Marion is a Scottish design researcher based in London. The focus of her research is improving choice and empowerment through real-world research, storytelling and collaboration. She is committed to expanding methodologies for inclusion in different levels of society, in different sectors, within different cultural settings and with different species.

Marion is currently a Design Coach and Innovation Fellow, Centre for Digital Citizens, Newcastle University. Prior to this, she was based at Building Digital UK using design research approaches to build an evidence base for the impacts of high-speed internet in rural communities and laying the foundations for a Policy Design Lab at the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport.

Julia is a Professor of Contemporary Design Practices at Aalto University and the founder of the Department of Seaweed, a transdisciplinary community of practice investigating the potential of macro algae as a design material. She uses her artistic practice as research through design to explore the ethical and material value systems underlying our relationship with flora and fauna. Lohmann is developing empathic, collaborative and co-speculative approaches to design. She promotes more-than-human-centric, regenerative practices benefitting socio-ecological systems.

On this subject she co-curated the exhibition Critical Tide at the Design Museum Helsinki in 2019, focussing on the ocean. In Aalto ARTS, Lohmann teaches the MA courses Critical Design Practices and co-teaches Materials and Living Systems together with Anna van der Lei. Together with Professor Lucy Davies and Sanni Saarimäki she is also teaching TAI-E3161 - Field Ecology Intensive. Lohmann's research interests include regenerative design, biomaterials, transdisciplinary communities of practice and museums as co-speculative places of design. She is a researcher in the Academy of Finland funded Biocolour research project on natural dyes, a creative practitioner in the EU Horizon 2020 funded CreaTures research on how creative practices can help achieve the SDG goals and a researcher in the Nordplus funded Nordark research project that investigates non-human needs in relation to after-dark outdoor lighting in Nordic countries.

Ruth Catlow is a recovering web utopian. As artistic director and co-founder of Furtherfield London’s longest-running (de)centre for art and technology she curates and creates collaborative, playful and emancipatory artworks to engage people across silos around emerging technologies and the wicked social and political problems they give rise to or intensify.

Iryna Zamuruieva makes images, writes, walks, organises and performs. Originally from the middle of the Ukrainian steppe, Iryna now lives by the North Sea coast in Scotland. Here she works with a sustainability organisation Sniffer on transforming organisations and places to flourish in the future climate. This involves leading climate change adaptation projects (with Adaptation Scotland), researching the role of creative practices in eco-social transformations (with CreaTures) and creating structures for collaborative, care-ful and non-hierarchical decision-making. In her independent practice Iryna explores multispecies relations from pigs and viruses to natures to walking and steppes & ecofeminism. In her recent work she dreams to see the steppe again with Dr. Darya Tsymbalyuk and imagines a dog opera with Dr. Kit Braybrooke.

Lara is a Research Fellow on the H2020-funded CreaTures project (Creative Practice for Transformational Futures) at the University of Sussex. This transdisciplinary project highlights how arts, design and citizen-led creative projects can contribute to addressing climate change. The project is led by Aalto University, and partners include: RMIT Melbourne, Utrecht University, Superflux, Hellon, Furtherfield, ZEMOS98, Kersnikova, Open Knowledge Finland and Sniffer.

Ann Light is a design researcher and interaction theorist, specializing in participatory practice, human-technology relations and collaborative future-making. Her 25-year research career has focused on the politics, ethics and agency of design, and especially co-design in communities, exploring social activism at neighbourhood level, investigating the design of sharing structures and questioning the boundaries of participation. Regarding the social and ecological as inextricably linked, over the last few years she has turned to consider climate collapse and the stress that current systems put on the planet, believing creative remaking of relations is needed for liveable futures and looking at ways that socially engaged art and design can find potential in difficult places and offer visions of fairer worlds. She is currently co-leading research on the European Union project Creative Practices for Transformative Futures (CreaTures).

Markéta is a design researcher and curator experimenting with embodied, relational ways of knowing and doing, often in multi-species settings. She currently serves as a postdoctoral research fellow at Aalto University - School of Arts, Design and Architecture (FI), working with the CreaTures project (Creative Practices for Transformational Futures). She has co-founded several art/design research initiatives, including the Open Forest Collective, the Feeding Food Futures network and the Uroboros festival.