is director of the International Research Centre “Interweaving Performance Cultures” and of the International Research Training Group “InterArt” at Freie Universität Berlin. From 1996 to 2011 she was professor of theatre studies at Freie Universität Berlin where she is currently operating as senior professor. She is a member of the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities, received the “Berliner Wissenschaftspreis” in 2010, and was visiting professor in Oslo, Beijing, Los Angeles, New Dehli and many other places.

Research areas:
aesthetics and theories of art, theory and history of theatre, aesthetics of contemporary theatre, interweaving performance cultures.

Selected publications:
The Routledge Introduction to Theatre and Performance Studies, New York/London 2014; Performance and the Politics of Space. Theatre and Topology, New York/London 2013 (edited with Benjamin Wihstutz); Performing Ibsen. Performing Multiple Modernities, New York/London 2012 (edited with Barbara Gronau and Christel Weiler); The Transformative Power of Performance: A New Aesthetics, New York/London 2008.

is director of the Institute for Critical Theory at Zurich University of the Arts. After receiving both his PhD and habilitation in philosophy from Technische Universität Darmstadt, he lectured on the philosophy of art and aesthetics at Muthesius Hochschule für Kunst und Gestaltung as a visiting professor. Between 2004 and 2013 Mersch was professor of media theory in the Arts and Media Department of the University of Potsdam.

Research areas:
philosophy of media, semiotics, aesthetics, philosophy of art, philosophy of language.

Selected publications: Ordo ab chao – Order from Noise, Zurich/Berlin 2013; Sichtbarkeiten 1: Erscheinen, Zurich/Berlin 2013 (edited with Mira Fliescher and Fabian Goppelsröder), Posthermeneutik, Berlin 2010; Ereignis und Aura. Untersuchungen zu einer Ästhetik des Performativen, Frankfurt/M. 2002.

is Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He is the editor of Truth and Democracy (University of Pennsylvania, 2012), The Claim to Community: Essays on Stanley Cavell and Political Philosophy (Stanford, 2006), and Politics, Metaphysics, and Death: Essays on Giorgio Agamben’s Homo Sacer (Duke, 2005). His recent publications include “‘How Can It Not Know What It Is?’ Self and Other in Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner,” Film-Philosophy (2013), “On Public Action: Rhetoric, Opinion, and Glory in Hannah Arendt’s The Human Condition,” Critical Horizons (2013), and “The Disappearance of the French Revolution in Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit,” The Owl of Minerva (2013). He is currently completing a monograph on Stanley Cavell’s contribution to practical philosophy.

is Associate Professor in the department of Social Anthropology at the London School of Economics (LSE). He received his PhD at the University of Amsterdam in 2003. Before joining the LSE, he held a postdoctoral position at the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology in Halle/Saale. His first major ethnographic research project focused on the anthropology of borders in Georgia and in Kyrgyzstan; since then his empirical research focused on processes of religious change in the Caucasus and Central Asia.

Research areas:
social anthropology, anthropology of religion, border studies and religious conversion.

Selected publications:
Ethnographies of Doubt. Faith and Uncertainty in Contemporary Societies, London/New York 2013 (ed.); Conversation after Socialism: Disruptions, Modernisms, and Technologies of Faith in the Former Soviet Union, Oxford/New York 2009 (ed.); Defending the Border, Ithaca/London 2006.

is a freelance author, lecturer, consultant, and performance artist living in Hamburg. Holding a PhD in philosophy from the University of Braunschweig, she is currently lecturing at the universities of Flensburg, Vechta, and Lüneburg. She is also writing a book on the aesthetics of doubt.

Research areas:
The relationship between politics and aesthetics, philosophy of agency and recognition, pragmatism, philosophy of everyday life.

Selected publications:
»Ungeregelte Zweifel und politische Urteilsbildung bei Shklar und Rancière«, in: Deutsche Zeitschrift für Philosophie, forthcoming; »Critical Common Sense, Exemplary Doubting, and Reflective Judgment«, in: Confines of Democracy (ed. by Castillo /Faerna/Hickman, forthcoming), Alterität und Anerkennung, Baden-Baden 2011 (edited with Andreas Hetzel and Dirk Quadflieg); »Enjoying the Doubtful. On Transformative Suspensions in Pragmatist Aesthetics«, in: European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy, Vol. 4, No. 1, 2012, pp. 247–254; Spielräume des Selbst. Pragmatismus und kreatives Handeln, Berlin 2007; Die Kunst der Anerkennung. Eine Swiki-Konversation, Hamburg 2006 (with Antje Eske/Kurd Alsleben).

is Effie Marie Cain Regents Chair in Art at the University of Texas at Austin, where he directs the Center for the Study of Modernism. He received a BA in architectural studies from Harvard University and holds a PhD in art history from Yale University. He served as a visiting professor at Emory University and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, received fellowships from both the Guggenheim and the Getty Foundation, a was honored with the “Distinguished Teaching of Art History” award.

Research areas:
art history of the 19th and 20th century, art theory, art criticism.

Selected publications:
Ellsworth Kelly: New York Drawing 1954–1962, New York 2014; Between Sense and De Kooning, London 2011; Doubt, New York/London 2008; Critical Terms for Art History, Chicago 1996 (ed. with Robert S. Nelson; 2nd edition 2003).

is professor of American Literature and Culture at the University of Paderborn. She was a research fellow at Harvard University, visiting professor at Oglethorpe University, Atlanta, and visiting scholar at Princeton University and Columbia University. She is currently spending her sabbatical at Princeton University and is writing a book on the intersections between the philosophy of pragmatism and modernist literature.

Research areas:
American literature of the 19th and 20th century, pragmatism, modernist poetry, gender studies, black studies, cultural theory, music and visual culture.

Selected publications:
American Philosophy and Culture: A Textbook, Münster 2014 (ed.; forthcoming); Pragmatism’s Promise, Special Issue of Amerikastudien/American Studies, Vol. 58, No. 2, 2013 (ed. with Susanne Rohr); Revisiting Pragmatism. William James in the New Millennium, Heidelberg 2012 (ed. with Susanne Rohr); Subjekte des Begehrens: Zur sexuellen Selbstbestimmung der Frau in Literatur, Musik und visueller Kultur, Bielefeld 2009.

is Professor of German Literature and Cultural Studies at the Department for German Studies at Liebig University Giessen. From 2005 to 2007 he was Scientific Coordinator at the "Center for Advanced Studies in Literature und Culture" (ZFL), Berlin.

Research areas:
the analysis of the logic of dilettantism, questions of performativity, the paratextual framing of narratives and the interrelation between the concept of hybridity and the concept of grafting as models of culture.

Selected publications:
Die Geburt des Autors aus dem Geist der Herausgeberfiktion. Editoriale Rahmung im Roman um 1800: Wieland, Goethe, Brentano, Jean Paul und E.T.A. Hoffmann, München 2008; Kulturwissenschaft. Eine Auswahl grundlegender Texte, Frankfurt/M. 2008 (ed.); Dilettantismus als Beruf. Professional Dilettantism, Berlin 2010 (edited with Safia Azzouni); Impfen, Pfropfen, Transplantieren, Berlin 2011 (ed.).

is Professor of English, Classics and Comparative Literature at Louisiana State University and currently a visiting scholar at Columbia University. She received her PhD in comparative literature from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1982.

Research areas:
classical literature, rhetoric and philosophy; early modern studies; political theory.

Selected publications:
Doubt and Skepticism in Antiquity and the Renaissance, Cambridge 2012; “What Penelope Knew: Skepticism and Doubt in Homer’s Odyssey”, in: Classical Quarterly, Vol. 59, No. 2, 2009, pp. 295-316; Tragedy and Theory, Princeton 1988. She is currently co-editing a special edition of the journal Comparative Literature entitled Odyssey, Exile, Return and the Norton Critical Edition of Aristotle’s Poetics.