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.