Mert Aytaç

Mert Aytaç is an architect, exhibition designer, and design researcher. He studied Architecture at Istanbul Bilgi University. Later, he took his MSc in Architecture from Politecnico di Milano. He did internships in different countries with architects such as Peter Eisenman in New York, Abelardo Gonzalez in Sweden, Andrea Caputo Architects, and David Chipperfield in Italy. Currently, he lives in Berlin.

Benno Brucksch

Benno Brucksch is a designer, researcher, and lecturer with a focus on digital technologies and their sociopolitical implications. He studied at Burg Giebichenstein Kunsthochschule Halle (BA.) and the Bauhaus Dessau Foundation (MSc.). He is part of the Fabmobil team and a founding member of the collective Druckwerk.xyz. Since 2017, he has been a regular lecturer, at universities like the Berlin University of the Arts, HyperWerk in Basel, and University of Art and Design Linz.  

Laurence Douny

Laurence Douny is a Social Anthropologist who is specialised in the anthropology and history of materials and techniques with a focus on West African wild silks and indigo. Since 2001, she has conducted extensive field research across West Africa such as in Mali, Burkina Faso and Ivory Coast. Some of her research interests include Indigenous knowledge systems, science and technology; the anthropology and history of West Africa; museums and heritage studies; methods and methodologies in anthropology. Together with Karin Krauthausen and Felix Sattler, she curated the exhibiton Daoula / sheen. West African Wild Silk on Its Way at T AT Berlin, 2023.

Elizabeth Hong

Elizabeth Hong is an American designer and researcher based in Paris whose work explores raw materials and the traditions, history, and culture they embody. Her practice focuses on material experimentation as well as critical reflection around their place in local modes of production and a circular economy.

Anja Kaiser

Anja Kaiser is a graphic designer and artist. Until March 2023 she represented the professorship for typography at the Leipzig Academy of Visual Arts. Kaiser is concerned with the appropriation of resistant media and undisciplined graphic methods. In self-initiated projects, she negotiates feminist subjects and explores alternative narratives and porous tools in graphic design.

Rebekka Ladewig

Rebekka Ladewig is Visiting Professor in Art and Design at HfG Offenbach and Research Fellow in Media Studies at Bauhaus Universität, Weimar. Her research focuses on the intersection of art and art history, science studies, cultural techniques, and perception. Rebekka’s publications include Symmetries of Touch. Reconsidering Tactility in the Age of Ubiquitous Computing, Body & Society, Special Issue 28/1-2 (2022) (co-edited with Henning Schmidgen); Modell Hütte. Von emergenten Strukturen, schützender Haut und gebauter Umwelt, 2021 (co-edited with Karin Krauthausen); Milieu Fragmente. Technologische und ästhetische Perspektiven, 2020 (co-edited with Angelika Seppi), as well as the monograph Schwindel. Eine Epistemologie der Orientierung, 2016. She is the editor of Michael Polanyi’s main work Personales Wissen. Auf dem Weg zu einer postkritischen Philosophie to be published in German with Suhrkamp later this year and is currently completing a book on the cultural history of arrows. Rebekka is founding-editor of the journal ilinx. Berliner Beiträge zur Kulturwissenschaft and the book series ilinx-Kollaborationen, published by Spector Books Leipzig. She lives in Berlin and Birmingham.

Louise Mazet

Louise Mazet is a French-Dutch design researcher with a background in communication, philosophy and gender studies. She works at the intersection of theory and practice, such as integrating zine-making into academic research. She likes to find creative and feminist utopian approaches to address and dismantle power structures around her. Currently, her favourite colour combination is lilac and green.

Estela Mendes Ribeiro

Estela Mendes Ribeiro is a Brazilian graphic designer currently in the MSc COOP Design Research. She is engaged in projects questioning normalcy concepts interwoven with social, cultural, and political contexts. Counter-narrative opposed to patriarchal values are addressed in her practice-based research on body and representation through photography as visual argumentation.

Saloni Mhapsekar

Saloni Mhapsekar is an Indian UX Designer and Researcher based in Berlin. She works at Aumio a startup reimagining sleep and relaxation for children through audio-first content. Saloni is passionate about child-centered design with a hint of play and learning. Outside work, she advocates inclusion at the grassroots level with her side-hustle project TypedTales supporting the mental health of children with special needs in India.

Kristine Pace

Kristine Pace is a design researcher and architect. She has completed her MSc in Design Research and is currently a planning professional with Din l-Art Ħelwa, a heritage NGO in Malta, and a lecturer on a casual basis at the University of Malta. Her current research focuses on the tracing of multiple agencies within the Maltese urban fabric and community definitions of heritage.

Andrea Palašti

Andrea Palašti is an artist/educator based in Novi Sad [Serbia]. She holds an MFA in Photography and DFA from the  Academy of Arts, University of Novi Sad, as well as a PhD in Art and Media Theory, University of Arts in Belgrade. Her projects are made visible through photo-exhibitions, historical and scientific research, illustrative lectures, and participatory workshops as means to encourage a nuanced understanding of our world. Currently she is researching the connections between Bauhaus and Bumblefoot in penguins as a BauhausLab 2023 fellow, for which she is supported by the Culture Moves Europe grant of the Goethe-Institut.

Patricia Ribault

Patricia Ribault is a Professor of Performative Design Research at the weißensee kunsthoschule berlin since 2020 and Principal Investigator of the Cluster of Excellence Matters of Activity at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. Prior to that, she was a Junior Professor of the History and Theory of Gestaltung at the Institute for Cultural History and Theory (HU) since 2015. She also leads a Master seminar at the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris. She began her career by studying applied arts and ceramics in Paris and by learning glass blowing in England and Murano. Her research focuses on the body, gesture, work, technique, art, industry, and design, and, more recently, on posthumanist studies.    

Maxie Schneider

Maxie Schneider (Dipl.-Ing. Arch) is an architectural design researcher. Her work combines physical and digital prototyping to develop textile building techniques and fibre-based material systems. Between 2017 and 2023 she has been investigating adaptive facades through the integration of smart materials within the RnD project ADAPTEX at the Weißensee school of art and design, department of textile and material design. With the project Polymorph Textility she continues her practice-based research on adaptive textile structures and morphologies of softness and elasticity as part of the PhD program (PEP) at TU Berlin and the Cluster of Excellence Matters of Activity. Currently she is a research associate in the Project Architectural Yarn at Matters of Activity in collaboration with the Max Planck Institute of Colloids and Interfaces where she investigates continuous and reconfigurable textile building materials.

Åsa Ståhl

Åsa Ståhl (Ph.D.) is a design researcher and a senior lecturer in design at Linnaeus University, Sweden. Her work combines participatory design with feminist technoscience in explorations and speculations of how to make and know liveable worlds. Ståhl currently leads the research project Holding Surplus House and the research environment Design after Progress: reimagining design histories and futures. Together with Kristina Lindström she runs the Un/Making Studio.

Paula Strunden

Paula Strunden is a transdisciplinary VR artist with a background in architecture. She studied in Vienna, Paris, and London and worked at Raumlabor Berlin and Herzog & de Meuron Basel. Since 2020, she conducts her design-led PhD as part of the European research network Communities of Tacit Knowledge (TACK) under the direction of Angelika Schnell at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna. Her room-scale extended reality (XR) installations have been exhibited at the Royal Academy of Arts London and Eye Filmmuseum Amsterdam, and nominated for the Dutch Film Award Gouden Calf in the category Best Interactive (2020). Paula is co-founder of the educational initiative Virtual Fruits and leads workshops and summer schools at public universities and cultural institutions as part of her associate position at Store Projects. Through her internet platform www.xr-atlas.org, she advocates an interdisciplinary historiography of virtual technologies and teaches courses at the Architectural Association London and the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna.

Vivien Tauchmann

Vivien Tauchmann is a designer, researcher, and educator exploring sociopolitical relations through embodied and kinaesthetic approaches. She graduated with a master's in Social Design from Design Academy Eindhoven. Besides her own projects and collaborations, she is working with several labour justice organisations such as the Clean Clothes Campaign, and is visiting lecturer amongst others at Bauhaus-Universität Weimar and the Royal Conservatoire Antwerp. Currently, she is based in Leipzig and Istanbul. 

Angelika Waniek

Angelika Waniek is a performance artist whose work is characterized by her interest in the political perspectives on performative and visual practices. By working at the interface of knowledge and experience transfer, She uncovers the potential of joint actions. Her emphasis is on cultural and historical narratives, including body images and how they are presented in the media. Angelika studied media art at the Academy of Visual Arts in Leipzig and Fine Arts at the Muthesisus Academy of Art in Kiel.