Oscar Abdulla is a London-based curator and photographer of British, Zanzibari and Yemeni heritage currently working as the Assistant Curator at Chisenhale Gallery, London. Formally trained as a documentary photographer, Abdulla’s research and visual art practices unsettle linear temporality in the colonial archive to challenge hegemonic histories and their pervasive influence on contemporary politics, with a particular focus on former British colonies and protectorates across East Africa and the Middle East. In his time at Chsienhale Abdulla has supported the delivery of the gallery’s exhibition and publishing programmes, collaborating closely with artists including Lotus Laurie Kang, Joshua Leon, Simnikiwe Buhlungu,Bruno Zhu and Claudia Pagès Rabal.

Abeer Almahdi is an Egyptian-Syrian creative and researcher based in London. She’s a recent MA from McGill University, currently completing a law conversion program at SOAS, University of London. Through her MA thesis, titled “Meilleur Souvenir!”: Cultural Mythologies of Egyptian Womanhood in the Colonial Postcard,” she built an archive of colonial postcard photography to analyse these images in relation to colonial cultural mythologies.

Her research interests include colonial popular culture, the production of colonial cultural mythologies in relation to images, and the instrumentalisation of Egyptian antiquity during European colonisation/imperialism. Abeer is particularly passionate about discussions on artefact repatriation, reforming antiquities laws, tackling the black market for antiquities, and decolonising museums.

Abeer’s research approach is inherently multidisciplinary, inspired by her professional experiences in journalism, research, equity education, and her creative pursuits in visual arts and photography. Therefore, Abeer primarily considers herself a storyteller, passionate about decolonising knowledge production and making research more accessible.

Juliana de Assis Beraldo is a PhD candidate in Comparative Literature at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ), Brazil. Her research explores how Latin American contemporary art engages with the archives of naturalism, focusing on both naturalist travelers and 19th-century literary-artistic naturalism. Beraldo was a Visiting Researcher (2023-2024) at the Department of Spanish and Portuguese at New York University (NYU), where she conducted bibliographical research for her dissertation. Her master’s thesis examined the intersections between art, philosophy, and queer theory. She is also a member of the Advanced Program of Contemporary Culture (PACC/UFRJ) where multidisciplinary research forums and workshops by artists, education professionals and researchers are held to exchange methodologies between different fields of the arts and humanities for writing practices, artistic production and studies concerned with contemporaneity. Beraldo’s primary research interests include Latin American contemporary art, feminist and queer criticism, and decolonial studies.

Sean Cham (he/him) is an artist, curator, and historian based between London and Singapore.

He is completing a PhD in History of Art (2021-5), on a Collaborative Doctoral Partnership between London’s National Gallery and Birkbeck. His doctoral work ‘Between Art and Empire’ examines the legacies of the British Empire in the Gallery, and aims to write back the history of colonised people associated with the institution.

In his artistic practice, Cham works at the intersections of photography, performance, and installation. His interdisciplinary and critical practice is concerned with histories and built environments; particularly considering ideas around authorship, contestation, archival gaps, colonial legacies, and migration.

Cham’s works were exhibited in Royal Photographic Society, Bristol (2025), Fabrica, Brighton (2024), DECK, Singapore (2020, 2015), B-Part, Berlin (2020), CICA Museum, Gimpo (2018). He also participated in the Venice Architecture Biennale (2021), Addis Foto Fest (2018), and Landskrona Foto Festival (2018). He was shortlisted for several awards, including: OD Photo Prize 2024; French + Singapore Photographic Arts Awards 2019; Invisible Photographer Asia Awards 2018; and a nominee for World Press Photo 6×6 Global Talent. Cham was also an Associate Creative at DECK, and one of the curators for the 9th Singapore International Photography Festival.

Sria Chatterjee is Head of Research Initiatives at the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art in London, where she also directs the multi-year research project, Climate & Colonialism. Sria is currently finishing a book on the relationship between art and the long environmental and agrarian crisis. Her writing has been published widely in academic journals, museum catalogues and public facing venues. Her work has been supported by fellowships and grants by the Max-Planck, the Swiss National Science Foundation, the Terra Foundation among others. In 2020, she founded and led the award-winning digital project, Visualizing the Virus. In Spring 2024, she was a fellow at the Davis Center for Historical Studies at Princeton University. Sria received her PhD from the Art & Archaeology department at Princeton University. Sria serves as Editorial Advisor for British Art Studies and as a Steering Group Member for British Art Network. She served as a judge for the Pen Hessell-Tiltman Prize for historical non-fiction in 2023.

As Director of Curatorial Affairs at the Mead Art Museum at Amherst College (MA, US), Lisa Crossman’s work centers exhibition making as a transformative process with the potential to be part of institutional change. Her curatorial practice foregrounds collaboration with artists, students, faculty, and guest curators, among others. Prior to this position, she was Curator at the Fitchburg Art Museum and worked with the Cultural Agents Initiative at Harvard University. Lisa holds a PhD from Tulane University, specializing in the history of modern and contemporary art of Latin America, with a focus on themes relating to nature and ecology. Her curatorial projects explore the visual arts as part of interdisciplinary conversations, with current projects focused on decentering national and colonial narratives through work with a range of collections and artists.

I am an artist, urban designer, and researcher based in Liverpool, dedicated to preserving and reimagining LGBTQ+ spaces and heritage. I created Queer Places, a digital archive mapping the history of LGBTQ+ spaces, events, and communities. Through 3D modelling, sculpture, illustrations, and storytelling, I bring to life the vibrant histories of these often-overlooked places.

Outside of Queer Places, I teach architecture design at the University of Liverpool and work as an urban designer in the city. My background in architecture informs my work, allowing me to explore the connections between space, memory, and identity. Queer Places highlights the cultural significance of LGBTQ+ spaces while advocating for their recognition in urban environments. Collaborating with communities and organisations, I ensure the archive reflects authentic lived experiences and fosters deeper connections with these spaces and their stories.
Since launching Queer Places, I have contributed to exhibitions, workshops, and talks that challenge traditional approaches to heritage. By prioritising creativity, accessibility, and storytelling, my work celebrates marginalised histories in dynamic and engaging ways.

Preserving LGBTQ+ history is not just about honouring the past—it’s about shaping a future where these stories remain visible, celebrated, and valued in our collective memory and urban landscapes.

Kimberly Forero-Arnías(she/ella) is white, US-born artist with a vibrant Colombia heritage working at the border of experimental film and animation. Her work has screened across the United States at festivals including Flex Fest, Ann Arbor, Chicago Underground, and Black Maria, as well as internationally at Rotterdam, Images Festival and the Edinburgh International Film Festival. She is the recipient of various awards including the SMFA Traveling Fellowship, Massachusetts Cultural Council Fellowship and the Film Studies Center Fellowship at Harvard. She currently lives and works in Boston, MA on the colonized Wôpanâak (Wampanoag) and Massachusett Tribe land.

Lucia Halder (*1981) has been head of the Photography Collection at the Rautenstrauch-Joest Museum (RJM) in Cologne since 2015. Halder’s work focuses on the history, semantics and political significance of historical and contemporary photographs. She studied history and art history and specialises in the accessibility and displayability of colonial image archives and (in)visibility. In 2018, together with Internationale Photoszene Köln, she developed the Artist Meets Archive residency programme.
Since 2020 she has conceived and realised the exhibition series Counter Images | Gegenbilder. The series takes a critical look at the medium of photography and offers international artists and curators a platform for decolonial approaches and counter-positions to familiar modes of representation.
Halder is chair of the History and Archives section of the German Photographic Society (DGPh) and a member of the editorial team of the blog www.visual-history.de. Since 2023 she is a member af the artistic board of Photoszene Köln.

Alicia Hughes (she/her) is Sloane Lab Project Curator at the British Museum, where she works on histories of collecting with a focus on the transatlantic in the long eighteenth century. She is an interdisciplinary art historian, with an interest in historical collaborative artistic practices between art and science. Her writing has been published widely in academic journals, including The British Art Journal, Art, Antiquity & Law, and the Journal for Eighteenth Century Studies. Her work has been supported by fellowships and grants by the Max-Planck and the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art among others. Alicia received her PhD in History of Art from the University of Glasgow as part of the Leverhulme Trust-funded ‘Collections: an Enlightenment pedagogy for the 21^st century.’ She previously served on the Association for Art History DEC Project Board (2016-21). Prior to this she worked with contemporary artists as Collections & Exhibition Manager at Salsali Private Museum in Dubai and was an Assistant Curator at The Hunterian, University of Glasgow.

As Sloane Lab Project Curator at the British Museum (2022-present), she has developed new cross-collection provenance research in the collection of Hans Sloane and led on participatory work and collaborations that address histories of colonialism within the collection. She developed the co-created National Programmes touring exhibition ‘For the curious and interested’ (2024) in Northern Ireland and Wales, which encouraged community groups to engage in conversation around the legacy of Sloane today.  She led the development of a new display in the Enlightenment Gallery at the BM (Sept 2024), that foregrounds new critical perspectives on Sloane’s legacy, particularly his links to transatlantic slavery.

Born in Mexico City in 1973, lives between Mexico and Berlin, Germany.
Her diverse use of photographic language—ranging from anonymous, intervened photographs to graphic testimonies and reflections on extinction and memory—reveals a continuous quest to understand time, loss, absence, identity, and memory. Employing appropriation strategies and visual exploration, her work intricately connects images with the viewer’s perception, uncovering hidden relationships.

She studied digital photography at the Grisart School of Photography in Barcelona, Spain, the Talleres Creativos del Centro de la Imagen in Mexico City, and earned a photography degree from the Cabañas Cultural Institute in Guadalajara, Jalisco. With over 40 group exhibitions and 20 solo exhibitions, her work has been showcased in Mexico, Spain, Italy, Chile, the Philippines, and other countries. Notably, her projects have been exhibited at prestigious venues such as the Centro de la Imagen in Mexico City, the Museo Álvarez Bravo in Oaxaca, ISELP in Brussels, and Cuadro 22 Gallery in Chur, Switzerland.

She is member of the National System of Creators of Mexico since 2012, Cecilia has received numerous awards and scholarships. She currently collaborates on educational projects centered around contemporary photographic creation while continuing to develop her own projects.

Onyeka Igwe is a London born, and based, moving image artist and researcher. Her work is aimed at the question: how do we live together? Not to provide a rigid answer as such, but to pull apart the nuances of mutuality, co-existence and multiplicity. Onyeka’s practice figures sensorial, spatial and counter-hegemonic ways of knowing as central to that task. For her, the body, archives and narratives both oral and textual act as a mode of enquiry that makes possible the exposition of overlooked histories. She has had solo/duo shows at  MoMA PS1, New York (2023), High Line, New York (2022), Mercer Union, Toronto (2021), Jerwood Arts, London (2019) and Trinity Square Video, London (2018). Her films have screened in numerous group shows and film festivals worldwide. She participated in the group show ‘Nigeria Imaginary’ in the national pavilion of Nigeria at the 60th Venice Biennial in 2024.

Sharon Liu is a Curatorial Assistant at the Mead Art Museum, Amherst College. Her work focuses on ways to engage local communities through curatorial projects, study groups, and zine making. Her recent exhibitions include “Laborious Hands: Printed Matter(s) from China, Malaysia, Mexico, the Soviet Union, and the United States” (Frost Library, Amherst, 2024), “Part of an Impossible Task: Michael Rakowitz” (Mead Art Museum, Amherst, 2024) and “Retrieving and Revitalizing: From Yurakucho to Yangon” (YAU Studio, Tokyo, 2023). Besides exhibitions, she has written for magazines, including Artforum China, CAFA Art Info, and Ocula. She graduated with a bachelor’s degree in Art History and Math from Wellesley College in 2017 and obtained a master’s degree in East Asian Studies from Yale University in 2020. She was a research student at Tokyo University of the Arts from 2022 to 2023, where she conducted art history research funded by the Ishibashi Foundation.

Nina Mangalanayagam is an artist and Senior Lecturer in Photography at HDK-Valand, University of Gothenburg, Sweden. Her research and visual practice explore hybridity, postcolonial histories and decolonial image making. She is currently working on a collaborative research project with Louise Wolthers at the Hasselblad foundation, ‘Photography and the Glitch’, which includes the co-curated exhibition and publication Bugs and Metamorphosis (2025). She is also working on a three-year artistic research project, “Colouring-In Sweden,” funded by the Swedish Research Council (Vetenskapsrådet), focusing on stories of women in Swedish colonial histories.

She has a PhD from Westminster University and a MA in Photography from the Royal College of Art, UK. Mangalanayagam exhibits and publishes her practice and researchwidely internationally. Recent publications include co-editing with Louise Wolthers the special journal issue of Philosophy of Photography on Photography and the Glitch (2023) and co-editing the section on Decolonial Practices in The Routledge Companion to Global Photographies (2024) together with Emese Mucsi.

I am a visual artist, creative producer, freelance editor, and writer with a background in publishing, bookselling, and producing. My creative practice is rooted in breathing life into the dry bones of archive material and is deeply inspired by the critical fabulation practice of the author Toni Morrison and scholar Sadiya Hartman, and others – Bayo Akomolafe, Isaac Julien, Archie Moore. As an artist I aim to shed light on stories that expand our understanding of histories, people, and the world-building ontologies we might learn from the past.

Recent projects include Fugitives in the Archive (2024, Spike Island), a short film that synthesises historical research, archive material, and poetry into a visual meditation on the history of runaway enslaved persons in 18th century Britain; Conversations with Baldwin (2023 – 24, Words of Colour & partners), an arts festival I curated and produced celebrating the centenary of the writer James Baldwin; Exhibition Researcher, My Words, (2022, Museum of Colour) where I conducted research for the digital exhibition My Words, which showcased 250 years of poets of colour in Britain; Historical Fiction Writer, wherein I have written a historical mystery novel for young adults set in 18th century Bristol (work-in-progress).

Jyoti Mistry is Professor in FILM at Valand Academy and works in film both as a research form and as a mode of artistic practice. She has made critically acclaimed films in multiple genres and her installation work draws from cinematic traditions but is often re-contextualized for galleries and museums that are outside of the linear cinematic experience. Select film works include: When I grow up I want to be a black man (2017), Impunity (2014), 09: 21:25 (2011), Le Boeuf Sur Le Toit (2010) and I mike what I like (2006).

Select publications include: we remember differently: Race, Memory, Imagination (2012) a collection of essays inspired by her film which explores the complexity of racial identity in South Africa. Gaze Regimes: Films and Feminisms in Africa (2015). Places to Play: practice, research, pedagogy (2017) explores the use of archive as an exemplar entry to rethink colonial images through “decolonised” film practices. She has co-edited a special issue of the Journal of African Cinema: “Film as Research Tool: Practice and Pedagogy” (2018).

She has taught at University of the Witwatersrand (South Africa), New York University; University of Vienna; Arcada University of Applied Science Polytechnic in Helsinki, Nafti in Accra and Alle Arts School at University of Addis Ababa. Mistry has been artist in residence in New York City, at California College of Arts (San Francisco), Sacatar (Brazil) and a DAAD Researcher at Babelsberg Konrad Wolf Film University (Berlin). In 2016-2017 she was Artist in Residence at Netherlands Film Academy. In 2016 she was recipient of the Cilect (Association of International film schools) Teaching Award in recognition for innovation in practices in film research and pedagogy.

E.M. Parry is a trans*-disciplinary artist and award-winning designer, working across scenography, performance, drag, and visual art. Their work has been seen in the West End, international opera houses, pubs, clubs, ships, cabarets, museums and haunted basements. They are an associate artist at Shakespeare’s Globe, a previous artist-in-residence at Triangle LGBTQ+ Cultural Centre, and have shown their work at the V&A, Prague Quadrennial, Fix 23 Live Art Festival, Belfast, and hARTs Lane Gallery where they had their first solo exhibition, Closet Dramas, in 2024. They trained at Wimbledon, Motley, and recently completed a PhD at the University of Brighton, exploring queer and trans history through creative practice. Current work includes commissions from the Museum of London and Greenwich Maritime Museum, collaborating with queer communities to create artworks and installations in conversation with the collections. Conference appearances include Performance Studies International, TAPRA, and Queer Collections & Heritage Network. Academic publication includes contributions to Gender on the Transnational Early Modern Stage (Toronto University Press), Global Gender Nonconformity, (Bloomsbury) and Performance & Communities (Intellect). They work with, through and for queer bodies, squinting at history, flirting with ghosts and the things that go bump in the margins.

Simon Popple is Lead for the Digital Creativity and Cultures Hub at the University of Leeds and Senior Lecturer in Photography and Digital Culture in The School of Media and Communication. His research encompasses archives, community histories, digital storytelling and creative archival practices. He has led several large projects on community archiving and teaches and researches archival histories and critical theory. He has published widely on archives and community histories.

Nurul Huda Rashid is a researcher, visual artist, and writer. Her projects are anchored in articulations of the female figure through explorations of the image in photography and the archives, focusing on Southeast Asia collections and images from the Muslim world(s). Bridging perspectives from visual and archival methods alongside feminists and decolonial theories, Nurul activates through annotation as pedagogy for the collective and community. She has collaborated on a Nusantara digital archive in Pulau Something (2021) with cultural workers in Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, the Philippines, and Taiwan; co-facilitated a decolonial pedagogical camp, New Curriculum for Old Questions (2019) with the National University of Singapore (NUS) Museum; and co-created programmes with arts spaces and community groups. Having completed her PhD in the Cultural Studies in Asia Programme in Singapore where she studied the algorithmic representation of Muslim women images, Nurul is currently a postdoctoral researcher at Leiden University in the Netherlands.

Aída Esther Bueno Sarduy holds a PhD in Social and Cultural Anthropology from the Complutense University of Madrid and is a filmmaker. Her research work has focused on religions of African origin in Cuba and Brazil, approached from a gender perspective and from feminist theory and criticism. Currently, she studies the processes of buying and selling of enslaved people, as well as the letters of freedom and manumission documents of African and Afro-descendant women in Brazil during the 18th and 19th centuries, with a special focus on the states of Pernambuco and Bahia. She has taken some of her archival research to film and audiovisual installation (Guillermina, short documentary; Joaquina de Angola, audiovisual installation; Anna Borges do Sacramento, in editing).

Since 1999, she has taught at several universities in the United States, including NYU, Boston University and Stanford. She is the founder of Ibirí Filmes, an Afro-focused audiovisual production company based in Spain, dedicated to promoting the work of black filmmakers. She also runs Afro Diasporic Room, a consultancy specializing in Afro-Latin American artistic projects.

Bindi Vora is an interdisciplinary artist of Kenyan-Indian heritage, associate lecturer at LCC and senior curator at Autograph, London. 

Since joining Autograph, she has curated C. Rose Smith: Talking Back to Power (2024) Mónica Alcázar-Duarte: Digital Clouds Don’t Carry Rain (2024) Hélène Amouzou: Voyages (2023) Eric Gyamfi: Fixing Shadows – Julius & I (2023), Poulomi Basu: Fireflies (2022), co-curated Sasha Huber: YOU NAME IT (2022), Care I Contagion I Community – Self & Other (2021–2022); Lola Flash: [sur]passing and Maxine Walker: Untitled (both 2019). She published a series artist conversations with Sasha Huber, Mónica Alcázar-Duarte, Maryam Wahid, Tobi Alexandra Falade, David Uzochukwu amongst others. She has independently curated Poulomi Basu: Centralia for Rencontres d’Arles – Louis Roederer Discovery Award (2020); her writing has appeared in publications by Maryam Wahid Zaibuinnisa (MAC, 2022); Another Country: British Documentary Photography Since 1945 (Thames & Hudson); FOAM and British Journal of Photography, participating in public programmes for Tate, GRAIN Photo Hub, The Photographers’ Gallery. She is currently part of the working group ‘Climate and Colonialism’ at The Paul Mellon Centre and Autograph, London. 

Marlies Weileder is currently an MA student in Cultural Heritage at Heidelberg University in Germany. During her master’s studies, she spent time on academic exchange at the University of Manchester, gaining applied knowledge in the field of archives and special collections. She completed her BA in religious studies and Middle Eastern studies in Heidelberg and Jerusalem. Her research interests are the presentation and curation of cultural heritage, heritage activism, histories of photography and photography in the archive. Aspiring to work in the GLAM sector, her academic pursuits are in constant dialogue with the practical considerations and challenges of curation processes. This is reflected in recent projects such as the co-curation of the exhibition “Reflections of the Archive” at the Ethnological Museum vPST in Heidelberg as part of a co-operation between the museum and the Heidelberg Centre for Transcultural Studies.

Alexey Yurenev is a photographer and visual researcher exploring how technology shapes knowledge production and collective memory. His documentary projects have been published in The New York Times, National Geographic, Topic, and FOAM magazine. Yurenev’s work has been recognized by Photographer of the Year International, the Silurian Society of New York, the Dummy Award ’24, and nominated for an Emmy and Shorty Awards. His work has been exhibited at the FOAM Museum and is part of the Johns Hopkins University Special Collections.

In 2020, Yurenev co-founded FOTODEMIC.org, a platform dedicated to innovative visual strategies, and became a faculty member at the International Center of Photography in New York. Since 2019, he has been developing Silent Hero, a visual research project investigating the potential of technologies like machine learning, photography, and forensic imaging to engage with histories, including a previously unknown family episode from WWII. The project has led to multiple outcomes, including the book Seeing Against Seeing, the graphic novel 17.VII.44, and the short film No One Is Forgotten.

Yurenev holds an MA in Photography & Society from the Royal Academy of Art, The Hague, and is based in New York City.

Vera Zurbrügg is a Swiss artist based between London and Basel. She obtained a PhD from the London College of Communication, University of the Arts London, in 2025. Her practice-led research focuses on Switzerland’s contested role during the Second World War and its influence on the Swiss national identity. Vera uses an aesthetic of the secret through conceptual readings of objects and material interventions to analyse the impact of state secrecy on collective memory and to critically examine the inherent power dynamics and ideological underpinnings of historical knowledge production. Through a counter-archive of collected and gilded objects, she interrogates the archive as a historical apparatus, following processes of selection and discrimination. Vera is co-founder of RAKE – a visual research collective that uses open-source data to investigate a variety of unseen and obscured elements in society, business, and politics. Additionally, she is a member of the Secrecy, Power and Ignorance Network (SPIN), a collaborative initiative of researchers focusing on the lasting – sometimes violent – implications of deliberate acts of obfuscation, as well as ARCHIVO, a platform dedicated to photography and visual cultures to study their impact on our understanding of the past.