Speaker biographies

Sammy Baloji is a photographer, visual artist and filmmaker living between Lubumbashi and Brussels. His work explores the colonial history of the Democratic Republic of Congo under Belgian rule, and its lasting ecological impact and entanglements into the present, with a particular focus on the cultural, architectural and industrial heritage of the contested and resource-rich region of Katanga. Drawing on archival records, personal testimonies and scientific analysis, he examines the enduring legacy of colonial extractivism, underscoring its human, more-than-human and environmental consequences whilst urging a reassessment of our relationship with the planet. He has exhibited in Athens, Brussels, Florence, London, Moscow, Sydney, Toronto, and at the Venice Biennale and Documenta 14 amongst other places.

Jasmina Cibic is a Slovenian artist whose interdisciplinary practice spans film, installation, performance, and photography. Her work explores how culture is instrumentalised by the state as a tool of soft power, particularly during periods of political or ideological crisis. Through research-driven projects that weave together archival material, political rhetoric, and allegorical staging, Cibic reveals the complex intersections of art, architecture, gender, and national identity. Often assuming a dual role as both analyst and storyteller, she constructs seductive visual narratives that reflect—and critique—the strategies of cultural diplomacy. Cibic represented Slovenia at the 55th Venice Biennale and has presented solo exhibitions at institutions including macLyon, Museum of Contemporary Art Belgrade, CCA Glasgow, Belvedere 21 Vienna, MG+MSUM Ljubljana, and in group exhibitions including at MOMA New York, MAXXI Rome, IMMA Dublin, the Chicago Architecture Biennial.

Dr. Lina Džuverović is a curator and academic based in London. She is the Course Leader of the MA Curating and Collections at Chelsea College of Art, University of the Arts, London. Her current research centers on explorations of gendered divisions of labour within art collectives under the umbrella project And Others: The Gendered Politics and Practices of Art Collectives. She was one of three lead curators of the 60th October Salon (2024), Belgrade, Serbia, a major biennial exhibition. She has curated and co-curated exhibitions including: “Monuments Should Not Be Trusted” (Nottingham Contemporary, 2016), Sanja Iveković – “Unknown Heroine” (South London Gallery/Calvert 22, 2012), and the 5th Nordic Contemporary Art Biennial (Norway, 2009). She has worked for Birkbeck, University of London and University of Reading as well as held curatorial and Artistic Director roles in several UK institutions.

Terike Haapoja is an interdisciplinary visual artist. Her large scale installations, writings, and collaborations explore the possibility of nonviolent coexistence across differences, with a specific focus on multispecies politics. While rooted in environmental thought and drawing from critical animal studies and posthumanism, Haapoja’s work is in dialogue with intersectional feminist and post-colonial discourses, critically reflecting on structures of exclusion that emerge from Western traditions. Haapoja is currently working on a long term project ‘[Against] Animal Capitalism’ that seeks to build a foundation for a multispecies left politics. She is the co-editor of seven publications on art and politics/environment, and her work has been exhibited widely in solo and group shows internationally. Haapoja represented Finland in the 55th Venice Biennale with a solo show in the Nordic Pavilion.

Janek Simon is a conceptual artist and an occasional curator based in Warsaw. The main motivation behind his work is curiosity. On a more concrete level he is inspired by travel, history of science and political ideas, and the practice and ethics of the DIY culture, always filtering the theories through his personal experience though. In recent years he developed a body of work investigating notions of distance and difference between places, working on projects that try to remap the semi-peripheral position of Eastern Europe through geographical experiments. His works was shown, among others, at Manifesta 7, Liverpool Biennale, Prague Biennale, and numerous individual exhibitions in major public art institutions in Poland and elsewhere (Arnolfini Bristol, Casino Luxembourg, Zacheta National Gallery of Art in Warsaw, CSW Zamek Ujazdowski and others). 

Kasia Garapich is a visual artist born in Poland, living and working between London and Kraków. She works across various media including sculpture, performative gestures and video, site specific installations and drawing. In 2025, Kasia received a practice-led PhD from the Slade School of Art for a project in which she made a white bear costume and climbed the most difficult trail in the High Tatras, retracing routes used by brown bears, a local endangered species. As part of the project, she created a white bear costume and climbed the most difficult mountain trail in the High Tatras, retracing routes used by endangered brown bears. The costume references the tourist-entertainment white bear mascot in Zakopane, which obscures the presence of real bears. Kasia’s work has been shown in numerous institutions, including the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw, the Zachęta National Gallery of Art Project Room, the Tatra Museum Zakopane, Watermans Art Centre, and the Freud Museum London.

Prof. Fahim Amir is professor of philosophy at the University of the Arts Bremen, living in Vienna and Bremen. Amir’s research focuses on nature, culture and colonial historicity, art, utopia, and cohabitation. Amir was the curator of live art festival Occupy Species (Kampnagel Hamburg, 2013), of the art exhibition Utopian Flares (Secession Vienna, 2014), and of the symposium Excess. Forum for Philosophy and Art (International Summer Courses Darmstadt, 2016). He coedited the publications Transcultural Modernisms (Sternberg Press, 2013) and Ultramarin (Afghanistan) (Verlag Forum Stadtpark, 2025). His book Schwein and Zeit (Being and Swine, Edition Nautilus, 2018) was included in the Top Ten list of the best non-fiction books by Die Zeit and ZDF, was shortlisted for Prix littéraire François Sommer, and elected by Goethe Institute and Frankfurt Book Fair as one the best books of the year.

Dr. Flora Roberts is an Assistant Professor of Environmental History at Utrecht University. She is a leading member of Utrecht’s Network for Environmental Humanities at UU, and has developed a new minor in Environmental Humanities. In her teaching, which ranges from the cultural history of Russian Empire to the environmental history of (un)natural disasters, she also seeks to make space for students to build climate and social resilience beyond the classroom. To this end, she has established the Biophilia group, for students who meet regularly for gardening and rewilding initiatives to foster more sustaining human & more than human relations on our campus. Her research focuses on the environmental history of Soviet Central Asia; she has published on building socialism through large infrastructure projects, and is currently feeling her way to a new research project on socialist and indigenous forms of nature connectedness.

Dr. Sarah Wade is an art historian and Associate Professor in Museum Studies at University of East Anglia, UK. Her research focuses on human-animal relations and representations of wildlife in contemporary art, exhibitions and museum display, particularly concerning ecological issues. Sarah holds a PhD in History of Art from UCL and has published widely on extinction and wildlife conservation issues in artistic and curatorial practice. She is co-founder of the ‘Curating the Sea’ research project, which has resulted in a special issue of the Journal of Curatorial Studies (2020), the book Oceans: Documents of Contemporary Art (MIT Press/Whitechapel Gallery, 2023) and the exhibition Sea Inside (Sainsbury Centre, UK, 2025). Over the years, Sarah has worked with various museums and heritage organisations in research, project management and curatorial capacities and continues to collaborate with museum colleagues on research projects and exhibitions.

Dr. Sorcha Thomson is an interdisciplinary historian of twentieth century anti-colonial and socialist movements. She is particularly interested in the role of tricontinental movements and their solidarity networks in shaping global political agendas and imaginations. As SAVA Research Fellow in Global Socialisms, her current project investigates the transnationalism of Cuban agrarian reform between 1959 and the 1970s, a program of land redistribution that transformed the island and its socio-ecological relations.

Dr. Makar Tereshin is a social anthropologist and documentary photographer. He holds a PhD in Social Anthropology from University College London. His research interests concern material culture studies, environmental and visual anthropology. Makar specialises in the ethnographic study of large-scale technological and industrial infrastructures, with a focus on the social, political, and environmental transformations they generate in Russia and Kazakhstan.

Documentation