Alberto Pérez-Gómez was born in Mexico City where he studied architecture and practiced. He was awarded an M.A. and a Ph.D. by the University of Essex (England).  He has taught at London’s Architectural Association and at universities in Mexico, the US and Canada. In 1983 he became Director of Carleton University’s School of Architecture and in 1987 was appointed Bronfman Professor of Architectural History at McGill University in Montreal, where he founded the History and Theory Post-Professional (Master’s and Doctoral) Programs. He became Emeritus Professor in January, 2020.

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Alberto Pérez-Gómez’s research interests revolve around phenomenology, enactive cognitive science and hermeneutics in architecture. He continues to publish extensively in periodicals and chapters of books. A collection of his essays in two volumes titled Timely Meditations (RightAngle Intl.) was published in 2016. Over 25 years he edited with Stephen Parcell the collection in seven volumes titled CHORA: Intervals in the Philosophy of Architecture, including a total of 87 essays by 78 authors. His main books are still in print: Architecture and the Crisis of Modern Science (MIT Press, 1983) diagnosed the limitations of functionalist (instrumental) and formalist approaches in architecture; Polyphilo or The Dark Forest Revisited (1992) written in the form of an erotic tale, explored the emotional and cognitive dimensions of architectural space; Architectural Representation and the Perspective Hinge (1997), traced the history and theory of modern European architectural representation, locating the origins of contemporary instrumental techniques long before the so-called digital turn.

Built upon Love (2006) examined points of convergence between ethics and poetics in architectural history and philosophy, drawing conclusions for contemporary practice. His latest book, Attunement, Architectural Meaning after the Crisis of Modern Science (2016) examines the issue of atmosphere and its relationship to traditional concepts of place, harmony and stimmung, leading to an enquiry on the importance of narrative language in the generation of significant architecture.

Andrea Chiba is a Professor in the Department of Cognitive Science and in the Program for Neuroscience at the University of California, San Diego. Dr. Chiba earned her Bachelor’s degree from the University of California, Berkeley and subsequently taught high school math. She earned her Ph.D. in neuroscience from the University of Utah. She is Co-Director and the founding Science Director of the Temporal Dynamics of Learning Center, an NSF Science of Learning Center. The Center research is focused on the importance of time and timing in various aspects of learning, from the level of the synapse to social interactions. Chiba is involved in many Center projects that allow cross-species comparisons of learning and memory, bridging from rodent to human. 

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Dr. Chiba’s Laboratory is focused on gaining an understanding of the neural systems and principles underlying aspects of learning, memory, affect, and attention, with an emphasis on neural plasticity. Work in her laboratory is highly interdisciplinary, using a variety of neurobiological, neurochemical, neurophysiology, computational, robotic, and behavioral techniques.

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Dr. Chiba has authored dozens of papers and other publications and has organized and participated in international workshops to help educators and policy-makers understand how the science of learning provides a strong foundation for educational excellence.

Anya Hurlbert is Professor of Visual Neuroscience and Dean of Advancement at Newcastle University.  She co-founded Newcastle’s Institute of Neuroscience in 2003, serving as its co-Director until 2014, and now steers the Centre for Transformative Neuroscience.  She was a Marshall Scholar and holds degrees in physics, physiology, brain and cognitive science, and medicine from US and UK institutions.

Anya’s research interests are focussed on the understanding of human vision, especially colour perception and its role in cognition and behaviour; her work includes applications in imaging, lighting, visual art, and human health. She received the Newton Medal (the Colour Group GB; 2022) and has delivered the Edridge-Green Lecture (the Royal College of Ophthalmologists), the Richard Gregory Memorial Lecture (Bristol Vision Institute), amongst other keynotes.

Anya speaks and writes widely on colour perception and art, and has devised several science-based art exhibitions, including an interactive installation at the National Gallery, London. Anya serves on the Scientific Consultative Group of the National Gallery, where she was recently Scientific Trustee, the Board of Directors of the Vision Sciences Society, and the Rank Prize Optoelectronics Committee. She is Associate Editor of the Journal of Vision, a Trustee of the Science Museum Group and member of the Advisory Board of the National Science and Media Museum.

Arne Lowden is an Associate Professor at the Stress Research Institute at the Department of Psychology, Stockholm University and his research profile is "diurnal rhythms, light behavior, sleep". Arne is an active sleep specialist, but also a light specialist. He has primarily studied circadian disruption (jet lag) for shift workers and flying personnel. Furthermore, he has made studies of self-selected working hours, carried out experimental studies of nutrition and sleep and studied how alertness, learning and performance can be improved in school.

Recently, he has devoted himself to studies that include, among other things, effects on sleep and recovery based on bright light exposure in schools and offices, lighting in windowless rooms, in homes for the elderly, in mining and metal industry, night-time driving behavior of car drivers and the effects of snow on mood and alertness.

Arne is also active as a lecturer and runs work, among other things, within the non-profit association "Ljusinitiativet" which performs light measurements and describes how we can use good quality lighting at work and at home.

David Dorenbaum, MD (México, 1956), is a psychoanalyst, an Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Toronto, a member of the International Psychoanalytic Association and the Lacan Clinical Forum at the Austen Riggs Center in Stockbridge, Massachusetts. His essays
appear in various publications that have resulted from collaborations with artists and museums. He is a regular contributor to the newspaper El País. His most recent essay appears in the book Kings Road Mona Kuhn (Steidl, 2021).

This project is the result of a collaboration with photographer Mona Kuhn, and the Department of History of Art and Architecture at UC Santa Barbara. It lyrically reconsiders the realms of space and time within the architectural elements of the Schindler House, built by Austrian architect Rudolph M.
Schindler in 1922, in Los Angeles.

Frida Brismar Pålsson is devoted to the field of human flourishing, aesthetics and architecture. She founded the studio Paradis Produktion in 2015 with a mission to communicate the science behind how buildings - especially schools - and spatial experience shape our development, learning, health and interaction. The basis of her knowledge lies in the intersection of environmental psychology, aesthetics and cognition. 

Being brought up by two medical professors, she wrote her first paper on how neurological development interacts with space and movement 18 years old. After a university degree in philosophy and aesthetics, she turned to art studies and architecture. During her early professional years, she worked as a critic in architecture, design and crafts for the Swedish professional magazine FORM, and was the editor for books such as Nordic Architects (2013), See the Light (2012) and Nordic Designers (2011). 

Today, she regularly gives lectures, workshops and educational programs to architects, educational planners and policy makers about how school design affects learning outcomes and overall health. Her latest school design project, together with Brunnberg & Forshed Architects, was selected finalist in the New European Bauhaus Award 2022 among 2000 applicants for its inclusive design, “creating a sense of belonging”. Following this project, Frida wrote a book about the scientific evidence behind her school design thinking, presenting the outlines to the European Commission Directorate for General Regional and Urban Policy. 

Over the years, she has deepened and broadened her quest for understanding the connection between flourishing, aesthetic experience and the built environment. In 2022 she co-produced a symposium on Architecture and Spaces for Healing in Downing Hall, Cambridge University and moderated the neuro-architecture session with Mark A. Hewitt Donald H. Ruggles and Michael Mehaffy. 

Parallel to this, she is a practicing educator in the transdisciplinary field of philosophy, architecture and movement. In 2015-2016 she worked with children and teachers at the outset of the Kiruna city move due to mining relocation, using movement and creative dance to understand local architecture and the identity of place. In the very north of Sweden, where the all-encompassing white color of the snow (where bare ground can be seen only a few weeks every year) and the contrasts between light and darkness is always present, Frida and the children co-created the choreography Ark/Arc, which was performed as one of the very last events in the beautiful Kiruna City Hall before its demolition, and at the Ice Hotel in Jukkasjärvi. 
 

Galen Cranz is a designer, a consultant, and a Professor of the Graduate School in Architecture at the University of California at Berkeley, where she taught social and cultural approaches to architecture and urban design, and established the field of Body Conscious Design, which she taught for 30 years.

She received her Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of Chicago and was certified as a teacher of the Alexander Technique mid-career in New York. Cranz has lectured widely on her perspective on Body Conscious Design and taught her unique approach at craft schools in the US and abroad. Her
research on the chair has attracted print and media attention nationally and internationally. The Chair: Rethinking Culture, Body, and Design (Norton 1998) received a 2004 Achievement Award from the Environmental Design Research Association (EDRA).

As a designer she has been part of significant park design competition teams for Spectacle Island, Boston Inner Harbor; Olympia Fields, Chicago; Tschumi’s Parc de LaVillette in Paris, and lead designer for and winner of the St. Paul Cityscape competition. She holds two US patents for body-conscious bathtub and chair designs. In 2005-2007 she designed and built a residence for the elderly following universal design principles.

Johanna Enger holds a position as Assistant Professor and researcher in lighting design at Konstfack - University of Arts, Crafts and Design in Stockholm. At Konstfack she heads a workshop called the Perception Studio wich offers courses and tutoring to design and craft students at all levels.
With a background in industrial design and a MSc degree in Lighting Design she has dedicated over 15 years striving to bridge design practice and research in the combined knowledge area of light, colour, visual perception and spatial experience. Her experience spans from lighting design and light art practice, presidency of the jury of the Swedish Lighting Award to PhD studies in Environmental Psychology to the current position as teacher as well as research leader for the interdisciplinary research project Perceptual Metrics for lighting design.   

Johan Örn is an architectural historian and writer specialized in Swedish 20th century architecture and design. He earned his master’s degree in art history at Stockholm University in 1999 and his doctoral degree in architectural history at KTH Royal Institute of Technology in 2007. Since his graduation he has worked as preservationist, collections curator, and writer. Currently Johan holds a position as lecturer in theory and history at KTH School of Architecture and is curator of The Celsing Archive.

He is also associated with AIX Arkitekter AB. Johan is the author of several books, including The HI Group and the Return to Craft: Swedish Furniture and Interiors 1960 – 1966 (ArkDes /Carlsson 2017) and Sigurd Lewerentz: Architect of Death and Life (ArkDes/Park Books 2021). He cocurated Freestanding at 2018 Venice Biennale and Sigurd Lewerentz: Architect of Death and Life at ArkDes in 2021. He is also member of the Docomomo International Specialist Committee on Interior Design (ISC/ID).

Jenni Reuter (b. 1972) is Associate Professor in Architectural Principles and Theory at Aalto University. The core of her teaching is space making for a sustainable future. She is investigating the changing role and possibilities of the architect, new pedagogical models and the interplay between architecture and other disciplines of art. Since 2016 she has curated the international Architecture Speaks! lecture series in collaboration with the Museum of Finnish Architecture. 

Jenni also works as a practicing architect, both in her own office and together with architects Saija Hollmén and Helena Sandman. The group started their collaboration in 1995 with the Women’s Centre project in Rufisque, Senegal. At the moment they are designing dormitories for girls in the Iringa region in Southern Tanzania. In 2007 they founded Ukumbi NGO, the mission of which is to offer architectural services to underprivileged communities in need. 

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The works by Jenni Reuter as well as Hollmén Reuter Sandman Architects have been honoured with both national and international awards and have been published and exhibited widely, among others at the Venice Architecture Biennale several times.

Jenni Reuter has been lecturing and teaching in universities and institutions around the world. She carries several positions of trust and has taken part in national and international jury commitments.
 

Jenny Roe is Professor and Director of the Center for Design & Health in the School of Architecture, University of Virginia. An environmental psychologist and former head of Landscape Architecture for an international architectural practice, she writes, lectures, and consults for a wide range of academic and public audiences on human health-centered design for the built environment. She is an expert in restorative environments that support mental health including an important role for public parks and urban green space.  Her book on this subject, Restorative Cities: Urban Design for Mental Health and Wellbeing (Roe and McCay, 2021) explores a new way of designing cities that puts mental health at the forefront.  A companion book, Restorative Architecture: an Introduction to Environmental Psychology for Designers will be published in 2027 (Bloomsbury).

Roe has won numerous awards and research grants exploring a rich variety of architectural and landscape contexts and their psychological impact on people.   Her scholarly outputs include over fifty-five peer review publications including for the World Health Organization and the Lancet, the world’s leading medical journal.  She acts as expert advisor to the UK’s Design Council and advises various community organizations and foundations on strategies for promoting and implementing health-centered design.  

She is former Senior Research Leader in Human Wellbeing and Behavior Change for the Stockholm Environment Institute where she worked with environmental scientists and health professionals to find solutions to build sustainable, resilient, and healthy cities across the globe. Prior to academia, she was Principal Landscape Architect in a multi-disciplinary architectural practice in London called Sprunt specializing in social housing, educational and healthcare design.

John Axelsson, PhD, is a professor at Stockholm University and an associate professor at Karolinska Institutet. With my research I aim to increase the knowledge and awareness of how sleep in the rapidly developing 24-hour society affects health, cognitive processes and social behaviour. Our research is strongly interdisciplinary, and we have carried out research showing that the concept of ‘Beauty sleep’ is no myth, that sleep is important for motivational states and for how old we feel, and that sleep is important for how we fight infections. The research questions I find particularly intriguing and work on at present include: How do we adapt to long-term sleep loss? How fast does the brain wake up from sleep? And why are we so differently affected by sleep loss?

Jonas Kjellander, born in Sweden with a background as longtime resident in Asia and Latin America, is a senior architect and lighting designer at Sweco Architects, Sweden. Jonas has comprehensive experience in public and private developments involving building, interior and urban design.  He is the responsible architect and/or lighting designer for a wide selection of schools, higher education, kindergartens, activity centers, libraries, offices, retail, restaurants, sport facilities, residential buildings and historic environments, of which a considerable amount have been published nationally and internationally. His international experience comprises China, Malaysia, Panama, Mexico, Greece, Austria and Norway.

Jonas is devoted to design for social sustainability with the children's perspective and lighting as a major tool for pedagogy, inclusion and wellbeing. He has been awarded the Swedish Lighting Prize three times as well as the Nordic Lighting Prize and the Great Merit Prize by the Swedish Lighting Foundation. He is a frequent lecturer on the integrated fields of architecture, children and light.

Juhani Pallasmaa is a Finnish architect and Professor emeritus, Aalto University. Pallasmaa has written and lectured extensively across the world for over 45 years on architecture, the visual arts, environmental phenomenology, and cultural philosophy. 

Among the many academic and civic positions he has held are those of Director of the Museum of Finnish Architecture and head of the Institute of Industrial Arts, Helsinki. He established his own architect's office in 1983 in Helsinki. He has taught architecture at many universities around the world, including Yale University, The Catholic University of America in Washington, DC, the Washington University in St. Louis, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and Frank Lloyd Wright's Taliesin School. Pallasmaa has lectured widely in Europe, North and South America, Africa and Asia.

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Among Pallasmaa’s many books on architectural theory are: “The Eyes of the Skin – Architecture and the Senses” and “The Thinking Hand” as well as “Encounters 1 and 2”. His new book, “Rootedness: Reflections for Young Architects” was published recently by Wiley in London.

Pallasmaa was a member of the jury on the Pritzker Prize Committee for many years. He is a member of the Finnish Association of Architects, an honorary Fellow of the American Institute of Architects and of many other professional organizations.

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Kate Jeffery is a medically qualified neuroscientist researching the activity of cells in the brain that form the core of a place-knowledge system used for both navigation and memory. She is particularly interested in how the brain represents complexly structured space, with a focus on two main issues: three dimensional space, and the internal “sense of direction.” Recently she has been linking her research to the human experience of space, via collaborations with architects.

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She heads the School of Psychology and Neuroscience at the University of Glasgow, and is co-director of the electrophysiology company Axona Ltd, which makes high-density recording systems for behavioural neuroscientists.

She is also a Fellow of the Royal Society of Biology and the Royal Institute of Navigation.

Katharina Wulff, Ph.D., is Associate Professor of chronobiology and sleep at Umeå University in Northern Sweden where she established the Nordic Daylight Research Programme. She earned her Master’s degree in biology at the Free University Berlin in 1996, after returning from conservation projects at the Coastal Old Growth Forests of British Columbia, Canada. Wulff completed her doctoral thesis in human behavioural chronobiology at the Humboldt-University Berlin in 2001 and moved with a Marie Curie Individual Fellowship to Imperial College London, UK in 2002, bringing human aspects of sleep and circadian adaptation to the lab of prof. Russell Foster, while working in close collaboration with prof. Derk-Jan Dijk, Surrey Sleep Research Centre and Eileen Joyce, emeritus prof. of neurology at UCL.

Wulff moved to Oxford University in 2006, where she expanded her research on how sleep and circadian phenotypes impact physical and mental wellbeing. In 2019, the family relocated to Umeå in Northern Sweden to consider subarctic climate factors as means of temporal predictors that challenge human biology and necessitates thinking of a sunlight-adapted architecture. She recently served on the ‘Sleep, Circadian Rhythms and Mental Health Advisory Committee’ of the Wellcome Trust, and is a co-founder of the Light Collaboration Network (LCN), an past speaker of the Daylight Academy (DLA).

Dr.Kerstin Brismar is Professor since 1999 in Endocrinology/ Diabetes Research at Dept. of Molecular Medicine and Surgery, Rolf Luft Center for Research in Diabetes and Endocrinology, Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, Sweden.
She is the Co-founder of KI-Lifestyle4Health, a net-work of scientists and PhD students at Karolinska Institutet, Co-founder of Rolf Luft Foundation for Diabetes Research and Co-founder of the Wound Healing Society in Sweden. She has Published around 400 peer reviewed articles and five books. She has more than 50 years of clinical experiences, working as specialist in  endocrinology at Karolinska University hospital, and of research in the IGF system and in diabetes, how to prevent the disease and its complications including studies on the importance of lifestyle including diet, physical activity, sleep and stress. 

Kurt Hunker, FAIA is Chief Design Officer at Davy Architecture in San Diego, California. In this role he
is involved in all aspects of practice leadership, from firm-wide design direction to business and
project development to staff mentorship. He has worked on projects across the United States at
all scales and in a wide range of typologies. Many have received design awards from the
American Institute of Architects (AIA) and other organizations and have been published in state,
regional and national periodicals. He is a licensed architect in California and an NCARB
certificate holder.

Hunker is Professor Emeritus of the NewSchool of Architecture and Design, where he also
served as Graduate Program Chair, Dean and Provost in his 32 years of award-winning
teaching. Numerous former students have gone on to achieve professional and academic
success in their own right. In 2013 he was elevated to Fellowship in the AIA for his contributions
to architectural education. Currently Hunker is a member of the Board of Directors and President of the Academy of Neuroscience for Architecture, a world-wide advocacy group for
the promotion and application of brain research towards improving architectural design.

Kurt Hunker has been a guest lecturer for local and regional organizations, and has presented
papers at international conferences in Los Angeles, London, Vienna, Moscow and Jyvaskyla,
Finland, among others. Topics have ranged from the literature of architectural criticism to the
phenomenon of "spectacle" in contemporary high-rise building to the work of the great Finnish
architect Alvar Aalto. He received a Master of Architecture degree with Faculty Commendation
from the Graduate School of Design at Harvard University and a B.S. in Architecture from the
Ohio State University.

Mark Alan Hewitt, FAIA, is an architect, historian, and preservationist practicing in the New York area. Educated at Yale and the University of Pennsylvania, he has taught at leading schools of architecture throughout the U.S., including Rice, Columbia, and the New Jersey Institute of Technology. His design practice focuses on architectural conservation, history of the built environment, adaptive reuse, and traditional design for residential and institutional clients. He is active as an advocate for sustainable design, historic preservation, social justice, and housing equity for all humans. 

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Hewitt is the author of seven books and dozens of articles on architectural history, theory, and practice. He has published extensively on American architecture of the Progressive era, and has written numerous biographies of American architects. His latest book, Draw In Order to See, is the first to trace the history of architectural design using cognitive neuroscience and embodiment as a basis for analysis. 

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He is a Fellow of the American Institute of Architects, a recipient of the Arthur Ross Award for publishing on classical architecture, and a former NEH Winterthur Fellow. He has also won design awards for projects ranging from single family houses to churches. He continues to do research bridging the gap between the sciences, social sciences, and humanities as a cultural historian and critic.

Sarah Robinson is an architect, writer and educator whose practice is based in Pavia, Italy. Her writing and research is concerned with the many ways that the built environment shapes body, mind and culture. Her books, Nesting: Body, Dwelling Mind (William Stout, 2011), Mind in Architecture: Neuroscience, Embodiment and the Future of Design with Juhani Pallasmaa (MIT, 2015) and Architecture is a Verb, (Routledge, 2021) are among the first works to engage the dialogue between architecture and the cognitive sciences.

Holding degrees in both philosophy and architecture, she was the founding president of the Frank Lloyd Wright school of architecture board of governors.

She is Adjunct Professor in Architecture, Design and Media Technology at Aalborg University, Denmark, and she is a member of the scientific board of NAAD at IUAV, Venice. 

Satchidananda (Satchin) Panda, Ph.D. is a Professor at the Salk Institute in California, where his research focuses on the circadian regulation of behavior, physiology, and metabolism in model organisms and in humans. Dr. Panda discovered a blue-light sensing cell type in the retina which entrains our master circadian clock, affects mood, and regulates the production of the sleep hormone melatonin. Recently, he discovered that maintaining a daily feeding-fasting cycle – popularly known as time-restricted feeding (TRF) – can prevent and reverse metabolic diseases. Based on a feasibility study in humans, his lab is currently carrying out a smartphone-based study to assess the extent of circadian disruption among adults. Dr. Panda has received the Julie Martin Mid-Career Award in Aging Research, Dana Foundation Award in Brain and Immune System Imaging, and was a Pew Scholar in the Biomedical Sciences.

Tatiana Berger (Princeton University, UC Berkeley) is an architect, urban designer, entrepreneur, consultant and educator. She worked as an architect for over 35 years in the U.S., Portugal, Spain and Austria. Her built works, collaborations and community plans were published in international periodicals and presented in exhibitions in Europe and U.S.  Berger worked with Richard Meier in New York,  was Director of the Sochi Olympics 2014 project for ILF Engineers and project architect for Baumschlager-Eberle in Bregenz, Austria. From 1997-2004 she worked as project architect and manager in the office of Alvaro Siza in Porto. Berger's built work, designed in collaboration with architects named above, is found in Porto, Lisbon and Viana do Castelo in Portugal, and also in Austria, the Netherlands, China, Russia and the U.S. In addition to architecture, her experience in professional practice includes landscape design and urban planning, furniture/product design, and construction administration.     ​

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Berger is Founder and Director of Moving Boundaries Collaborative, which provides educational services and design/consulting services. She is guest lecturer at NAAD in Venice, ETH Zurich, NeuroArq Brazil, NAD Chile, and the BAC. She was Associate Professor of Architecture and Urbanism at the NewSchool of Architecture & Design in San Diego and Professor of Architecture at the Boston Architectural College. A member of the Advisory Council of the Academy of Neuroscience for Architecture (ANFA), she developed a new curriculum in architectural theory and studio with a focus on ANFA themes as faculty in the pioneering Neuroscience for Architecture Program at NewSchool. She is President of ANFA Portugal, a new international chapter. ​

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​She has lectured internationally on topics in architectural theory, urbanism and health, regionalism, and transdisciplinary design education. Berger has directed and curated multiple international conferences and courses in human-centered design. She is increasingly involved in research in dynamic sensory experience of the built environment informed by knowledge from the human sciences. 

Tim Ingold is Emeritus Professor of Social Anthropology at the University of Aberdeen.
Following 25 years at the University of Manchester, where he was appointed Max Gluckman
Professor of Social Anthropology in 1995, Ingold moved in 1999 to Aberdeen, where he
established Scotland’s youngest Department of Anthropology. Ingold has carried out
ethnographic fieldwork among Sámi and Finnish people in Lapland, and has written on
comparative questions of environment, technology and social organisation in the
circumpolar North, the role of animals in human society, issues in human ecology, and
evolutionary theory in anthropology, biology and history. He has gone on to explore the
links between environmental perception and skilled practice, replacing traditional models of
genetic and cultural transmission with a relational approach focusing on the growth of
bodily skills of perception and action.

Ingold’s current interests lie at the interface between anthropology, archaeology, art and architecture. His recent books include The Perception of the Environment (2000), Lines (2007), Being Alive (2011), Making (2013), The Life of Lines (2015), Anthropology and/as Education (2018), Anthropology: Why it Matters (2018), Correspondences (2020) and Imagining for Real (2022). His next book, The Rise and Fall of Generation Now, will be published by Polity Press. Ingold is a Fellow of the British Academy and the Royal Society of Edinburgh. In 2022 he was made a CBE for services to
Anthropology.

Tonino Griffero is full professor of Aesthetics at the Tor Vergata University of Rome. He is director of book series ("Percezioni. Estetica & Fenomenologia", Milan; "Sensibilia. Colloquium on Perception and Experience” www.sensibilia.it, Milan; “Atmospheric Spaces. Aura Stimmung Ambiance” https://atmosphericspaces.wordpress.com/ (Milan) and of the e-journal “Lebenswelt. Aesthetics and Philosophy of Experience” http://riviste.unimi.it/index.php/Lebenswelt/index. 

His research focused on hermeneutics (E.D. Hirsch jr., Emilio Betti, Eduard Spranger, Hans-Georg Gadamer), aesthetics, German idealism (Schelling), speculative pietism (F. C. Oetinger), philosophy of symbol and mythology, transitive imagination, spiritual body, 19th century German philosophy (Erich Rothacker, Odo Marquard, Joachim Ritter), New Phenomenology (Hermann Schmitz), aesthetics and phenomenology of atmospheres, ontology of quasi-things, philosophy of the lived body and collective feelings. 

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Books: Interpretare. La teoria di Emilio Betti e il suo contesto (1988), Spirito e forme di vita. La filosofia della cultura di Eduard Spranger (1990), Senso e immagine. Simbolo e mito nel primo Schelling (1994), Cosmo Arte Natura. Itinerari schellinghiani (1995), L’estetica di Schelling (1996), Oetinger e Schelling. Teosofia e realismo biblico alle origini dell’idealismo tedesco (2000), Immagini attive. Breve storia dell’immaginazione transitiva (2003), Il corpo spirituale. Ontologie “sottili” da Paolo di Tarso a Friedrich Christoph Oetinger (2006), Atmosferologia, Estetica degli spazi emozionali, 2010 (engl. Atmospheres. Aesthetics of Emotional Spaces, 2014), Storia dell'estetica moderna (2012), Quasi-cose. La realtà dei sentimenti, 2013 (engl. Quasi-Things. The Paradigm of Atmospheres, 2017), Il pensiero dei sensi. Atmosfere ed estetica patica (2016), Places, Affordances, Atmospheres. A Pathic Aesthetics (2020), The Atmospheric “We”. Moods and Collective Feelings (2021), Being a Lived Body. From a Neo-phenomenological Point of View (2024, forthcoming). 

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As co-editor: with G. Moretti, Atmosphere/Atmospheres. Testing a new paradigm (2018), with G. Francesetti, Psychopathology and Atmospheres. Neither Inside nor Outside (2019), it. Psicopatologia e atmosfere. Prima del soggetto e del mondo (2022), with M. Tedeschini, Atmosphere and Aesthetics. A Plural Perspective (2019).
 

Ute Besenecker is a design researcher and educator focusing on the impact of lighting on human perception, behavior and wellbeing in spatial environments. Her special interest is facilitating interdisciplinary research collaborations in architecture, lighting design, art, engineering, and the sciences to connect research, education, and practice.

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Ute’s background spans academic human factors research as well as professional practice in lighting design, policy development, product management, and architecture. She holds a Ph.D. in Architectural Sciences from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) as well as Master’s Degrees in Lighting from the Lighting Research Center at RPI, USA, and in Architecture and Design from Columbia University, USA, Leibniz Universität Hannover, Germany, and Polytechnico di Milano, Italy.

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Current academic activities in architecture and lighting design include teaching and supervision in related Master's and Doctoral programs at KTH, as well as grant-funded research projects related to indoor and outdoor lighting design.

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Ute is a part of the editorial team for LEUKOS, the journal of the Illuminating Engineering Society (IES) as an Associate Editor, and member of the International Association of Lighting Designers (IALD), the International Commission on Illumination (CIE), and the IES. In addition, she is founding member of the Light Collaboration Network for Research and Education (LCN), and part of the NAVET working group, a Stockholm hub to navigate between art, technology, and design.