Didier Eribon (School of Philosophy and Social Sciences of the University of Amiens, Paris, France)

Didier Eribon

Didier Eribon is professor at the School of Philosophy and Social Sciences of the University of Amiens (France). He has for years been running a seminar at the École des hautes études en sciences sociales in Paris. He has also been Visiting Professor at the University of California, Berkeley for several years, and at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton. He has lectured in a great number of countries and, in the U.S., at The New School, University of Chicago, Harvard University, Yale University, New York University (NYU), theUniversity of Michigan at Ann Arbor, theUniversity of Virginia at Charlottesville, among others. He was one of the speakers at the Conference "Foucault in Berkeley. Twenty Years Later", held in Berkeley October 2004, with Leo Bersani, Judith Butler, Paul Rabinow, Hubert Dreyfus, Michael Lucey, and others. He is the author of several books already considered as "classics", including his Réflexions sur la question gay (trans. in English as Insult and the Making of the Gay Self) in 1999, Une morale du minoritaire in 2001, in 2005, Echapper à la psychanalyse (Escaping Psychoanalysis), D'une revolution conservatrice et de ses effets sur la gauche francaise (2007), and Retour à Reims (2009).

Between 1984 until rencently, Eribon wrote frequently forLe Nouvel Observateur, the famous French weekly magazine in which he reviewed books in the fields of philosophy and social sciences. He currently lives in Paris. He is the recipient of the 2008 Brudner.

Antke Engel (Institute for Queer Theory, Hamburg/Berlin, Germany)

Antke Engel is director of the Institute for Queer Theory situated in Hamburg and Berlin. She received her Ph.D. in Philosophy at Potsdam University (Germany) in 2001 and held a visiting professorship for Queer Theory at Hamburg University between 2003 and 2005. The focus of her work is on feminist and poststructuralist theory, on conceptualizations of sexuality and desire, and on the critique of representation. In her dissertation Wider die Eindeutigkeit. Sexualität und GeschlechtimFokus queerer Politik der Repräsentation [Against Uniqueness. Sexuality and Gender in the Focus of Queer Politics and Representation] (2002) Engel proposes a strategy of equivocation as a means of queer cultural politics. Apart from extensive teaching experience and public lecturing, Antke Engel has also been engaged as an activist, a cultural worker, and a magazine publisher – believing in the mutual inspiration of theory and politics. Recently she published Bilder von Sexualität und Ökonomie. QueerekulturellePolitikenimNeoliberalismus, [Images of Sexuality and Economy.Queer Cultural Politics in Neoliberalism] (2009). 

Tomasz Sikora (Pedagogical University of Cracow, Poland)

Tomasz Sikorais Assistant Professor at the English Department of the Pedagogical University of Cracow (Poland). In the years 2000-2006 he co- organized, together with Tomasz Basiuk and DominikaFerens, a series of conferences that introduced queer theory into the Polish academic landscape. Three volumes of essays collected some of the work inspired by the conferences: Odmianyodmienca/A Queer Mixture (2002), Parametrypozadania [Parameters of Desire] (2006), and Out Here: Local and International Perspectives in Queer Studies (2006). The collaboration between Sikora, Basiuk and Ferens found continuation in the creation and management of the online journal of queer studies Inter Alia (published in English and Polish), which has run six issues so far. Sikora also publishedVirtually Wild: Wilderness, Technology and the Ecology of Mediation (2003) and co-edited a number of volumes on American and Canadian studies, includingEmbracing Otherness: Canadian Minority Discourses in Transcultural Perspectives (2010) and Towards Critical Multiculturalism: Dialogues Between/Among Canadian Diasporas (2011). His main areas of research and publication include critical and queer theory, interdisciplinary American and Canadian studies, political philosophy, ecocriticism, and gothicism. He is also a part-time blogger, journalist and amateur photographer.

Lee Edelman (Tufts University, Medford, Massachusetts, USA)

Lee Edelman began his academic career as a scholar of twentieth-century American poetry. He has since become a central figure in the development, dissemination, and rethinking of queer theory. His current work explores the intersections of sexuality, rhetorical theory, cultural politics, and film. He holds an appointment as the Fletcher Professor of English Literature, and author of No Future: Queer Theory and the Death Drive (Duke University Press, 2004), Homographesis: Essays in Gay Literary and Cultural Theory (Routledge, 1993), Transmemberment of Song: Hart Crane's Anatomies of Rhetoric and Desire (Stanford, 1987).

Lynne Huffer (Emory University, Atlanta, Georgia, USA)

Lynne Huffer is Samuel Candler Dobbs Professor of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Emory University. She holds a PhD in French Literature from the University of Michigan (1989) and has taught at Yale (1989-1998) and Rice (1998-2005) Universities. Her fields of study include feminist theory; queer theory; gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender studies; modern French and francophone literature; literary theory; and ethics. Her published work is widely cited and reviewed, and she is frequently invited to speak at both academic and non-academic venues. She has won numerous awards, including two major teaching prizes at Rice University and, most recently, the Modern Languages Association Florence Howe Award for feminist scholarship in English (2011). She is the author of four books: Are the Lips a Grave? (2013); Mad for Foucault (2010); Maternal Pasts, Feminist Futures (1998); and Another Colette (1992); and numerous articles on feminist theory, queer theory, French literature, and ethics. Her personal essays and creative nonfiction have appeared or are forthcoming in Wild Iris Review, Blue Lake Review, Forge, Cadillac Cicatrix, Dos Passos Review, Eleven Eleven, Passager, The Rambler, Rio Grande Review, Southern California Review, Sou'wester, and Talking River Review. She has had writer’s residencies at the Ragdale Foundation in Lake Forest, Illinois, Brush Creek Foundation for the Arts in Saratoga, Wyoming, Hambidge Center in Dillard, GA, and the Camargo Foundation in Cassis, France. She is currently working on two book projects: a memoir, Sleeping Sickness and Other Queer Histories; and a philosophical exploration of eros as a modern, transformative concept of life. She is also working on a series of artists books in collaboration with the visual artist Jennifer Yorke.

Elisabeth von Samsonow (Academy of Fine Arts, Vienna, Austria)

Elisabeth von Samsonow, artist and philosopher, is Professor of Philosophical and Historical Anthropology at the Academy of Fine Arts, Vienna, and Visiting Professor at the Bauhaus University Weimar (2012-2013). She is a member of GEDOK Munich, foreign correspondent for Multitudes and editor of Recherche. Her teaching and research focus on collective memory, the relationship between art and religion, sacral and profane androgyny, and the dissolution of the modern self. Her work as an artist is concerned with the systematic and symbolic place of sculpture in the framework of contemporary multimedia. Her most recent publications include: Was ist anorganischer Sex wirklich? Theorie und kurze Geschichte der hypnogenen Subjekte und Objekte (Walther König, 2005), Egon Schiele: Ich bin die Vielen and Egon Schiele Sanctus Franciscus Hystericus (Passagen Verlag, 2010 and 2012), Anti-Elektra. Totemismus und Schizogamie (diaphanes, 2007). Samsonow’s artistic projects include: The Secrets of Mary Magdalene, Jerusalem, 2008; Performance/procession en honneur de l’Électre, Innerschildgraben/NÖ., 2009; Ariadne, sculpture pour le chemin de Dionyse, Mistelbach en Autriche 2011; Hippo Hypno Schizo Hoch Zeit, performance at the Musée Freud Bergstrasse, Elektra Belvedere Vienne, Expo GOLD curator: Thomas Zaunschirm; Samsonow Transplant Parasonic Orchestra. Von Samsonow is also translator and editor of several German editions of Giordano Bruno.

Boyan Manchev (New Bulgarian University, Sofia, Bulgaria/Berlin University of the Arts, Germany)

Boyan Manchev is a philosopher, Professor at the New Bulgarian University (Sofia) and at the Berlin University of the Arts (UdK Berlin). He is also former Director of Program and Vice-President of the International College of Philosophy in Paris. His actual research, which proposes the perspective of a radical materialism, is focused on the fields of ontology, philosophy of art and political philosophy. Manchev has lectured widely at European, North-American and Japanese universities and cultural institutions. He has organised and/or collaborated to number of projects, congresses and public forums dealing with philosophy, art and politics at the CIPh, EHESS and Palais de Tokyo (Paris), UTCP (Tokyo), Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Volksbühne and NBK (Berlin), ZKM (Karlsruhe), Tanzquartier, MUMOK, WUK and IWM (Vienna), PS1 and Apexart (New York), ICA, SGHG and SLS (Sofia), the Festival d’Avignon, among others. Manchev has also participated as theorist, dramaturge or performer in theater, contemporary dance and visual arts projects. He co-authored with Ani Vaseva the theatre pieces A Dying Play and Frankenstein, and curated the exhibition Out of Time at the Sofia City Art Gallery (March – April 2011). Manchev is the author of seven books and numerous book chapters, catalogues and other publications in various languages. His last book is Logic of the Political (Sofia: Critique & Humanism, 2012), and is the author of Miracolo (Milano: Lanfranchi, 2011), L’altération du monde: Pour une esthétique radicale (Paris: Lignes, 2009); La Métamorphose et l’Instant – Désorganisation de la vie (Paris: La Phocide, 2009); Rue Descartes 64: La métamorphose, ed. by B. Manchev (Paris: PUF, 2009); Rue Descartes 67: Quel sujet du politique?, ed. by G. Basterra, R. Iveković and B. Manchev (Paris: PUF, 2010); The Body-Metamorphosis (Sofia: Altera, 2007); The Unimaginable. Essays in the Philosophy of Image (Sofia: New Bulgarian University, 2003).

Jenny Sundén (Södertörn University, Sweden)

Jenny Sundén is Professor of Gender Studies at the School of Culture and Learning, Södertörn University, Sweden. Her research interests are primarily in digital media studies, cultural studies, science and technology studies, queer and feminist theory, affect theory, ethnography, and games. She is the author of Material Virtualities: Approaching Online Textual Embodiment (Peter Lang, 2003) and Gender and Sexuality in Online Game Cultures: Passionate Play (Routledge 2012, with Malin Sveningsson). Her edited volumes include Cyberfeminism in Northern Lights: Gender and Digital Media in a Nordic Context (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2007, with Malin Sveningsson Elm), Second Nature: Origins and Originality in Art, Science and New Media (AxlBooks 2011, with Rolf Hughes), and a special issue of the journal Somatechnics - “Somatechnical figurations: Bodies, Kinship, Affect” (Edinburgh University Press 2013, guest edited with Ulrika Dahl). Her articles appear in journals such as Ada: A Journal of Gender, New Media & Technology, European Journal of Cultural Studies, Feminist Media Studies, Games and Culture, and Somatechnics.

Susanna Paasonen (University of Turku, Finland)

Susanna Paasonen is Professor and chair of Media Studies and deputy head of the School of History, Culture and Art Studies at University of Turku, Finland. With an interest in studies of popular culture, sexuality, pornography, affect theory and Internet research, she is the author of Figures of Fantasy: Internet, Women, and Cyberdiscourse (Peter Lang, 2005) and Carnal Resonance: Affect and Online Pornography (MIT Press, 2011), as well as co-editor of Women and Everyday Uses of the Internet: Agency & Identity (Peter Lang, 2002, with Mia Consalvo), Pornification: Sex and Sexuality in Media Culture (Berg, 2007, with Kaarina Nikunen and Laura Saarenmaa), Working with Affect in Feminist Readings: Disturbing Differences (Routledge, 2010, with Marianne Liljeström) and Networked Affect (forthcoming by MIT Press, 2015, with Ken Hillis and Michael Petit). In addition, her research has appeared in journals such as Feminist Theory, European Journal of Cultural Studies, New Media & Society, Television & New Media and Sexualities. She serves on the editorial boards of Porn Studies, Sexualities, Journal of Scandinavian Cinema and Computers & Composition journals, as well as an executive board member of the Association for Cultural Studies (ACS).

Mirjana Stošić (Singidunum University, Belgrade, Serbia)

Mirjana Stošić is currently teaching at the Faculty of Media and Communications at Singidunum University courses such as Media Discourse Analysis, Media Events and Rituals and the Monstrous Other. Her book The Others of Culture – Monsters, Bodies and Spaces is forthcoming in 2015. She has written on the subject of teratology and monstrous geographies, literary theory, semiotics and history and theory of reading. She has edited the book Strategies of Reading (Fakultet za medije i komunikacije, Centar za medije i komunikacije, Beograd, 2014).

Ana Hoffner (Academy of Fine Arts, Vienna, Austria)

Ana Hoffner is an artist, theorist, performer and mentor based in Vienna. Hoffner understands the artistic field as a place of critical knowledge production, mainly with an interest in Queer Theory and Visual Cultural Studies. Through a performative artistic and theoretical practice as well as video, photography and installation Hoffner’s work questions persistently both production and presentation, research methods as well as the communication of (arts-based) research results. Hoffner has finished her PhD in Practice Program at the Academy of Fine Art Vienna where she is also teaching as Senior Lecturer. Recent Exhibitions include: 2014: “Vier mal zwölf” Neuer Kunstverein Wien; “Opening (Stadt)Parcour” Tanzquartier Wien; “Drowning and Swallowing this Text” LACE – Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions; 2013: “Was ist Kunst?... Resuming Fragmented Histories” Künstlerhaus Graz, steirischer herbst; “Up till now” GfZK Leipzig; 2012: “History Lessons” mumok Kino Wien; “Wisdom of Shadow” 4th Sinop International Biennial; 2011: “Performancenite” Viennafair Wien; 2010: “where do we go from here” Secession Wien; “performIC” Künstlerhaus Büchsenhausen Innsbruck; “This Is Not Walking, It’s A Getaway” PM Galerija Zagreb; “Mit uns ist kein (National)Staat zu machen” Kunstraum Niederösterreich Wien; “City of women” Kinodvor Ljubljana; 2009: “Performing the East” Salzburger Kunstverein.

TKV (Serbia)

TKV was born in Belgrade in 1988. She finished the Graphics High School, Department of Photography in 2007 in Belgrade. Graduated at the Faculty of Media and Communications, Singidunum University in 2012. Currently working towards her MA in Global Media Culture, at the Faculty of Media and Communications. Street art has been in the focus of her creative work since 2004. She lives and works in Belgrade. The artist uses public space as space for creative interventions. That is way she unites gallery spaces and public spaces in one. By intervening in the appearance of the public space, she exercises her right to the city and opens dialogue about who has right over public spaces and what kind of spaces allow changing.

David M. Halperin (University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, USA)

David M. Halperin is a classicist by training; his early publications were on Hellenistic Greek poetics and ancient Greek philosophy. He currently works in the history of sexuality, lesbian and gay studies, and feminist and queer theory, and he has played a role in the institutionalization of queer studies within the academy. He is the author or editor of eight books, including One Hundred Years of Homosexuality (1989), The Lesbian and Gay Studies Reader (1990), Saint Foucault (1997), How To Do the History of Homosexuality (2004), What Do Gay Men Want? (2008) and Gay Shame (2010). Among his courses is the notorious “How to be Gay: Male Homosexuality and Initiation,” which examines gay male sexuality and identity from the perspective not of sex but of social practices and cultural identifications, and is the topic of his forthcoming book of the same title.

Jelisaveta Blagojević (Singidunum University, Belgrade, Serbia)

Jelisaveta Blagojević works at the intersections of contemporary philosophy, media studies, gender and queer studies. She holds a Ph.D. in Gender Studies from the University of Novi Sad, and since 2006 she works as Associate Professor and Dean for Academic Affairs at the Faculty of Media and Communications, Singidunum University, in Belgrade. Since 2001 she works at the Belgrade Women’s Studies and Gender Research Center as a Coordinator and Lecturer, and since 2003 as a Visiting Lecturer at the Gender and Politics program at the Political Science Faculty, Belgrade University. She has been working as a Visiting Lecturer at different Universities in South East Europe. Among her major publications are Media/Power (editor, 2011), Kultura koja dolazi [Culture to Come] (2010), Hieroglyphs of Jealousy (2010), Zajednica onih koji nemaju zajednicu [Community without Community] (2008), Gender and Identity (co-editor, (2006).

Marina Gržinić (Slovenian Academy of Science and Art, Ljubljana, Slovenia / Academy of Fine Arts, Vienna, Austria)

Marina Gržinić is doctor of philosophy and works as researcher at the Institute of Philosophy at the ZRC SAZU (Scientific and Research Center of the Slovenian Academy of Science and Art) in Ljubljana, and teaches at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna. She also works as a freelance media theorist, art critic and curator. Marina Gržinić has published hundreds of articles and essays and several books. Among her latest works are Situated Contemporary Art Practices. Art and Activism from (the East) of Europe (2004), Une fiction reconstruite. Europe de l’Est, post-socialisme et rétro-avant-garde [Fiction Reconstructed. Eastern Europe, Postsocialism and Retro-avantgarde] (2005), Avant-garde and Politics: The Eastern European Paradigm and the War in the Balkasn (2005), Aesthetics of Cyberspace and the Effects of De-realisation (2005), and From Biopolitics to Necropolitics: The Metastasis of Democracy, Communications and the Mass Intellect (with Sefik Seki Tatlic, 2011). She is also editor of the journal Reartikulacija. Grzinic has been involved with video art since 1982. In collaboration with Aina Smid, Grzinic produced more than 40 video art projects, a short film, numerous video and media installations, several websites and an interactive CD-ROM (ZKM, Karlsruhe, Germany)

Jamie Heckert (University of Essex, UK)

Jamie Heckert is an activist, scholar and yoga teacher living in the south of England. He intended to study chemistry and environmental studies when we went off to do his liberal arts degree at Grinnell College (USA), but found himself focusing on psychology and gender and women‟ s studies. His postgraduate studies in sociology at the University of Edinburgh combined interviews and personal insight with feminist, (post)anarchist and queer theories to rethink (sexual) politics. This scholarly work has always been intertwined with the evolution of his activism: organising Pride events with increasing ambivalence, teaching sex education with joy and exploring how it feels to put anarchy into practice. Jamie attempts to do this, in part, by weaving together personal stories and cultural analyses with academic theory and spiritual wisdom to create consciously performative lectures, participatory workshops and engaging writing. As well as contributing to numerous scholarly and movement publications, Jamie is a founding member of the Anarchist Studies Network, co-editor (with Richard Cleminson) of Anarchism & Sexuality: Ethics, Relationships and Power (2011), editor of a special issue of Sexualities, and Love Life columnist for the web magazine Bella Caledonia. He loves to garden, to dance, to listen.