DUNCAN BASS is a cultural critic, curator, and art historian. Current research explores the intersections of art and contemporary culture with an emphasis on the societal implications of emerging technologies and the politics of visuality. He has coordinated traditional and experimental curatorial projects for venues on a spectrum from real to virtual, including Ars Electronica Festival, the Art Institute of Chicago, Sullivan Galleries, and technicalimages.org. Bass is pursuing simultaneous MA degrees in Art History, Theory, & Criticism, and Arts Administration & Policy at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (anticipated graduation May 2019).
DANIEL GÓMEZ DUGAND is a Colombian-born, Chicago-based artist and scholar. His work finds thematic focus in the ways technology affects the creative faculty of its users. Specifically, his studies deal with the structuring of the empathic faculties of social groups centered around the technological mediation of creativity. He has published journalistic articles for F News Magazine and presented in the Rutgers University in Camden English Graduate Student Association Annual Conference in 2018 on 3D printing.
WANLIN JI is an M.A. candidate in computational social sciences at University of Chicago. Leveraging the power of computation and big data interdisciplinarily, he is curious about the influence of perceived information on human behavior. His research focuses on information manipulation in the digital age, causal inference and semantic network analysis. Previously, he was a technology & culture journalist in a major Internet media in China, with his articles being reproduced and featured by People's Daily Online, Xinhua Net, CCTV.com along with other major medias. He holds a B.A. (Hons) in economics.
HSIAO–CHEN J. LIN is an aspiring cultural ethnographer interested in the geopolitical realm of Taiwan, Japan, and PRC. Born and raised in Taiwan and studied in the US and Japan, Lin aims to deconstruct nation-states and trans/nationalism in order to facilitate a relevantly thoughtful discourse around Taiwanese identity through a post-colonial lens. Lin is also interested in the cyber flow of popular culture between the borders of these three nation-states and the consequent formation of subversive and creative online communities that resist against state powers and influences.
ZOEY MARTIN-LOCKHART is a sociocultural anthropology graduate student at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Her research explores queer/lgbtqia+ cybersociality in India and the role of the online-physical world nexus in the iterative formation of communities and subjectivities. Simultaneously, Zoey is interested in the interface of mental health care systems and queer/lgbtqia+ communities in urban India, which was the focus of her 2014-15 Fulbright-Nehru student research scholarship.
BRIAN NG is a poet from Hong Kong with a day job as data scientist at a game studio, after previous stints at Stellar and TGG Group. He graduated from the University of Chicago with a bachelor’s in Economics and English Language and Literature. He runs The Zahir Review with Alex Karsavin.
SABINE SCHULZ is a Ph.D. student in the department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations at the University of Chicago. She focuses on comparative studies of contemporary Japanese and Korean media, cultural production and exchange, and translation. Her current research concerns the transnational circulation and popularization of Japanese and Korean visual culture and music, the efforts of government cultural policies to capitalize on these phenomena, and the transformation and appropriation of cultural products and symbols across borders. She is particularly interested in the enabling and shaping role of technology, the Internet, and cyberspace in these transnational interactions.
GUANGSHUO YANG is a doctoral candidate in history at Northwestern University. His dissertation explores the entangled history of human-animal relationship in greater China from a global perspective, exploring the changing conception of animals and its complex relationship with colonialism, nationalism, and modernity. Graduated from Wesleyan University, Guangshuo is a Freeman Asian Scholar and has received grants from the Social Science Research Council, the American Council of Learned Societies, and the Henry Luce Foundation.
