Advisory Board

Sela Adjei (PhD) is a multidisciplinary artist, researcher, and curator with degrees in communication design, and African art and culture from the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST), Kumasi. He received his PhD in African studies from the University of Ghana, Legon. He is a member of the African Studies Association, AI4Afrika, and the International Society for Folk Narrative Research. His work focuses on decentering aesthetic canons and integrating African aesthetics, philosophy, pedagogy, and indigenous knowledge systems into design and contemporary art practices. He is currently a lecturer at the University of Media, Arts and Communication (NAFTI-Campus) in Accra, where he teaches philosophy, digital imaging, art history, and drawing.

Yaraslava Ananka (PhD) is a Slavist and translator of Polish and German lyrics into Belarusian and Russian. She is currently a research assistant at the Department of Slavonic Studies of Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. Her research interests are Polish and East Slavic cultural and literary relations in the 19th century, Russian emigration in the 1920s in Germany, Belarusian contemporary poetry and protest culture, Eastern European stand-up as oral history, dilettantism as a technique, and iconoclastic practices of resistance in Ukraine.

Paul Antick is a multidisciplinary artist, writer and educator. His work appeared in numerous academic journals and edited volumes, including Journal of Extreme Anthropology, Journal of Visual Culture, and Memory and Securitization in Contemporary Europe (2018). His recent work includes the short films Smith on Heroin (2021) and Smith’s Silent Disco (2019), and the radio program Smith in Belfast (2018), co-produced with Jo Langton, for Resonance FM. A graduate of the Polytechnic of Central London (photography) and Goldsmiths, University of London (Media & Communication), he is currently an associate professor in photography at the University of Roehampton. 

Magdalena Buchczyk (PhD) is a junior professor in social anthropology and cultural expressions at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. Her research focuses on material culture and critical understandings of heritage with reference to collections and making. Her publications include a special issue of the Oxford Review of Education on learning cities (2019) and a monograph entitled Weaving Europe, Crafting the Museum (forthcoming, Bloomsbury Academic). She also co-curated the exhibitions ‘Revisiting Romania: Dress and Identity’ (2015) at the Horniman Museum in London, ‘Forging Folklore, Disrupting Archives’ (2017) at Constance Howard Gallery in London, and ‘Learning City: A Self-Portrait’ (2017) at Coexist Gallery, Hamilton House in Bristol.

Cüneyt Çakırlar (PhD) is a UK-based researcher working at Nottingham Trent University. His research focuses on transnational sexuality studies and global visual cultures. Following his UCL Mellon Postdoctoral Fellowship, with a project on cultural translation in contemporary arts (2008–2009), he has taught film and media studies and queer arts at various institutions, including University College London, Boğaziçi University, and Istanbul Bilgi University, Turkey. He co-edited a volume on cultures of sexual dissidence in Turkey (2012). As a scholar, critic, programmer, and curator, he has also worked with various art institutions in Turkey, the USA, the UK, and Germany, and authored exhibition catalogues for various artists.

Cia Rinne is a Gothenburg-born author who lives near Berlin. She does readings, exhibitions, sound and video works of translingual minimalist poetry as well as libretti and texts for the stage. Her publications include zaroum, zaroum (2001), notes for soloists (2009), l'usage du mot (2017), and sentences (2019, shortlisted for the Prix Bob Calle du livre d’artiste). She is the laureate of the Prix littéraire Bernard Heidsieck-Centre Pompidou 2019.

Aslıhan Şenel (PhD) is an Istanbul-based architect, researcher, and educator, working with multidisciplinary and collective methods. She is an associate professor at Istanbul Technical University (ITU), where she teaches architectural design. She studied architecture at ITU and completed her PhD at University College London, where she also taught from 2004 to 2008. She has published on critical mapping, performative theories, collective practices of design, and representational theories and practices. Her publications include Travelling through Guidebooks: Reading and Remembering Imagined Topographies of Nicosia (2018) and Mapping as Performing Place (2014).

Vlad Strukov (PhD) is a London-based multidisciplinary researcher, curator, and cultural practitioner, specializing in art, media, and technology crossovers. He is currently carrying out a major research project, funded by the Swedish Research Council, on contemporary queer visual culture. He is the author and (co-)editor of many publications, including Contemporary Russian Cinema: Symbols of a New Era (2016), Russian Culture in the Age of Globalisation (2018), and Memory and Securitization in Contemporary Europe (2017). He makes regular appearances in international media such as Al Jazeera, American Public Radio, BBC, RBK, and others.

Alexey Ulko is a linguist, independent researcher, consultant on contemporary art and filmmaker based in Samarkand, Uzbekistan. He works with a wide range of issues, from postcolonial studies and contemporary Central Asian art to new metaphysics and esotericism. He has written, contributed to or edited several books, including ἀγάπη (2021), Censoring Art (2018), and Culture Smart! Uzbekistan (2017). He conducted research for the exhibition ‘We Treasure Our Lucid Dreams’ (2020) at Garage Museum of Contemporary Art, co-curated several exhibitions and art and music events in Tashkent, and wrote texts and made videos for different projects and publications. He is a member of the European Society for Central Asian Studies, the Association for Art History, and the Central Eurasian Studies Society.