, a 2018 Packard Fellowship and a 2022 Schmidt Science Polymath Award.

  • Studio Swine

    S33: Hair

    Studio Swine (Super Wide Interdisciplinary New Explorers) is a collective established in 2011 by Azusa Murakami (JP) and Alexander Groves (UK). Their work straddles between the spheres of sculpture, installations and cinema, blending poetry and research into immersive experiences. The studio adopts an unique approach to each work, drawing on the distinctive resources and vernacular aesthetic of its cultural, historic and economic landscape.

  • Derald Wing Sue

    S34: Anger

    Derald Wing Sue is Professor of Psychology and Education in the Department of Counseling and Clinical Psychology at Teachers College and the School of Social Work, Columbia University. Dr. Sue’s research has focused on the field of multicultural psychology, multicultural education, multicultural counseling and therapy, and the psychology of racism/anti-racism.

  • Adam Szymczyk

    S23: On Protest

    Adam Szymczyk was the Artistic Director of Documenta 14, Athens and Kassel, from 2013 to 2017. Prior to his position at Documenta, he was Director and Chief Curator of the Kunsthalle Basel. He was also the co-curator of the 2008 edition of the Berlin Biennale, and he cofounded the Foksal Gallery Foundation in Warsaw, Poland. In 2011, the Menil Collection in Houston, Texas, gave him the Walter Hopps Award for Curatorial Achievement.

  • Mickalene Thomas

    S28: Angels

    Mickalene Thomas is a multidisciplinary artist whose work draws on art history and popular culture to create a contemporary vision of female sexuality, beauty, and power. Blurring the distinction between object and subject, concrete and abstract, real and imaginary, Thomas constructs complex portraits, landscapes, and interiors to examine how identity, gender, and sense-of-self are informed by the ways women (and “feminine” spaces) are represented in art and popular culture. Thomas received a B.F.A. from the Pratt Institute in 2000 and an M.F.A. from Yale University School of Art 2002. Her work is in numerous international public and private collections, including The Museum of Modern Art, New York; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; Art Institute of Chicago; MoMA PS1, New York; Brooklyn Museum of Art, New York; Studio Museum in Harlem, New York; Yale University Art Collection, New Haven, CT; and Hara Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo. Thomas has been awarded multiple prizes and grants, including the USA Francie Bishop Good & David Horvitz Fellow (2015); Anonymous Was A Woman Award (2013); Brooklyn Museum Asher B. Durand Award (2012); and the Timerhi Award for Leadership in the Arts (2010).

  • Sissel Tolaas

    S37: Breath

    Sissel Tolaas is an artist and scent researcher, focusing intensively on the topic to challenge the idea of the artwork as a physical object. Her pioneering project SmellScape, which first began in 1998 and continues today, has captured the unique scents of 52 cities across the globe. Tolaas has shown her work at museums and institutions across the globe including MoMA, DIA, and the TATE Modern. Her most recent exhibition, RE___, considers the politics of smell and opens at the ICA in Philadelphia in August 2022.

  • Jana Traboulsi

    S23: On Protest

    Jana Traboulsi is a designer, illustrator, artist, and teacher. Her work focuses on image making as critical commentary, often bridging between the personal and the socio-political. She is the art director of the pan-arab quarterly Bidayat and the Lebanese publishing house Snoubar Bayrout. In 2014 she co-founded Sigil with Khaled Malas, Salim Al-Kadi and Alfred Tarazi. Sigil is an Arab art collective that seeks to explore the marvelous and terrifying metamorphoses of the Arab landscape that is the stake and site of historical and contemporary struggles.

  • Daveen Trentman

    S29: Dependency

    Daveen Trentman is a Co-Founder and Partner of The Soze Agency, a creative agency that consists of artists, strategists, filmmakers, activists, storytellers, immigrants, refugees, organizers, formerly undocumented, digital wizards, masters of design, writers, LGBTQ people, parents, allies and accomplices, that create campaigns, projects and strategies to promote equity and bring attention to important issues. As the Production Director and Curator for The Museum of Drug Policy Pop-Up, Daveen oversaw the initiative as it toured in four countries. She has also led the Truth to Power, the Right of Return Fellowship, which investments in formerly incarcerated artists.

  • Julia Turshen

    S27: Gastrodiplomacy

    Julia Turshen is the bestselling author of Now & Again (named the Best Cookbook of 2018 by Amazon and an NPR ‘Great Read’), Feed the Resistance (named the Best Cookbook of 2017 by Eater), and Small Victories (named one of the Best Cookbooks of 2016 by the New York Times and NPR). She also hosts the IACP-nominated podcast called ‘Keep Calm and Cook On.’ In addition to having written for the New York Times, the Washington Post, Vogue, and Bon Appétit, amongst others, she sits on the Kitchen Cabinet Advisory Board for the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History. She is also the founder of Equity At The Table (EATT), an inclusive digital directory of women and non-binary individuals in food.

  • Nicola Twilley

    S45: Egg

    Nicola Twilley is co-host of the award-winning podcast Gastropod, which looks at food through the lens of history and science, and an award-winning contributor to The New Yorker. She lives in Los Angeles. GEOFF MANAUGH is the author of the New York Times-bestseller A Burglar’s Guide to the City, as well as the architecture and technology website BLDGBLOG. He regularly writes for The New York Times Magazine, The Atlantic, The New Yorker, Wired, and many other publications. He lives in Los Angeles.

  • Mike Tyka

    S24: AI - Artificial Imperfection

    Mike Tyka, PhD Biophysics is a researcher of machine learning at Google and a science artist who studies the structure and dynamics of protein models. He is the co-founder of ALTSpace, a shared art studio in Seattle, where he creates sculptures of protein molecules. Since 2015 Mike has also begun working with artificial neural networks as an artistic medium and tool. He created some of the first large scale artworks using Iterative DeepDream and collaborated with Refik Anadol to create a pioneering immersive projection installation using Generative Adversarial Networks called Archive Dreaming. His latest generative portraits series “Portraits of Imaginary People” has been shown at ARS Electronica in Linz, at the New Museum in Karuizawa (Japan) and at the Seoul Museum of Art.

  • Christina Varvia

    S43: Traces

    Former Deputy Director and Lead Researcher of Forensic Architecture (FA), Christina joined the FA team in 2014 and held a variety of roles, from leading investigations and overseeing research and the development of new methodologies, to setting up office structures. She was trained as an architect, and has taught a Diploma unit (MArch) at the Architectural Association (2018-2020). She was also a member of the Technology Advisory Board for the International Criminal Court (2018). Currently, Christina is a Lecturer of Forensic Architecture at the Centre for Research Architecture, at Goldsmiths, University of London, as well as pursuing her PhD at Aarhus University where her research focuses on biopolitics and imaging of the human body. She has received the Novo Nordisk Foundation Mads Øvlisen PhD Scholarship for Practice-based Artistic Research and is also a fellow at Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, where she co-curated the Forensic Architecture exhibition Witnesses. She is a founding member and the chair of the board of Forensis.

  • Caro Verbeek

    S43: Traces

    Caro Verbeek is an embedded researcher of olfactory heritage at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, the Rijksmuseum and International Flavours & Fragrances. Trained as an art historian she specialises in sensory art and education in museums, art academies and universities. She has 10+ years of experience curating exhibitions and conserving collections (prints, drawings and scents). Verbeek creates olfactory tours and interventions for museums (Rijksmuseum, Van Abbemuseum, Bijbels Museum, Amsterdam Museum) and is determined to alter the way we think about and document ephemeral history and to create a language and sensory skills to do so. Her PhD project “In Search of Lost Scents - Reconstructing the Aromatic Heritage of the Avant-garde’ was widely discussed in (international) media during the exhibition "Aromatic Art (Re-)constructed” dd. 23.02.2017 - 23.05.2017 where people were able to smell the Battle of Waterloo, an 18th century canal house, medieval prayer nuts (all created by IFF), and Futurist and Surrealist olfactory works of art.

  • James Victore

    S23: On Protest

    James Victore is an author, artist and designer to brave clients. As a creative thought leader, James is a sought after speaker known for his timely wisdom and impassioned views about creativity and its place in the world. He teaches how to illuminate individual gifts in order to find clarity and purpose. His work is represented in the permanent collections of museums worldwide.

  • Addie Wagenknecht

    S24: AI - Artificial Imperfection

    Addie Wagenknecht is an artist whose work explores the tension between expression and technology. Seeks to blend conceptual work with forms of hacking and sculpture, her work has been shown at galleries and museums in Vienna, Paris, Istanbul, London, and Eindhoven. In 2016 she collaborated with Chanel and I-D magazine as part of their Sixth Sense series and in 2017 her work was acquired by the Whitney Museum for American Art. Her work has been featured in numerous books, and magazines, such as TIME, Wall Street Journal, Vanity Fair, Art in America, and The New York Times. She holds a Masters degree from the Interactive Telecommunications Program at New York University, and has previously held fellowships at Eyebeam Art + Technology Center in New York City, Culture Lab UK, Institute HyperWerk for Postindustrial Design Basel (CH), and The Frank-Ratchye STUDIO for Creative Inquiry at Carnegie Mellon University.

  • Tricia Wang

    S40: The Third Web

    Tricia Wang is a tech ethnographer obsessed with designing equity into systems and the co-founder of CRADL, The Crypto Research and Design Lab, Tricia Wang. Prior to CRADL, she co-founded Constellate Data, a data consultancy helping organizations get the most out of their data by integrating data science and social science. With more than 15 years of experience working with designers, engineers, and scientists, she has a particular interest in designing human-centered systems. She advises corporations and startups on using “thick data"—data brought to light using digital-age ethnographic research methods that uncover stories and meaning—to improve strategy, policy, products, and services.

  • Wim Wenders

    S28: Angels

    Wim Wenders is a film director, writer, and photographer. He is also president of the European Film Academy, and an honorary professor at the University for Television and Film in Munich. He became a member of the Academy of Arts, Berlin in 1984, and holds four honorary doctorates from the Sorbonne, Paris (1989); the Theological Faculty of Fribourg University, Switzerland (1995); the University of Louvain, Belgium (2005); and the Architectural Faculty of the University of Catania, Italy (2010). He is considered one of the most important figures to have emerged from the “New German Cinema” in the 1970s and was a founding member of the German film distribution company “Filmverlag der Autoren.” He received the Cannes Film Festival’s Palme d’Or in 1984 for Paris, Texas, the Golden Lion at the 1982 Venice Film Festival for The State of Things, and won best director at the 1987 Cannes Film Festival for Wings of Desire. He has also been nominated three times for the Academy Awards for his films Buena Vista Social Club (2000), Pina (2012), and, most recently, The Salt of the Earth (2015).

  • Annabel J. Wharton

    S46: Scale

    Annabel J. Wharton is the William B. Hamilton Professor of Art History at Duke University. She served as the first female Vincent Scully Visiting Professor at the Yale School of Architecture in 2014 and as the Harry Porter Visiting Professor of Architectural History, University of Virginia School of Architecture in 2019. She received her Ph.D. at the Courtauld Institute, London University. Initially her research focused on Late Ancient and Byzantine art and culture (Art of Empire [Penn State] and Refiguring the Post-Classical City [Cambridge]). Then she began to investigate the effects of modernity on ancient landscapes, notably in Building the Cold War: Hilton International Hotels and Modern Architecture (Chicago, 2001). She has combined her interests in the Ancient and the Modern in her last two books: Selling Jerusalem: Relics, Replicas, Theme Parks (Chicago, 2006) and Architectural Agents: The Delusional, Abusive, Addictive Lives of Buildings (Minnesota, 2015). Architectural Agents considers material and digital buildings as agents that both endure pain and inflict it. Her new book, Models and World Making: Buildings, Bodies, Black Boxes (University of Virginia Press) was released at the end of 2021.

  • Amy Whitaker

    S40: The Third Web

    is an associate professor of visual arts administration at NYU Steinhardt, studying the frictions between art and markets and between politics and economics. Her work on fractional equity in art using blockchain models new structures of economic sustainability for artists and extends to policy proposals for redistribution. The Story of NFTs: Art, Technology, and Democracy, which Whitaker co-authored with Nora Burnett Abrams, will be published in 2023.

  • Stephanie M. Wildman

    S30: White Male

    Stephanie M. Wildman is the John A. and Elizabeth H. Sutro Professor of Law at Santa Clara University, where she previously served for thirteen years as Director of the Center for Social Justice and Public Service. She was the Founding Director of the Center for Social Justice at the University of California at Berkeley School of Law (Boalt Hall), and received the 2007 Great Teacher Award from the Society of American Law Teachers, the largest national organization of law school faculty. Her most recent books include: Race and Races: cases and resources for a diverse America (2015); Social Justice: Professionals Communities & Law (2013), Women and the law stories (2011). Her book Privilege Revealed: how invisible preference undermines America (1997) won the 1997 Outstanding Book Award from the Gustavus Meyers Center for Human Rights.

  • Carlin Wing

    S44: Team Sports

    Carlin Wing is an Assistant Professor in the Intercollegiate Department of Media Studies at Scripps College. She earned her AB in Visual and Environmental Studies and Social Anthropology at Harvard University, her MFA in Photography and Media at CalArts, and her PhD in Media, Culture, and Communication at NYU. Her areas of interest include media and communication; science and technology; material culture; globalization; performance; disability; and play, games, and sport.

  • Emma Witkowski

    S44: Team Sports

    Senior Lecturer Emma Witkowski joined the RMIT University Games Program in 2013. She has written widely on the area of esports and networked high performance computer game cultures, especially esports as media sports, gender and game cultures, mega-events and LANs, public play and live-performance (live streaming) embodiment and materiality, and digital/sensory ethnography and qualitative methods. More specifically, she is interested in how expertise in high performance networked computer game play (esports) is formed and performed from individual, interactional, and institutional frames of relational practice.

  • Patrick Wyman

    S36: Renaissance or Revolution?

    Patrick Wyman is a writer and the host of The Tides of History podcast. He earned his PhD in 2016 from the University of Southern California and in 2021 published his first book, The Verge: Reformation, Renaissance, and Forty Years that Shook the World.

  • Rachel Yehuda

    S34: Anger

    Rachel Yehuda, PhD, Professor of Psychiatry and Neuroscience, is the Director of the Traumatic Stress Studies Division at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine which includes the PTSD clinical research program and the Neurochemistry and Neuroendocrinology laboratory at the James J. Peters Veterans Affairs Medical Center. Dr. Yehuda is a recognized leader in the field of traumatic stress studies.