Timotheus Vermeulen is a full professor of media, culture and society at the University of Oslo, Norway. In 23/24 he was a visiting scholar in history of art and architecture at Harvard University, USA. He previously held visiting and honorary positions at George Mason, USA; Utrecht University, Nl; and Technical University Graz, Austria. He is co-founder of the now defunct webzine Notes on Metamodernism, co-editor of the book series Studies in Metamodernism, and a regular contributor to public discourse. Together with Radio & TV presenter Gia Milinovich he hosts the weekly podcast of ideas The Cluster F Theory.

Vermeulen speaks and publishes widely on critical theory, aesthetics, screen media and (contemporary) art. Prominent texts include ‘Periodising the 2000s’, ‘The New Depthiness’, ‘The altergorithm’, ‘Groucho Marxism’ and ‘Notes on metamodernism’. His latest book, Plastic Time, is forthcoming with SUNY later this  year. His work is translated into over ten languages and has been cited widely, including in popular media like the New York Times, LA Review of Books, TLS, BBC Radio 4, Adbusters, Scenario, Vulture, Art News, and TANK.

Vermeulen is a frequently invited speaker in the media, at public events and at conferences. He has given public lectures at agenda-setting festivals, symposia and institutions around the world including The Venice Biennale, Documenta, State of Fashion, Frieze Art Fair, E-Flux, The Stedelijk Museum, Astrup Fearnley, CAFA Beijing, Summit at Sea, Cooper Union, Columbia University GSAPP, MIT, and Harvard.

Sonia Fizek is a games and media scholar. She holds a professorship in Media and Game Studies at the Cologne Game Lab at TH Köln – University of Applied Sciences, where she also fullfils the role of the head of research. In the years 2016-2025, she served as a co-editor-in-chief of the international Journal of Gaming and Virtual Worlds. In her latest book Playing at a Distance (MIT Press 2022), she explores the borderlands of video game aesthetic with focus on automation, AI and posthuman forms of play. Fizek’s current research concentrates on the environmental sustainability of video games. 

She is a scientific lead in the EU Horizon project "STRATEGIES. Sustainable Transition for Europe's Game Industries" (2024-2027, https://www.strategieshorizon.eu). Until 2024 she was a principal investigator of “Greening Games. Building Higher Education Resources for Sustainable Video Game Production, Design and Critical Game Studies” (2021-2024, https://greeningames.eu).