Colleen Anderson

Harvard University, Cambridge, MA (USA)

Colleen Anderson is a PhD candidate in the history department at Harvard University. She studies the history of Germany, twentieth-century Europe and the global Cold War, with a particular interest in the history of the future, outer space and the intersection of society and technology. Her current project is a social and cultural history of outer space in East and West Germany, which uses perceptions and presentations of outer space to reconsider how East and West German politicians, scientists, and amateur enthusiasts saw their societies, each other, and the Cold War world.

Jordan Bimm

York University, Toronto (CA)

Jordan Bimm is a fourth-year PhD student at York University’s Graduate Program in Science and Technology Studies in Toronto, Canada. His dissertation focuses on the construction of the American astronaut during the 1950s by tracing the development of astronaut selection requirements between a host of related fields including space medicine, space psychology and human factors engineering. The goal of his dissertation is to understand why certain bodies were first considered ‘best’ for work in outer space, and what social, political and technical ideas informed these choices and were conveyed through them. He has presented papers on topics in the history of space medicine and space psychology at meetings of the Society for the History of Technology (SHOT), the Society for the Social Studies of Science (4S), the History of Science Society (HSS), and the International Congress for History of Science, Technology, and Medicine (ICHSTM). In 2013, his article ‘Primate Lives in Early American Space Science’ appeared in the journal Quest: The History of Spaceflight. Another article, ‘Rethinking the Overview Effect’ won the 2013 Sacknoff Prize for Space History and will be published in Quest in 2014.

Thore Bjørnvig

Independent Scholar, Copenhagen (DK)

Thore Bjørnvig has an MA in the History of Religions from the University of Copenhagen, is an independent scholar, and works as a freelance writer. His main research interests lie in areas connected to intersections between science fiction, spaceflight, and religion. Recently published articles include ‘Outer Space Religion and the Ambiguous Nature of Avatar’s Pandora’ (2013) and ‘The Holy Grail of Outer Space: Pluralism, Druidry, and the Religion of Cinema in The Sky Ship’ in the journal Astrobiology (2012). He has also co-edited a special issue of the journal Astropolitics on spaceflight and religion (2013), to which he contributed an article on Frank White’s Overview Effect. His current research focuses on the cultural history of space toys and LEGO’s space themes, and religious aspects of the Dutch Mars One project.

Katherine Boyce-Jacino

Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD (USA)

Katherine Boyce-Jacino is a PhD candidate in the Humanities Center at the Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, MD. Prior to arriving at Johns Hopkins, she earned a BA with honors in 2010 from Wesleyan University in History and Astronomy. In 2011 she was a visiting research fellow at the Max Planck Institut für Wissenschaftsgeschichte in Berlin. She is currently a visiting doctoral student at the Emmy Noether Research Group ‘The Future in the Stars: European Astroculture and Extraterrestrial Life in the Twentieth Century’ at Freie Universität Berlin. Her dissertation project is tentatively titled “Planetaria and the Architecture of the Sublime,” and focuses on the emergence of planetaria in Weimar Germany and their spread across Western Europe to the United States in the interwar period.

Daniel Brandau

Freie Universität Berlin (D)

Daniel Brandau is a PhD candidate and research associate in the Emmy Noether Research Group ‘The Future in the Stars: European Astroculture and Extraterrestrial Life in the Twentieth Century’ at the Friedrich-Meinecke-Institut of Freie Universität Berlin. He studied history, German language and literature and educational science at Universität Bielefeld where he received his BA in 2007 and his MEdu in 2010. At the University of Cambridge he finished an MPhil in Modern European History in 2009. His PhD project at Berlin focuses on the “Plausible Future: Rocket Enthusiasm in Germany, 1920–1960,” studying visions of future spaceflight and reciprocities with socio-cultural discourse from the period of early rocket societies to the first manned missions. In 2013, he was Guggenheim Fellow at the National Air and Space Museum in Washington, DC, and is currently a fellow of the Institut für Europäische Geschichte in Mainz.

Jana Bruggmann

Freie Universität Berlin (D)

Jana Bruggmann is a PhD candidate and research associate in the Emmy Noether Research Group ‘The Future in the Stars: European Astroculture and Extraterrestrial Life in the Twentieth Century’ at the Friedrich-Meinecke-Institut of Freie Universität Berlin. Her PhD project, tentatively titled “Looking Back: The View of Earth from Outer Space, 1900–1975,” focuses on pictorial depictions of the Earth seen from outer space from Flammarion to the renowned space photographs ‘Earth Rise’ and ‘Blue Mable.’ Bruggmann received a BA in Art and Design Education from Hochschule Luzern Design & Kunst in 2009, and an MA in Curating and Museum Education from Zürcher Hochschule der Künste in 2011. From 2012 to 2013 she worked as research assistant at Kunsthaus Zug and curated a number of exhibition projects in Luzern.

Paul E. Ceruzzi

National Air and Space Museum, Washington, DC (USA)

Paul E. Ceruzzi is Chairman of the Space History Division at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Air and Space Museum in Washington, DC. He received his BA in American Studies from Yale University in 1970 and a PhD, also in American Studies, from the University of Kansas in 1981. Prior to becoming a curator at the Smithsonian, he taught history at Clemson University in South Carolina. At the museum, he has worked on several public exhibitions, including “Beyond the Limits: Flight Enters the Computer Age,” “Space Race,” “How Things Fly,” and most recently, “Time and Navigation,” which covers the art and science of navigation from eighteenth century seafarers to the current systems of global satellites. Ceruzzi has written several books on the history of computing and aerospace technology, including Beyond the Limits: Flight Enters the Computer Age (1989); Internet Alley: High Technology in Tysons Corner (2008); and most recently Computing: A Concise History (2012). He is currently working on a social and technical history of the Global Positioning System.

Oliver Dunnett

Queen's University, Belfast (IE)

Oliver Dunnett is a lecturer in human geography at Queen’s University, Belfast, and was awarded his PhD by the University of Nottingham in 2011. As a cultural, historical and political geographer, his research interests focus on the ways in which cultures of science, technology and outer space are connected to questions of place, landscape and identity in the twentieth century. He has explored these themes through research on the British Interplanetary Society, identifying a national culture of ‘British outer space’ in the mid-twentieth century with connections to well-known figures such as Arthur C. Clarke, Patrick Moore and C. S. Lewis. He has further developed these ideas by examining geographies of light pollution and amateur astronomy in Britain, whilst he has concurrent research interests in critical geopolitics and the geographies of popular culture, particularly the medium of comics and the genre of science fiction. Recent publications in the journals Cultural Geographies and Social and Cultural Geography reflect these research interests.

David Edgerton

King’s College London (GB)

David Edgerton graduated from St John’s College Oxford and Imperial College London. After teaching at the University of Manchester he became the founding director of the Centre for the History of Science, Technology and Medicine at Imperial College London (1993–2003) where he was also Hans Rausing Professor. He joined the History department at King’s College London with the Centre on its transfer to King’s in August 2013, where he is the Hans Rausing Professor of the History of Science and Technology and Professor of Modern British History. He is the author of a sequence of books on twentieth-century Britain: England and the Aeroplane: An Essay on a Militant and Technological Nation (1991), Science, Technology and the British Industrial ‘Decline,’ 1870–1970 (1996), Warfare State: Britain, 1920–1970 (2005) and Britain's War Machine: Weapons, Resources and Experts in the Second World War (2011). He is also the author of The Shock of the Old: Technology and Global History Since 1900 (2006). His first book has recently been republished as England and the Aeroplane: Militarism, Modernity and Machines (2013).

Greg Eghigian

Pennsylvania State University, State College, PA (USA)

Greg Eghigian is Associate Professor of Modern History and the former director of the Science, Technology, and Society Program at Pennsylvania State University. A historian of the human sciences, he is the author and editor of a number of books on the history of social deviance, including The Corrigible and the Incorrigible: Science, Medicine, and the Convict in Contemporary Germany (presently under consideration), From Madness to Mental Health: Psychiatric Disorder and Its Treatment in Western Civilization (2010) and The Routledge History of Madness (2016).

Anthony W. Enns

Dalhousie University, Halifax, Nova Scotia (CA)

Anthony W. Enns is Associate Professor of Contemporary Culture in the Department of English at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia. His essays have appeared in such journals as The Senses and Society, Screen, Culture, Theory & Critique, Journal of Popular Film and Television, Quarterly Review of Film and Video, Popular Culture Review, Studies in Popular Culture and Science Fiction Studies. His edited collections include Screening Disability: Essays on Cinema and Disability (2001); Sonic Mediations: Body, Sound, Technology (2008); and Vibratory Modernism (2013).

Danilo Flores

Freie Universität Berlin (D)

Danilo Flores is a BA student in the Department of Philosophy at Freie Universität Berlin. He has a special interest in historical and contemporaneous debates on extraterrestrial life. His bachelor thesis examines the UFO phenomenon from the perspective of sociocultural anthropology, studying how anomalous events in the sky relate to twentieth-century science-fictional accounts of alien encounters.

Paweł Frelik

Maria Curie-Skłodowska University, Lublin (P)

Paweł Frelik teaches in the Department of American Literature and Culture at Maria Curie-Skłodowska University in Lublin and at the American Studies Center of the University of Warsaw. His research and writing interests include science fiction visualities, contemporary experimental fiction, unpopular culture, and cross-media storytelling. He has published widely in these fields, including the edited volume Playing the Universe: Games and Gaming in Science Fiction (2007), and serves on the boards of Science Fiction Studies, Extrapolation, and Journal of Gaming and Virtual Worlds. Frelik is currently President of the Science Fiction Research Association.

Christopher Gainor

Independent Scholar, Sidney (CA)

Christopher Gainor is a historian of technology who has written extensively on the history of Canada’s space program, and on the interactions between Canada’s aerospace industry and space programs outside Canada. In recent years, he has been writing about the early history of intercontinental ballistic missile programs in the United States and the Soviet Union. He holds a PhD from the University of Alberta, and has taught at the University of Victoria and the Royal Military College of Canada. Gainor has written four books and published numerous articles in journals such as Technology and Culture and Quest: The History of Spaceflight Quarterly.

Alexander C.T. Geppert

Freie Universität Berlin (D)

Alexander Geppert directs the Emmy Noether Research Group ‘The Future in the Stars: European Astroculture and Extraterrestrial Life in the Twentieth Century’ at the Friedrich-Meinecke-Institut of Freie Universität Berlin. He received master’s degrees from Johns Hopkins University and Georg-August-Universität Göttingen, and a PhD from the European University Institute in Florence. Geppert has held fellowships at the University of California at Berkeley, the EHESS in Paris, the German Historical Institutes in London and in Paris, the Internationales Forschungszentrum Kulturwissenschaften in Vienna, the Kulturwissenschaftliches Institut in Essen, at Harvard University and at the University of Cambridge. Recent publications include Fleeting Cities: Imperial Expositions in Fin-de-Siècle Europe (2010, 2013); Wunder: Poetik und Politik des Staunens im 20. Jahrhundert (2011, co-ed.); Imagining Outer Space: European Astroculture in the Twentieth Century (2012, ed.); and Astroculture and Technoscience (2012), a special issue of History and Technology. At present, he is completing a comprehensive cultural history of the European Space Age.

Bernd Greiner

Hamburger Institut für Sozialforschung (D)

Bernd Greiner studied history, political science and American studies at Philipps-Universität Marburg, Johann Wolfgang Goethe-Universität in Frankfurt am Main and Millersville University, Pennsylvania. He received his PhD in political science in 1984 with a thesis on the National Security Council under Truman and Eisenhower and completed his Habilitation at Universität Hamburg in 1997 with a study on the “Morgenthau legend.” From 1984 to 1989, Bernd Greiner taught at the universities of Münster and Oldenburg and served on the editorial board of Englisch-Amerikanische Studien. He has been a member of the research staff at the Hamburger Institut für Sozialforschung since 1989 and teaches history at Universität Hamburg where he was appointed adjunct professor in 2004.

Jörg Hartmann

Karlsruher Institut für Technologie (D)

Jörg Hartmann is a PhD candidate at Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) where he received an MA in German literature and media studies. In his dissertation project “Spaceship with Spectator,” he illustrates, through the lens of Hans Blumberg’s philosophy, how science fiction films from Méliès (1902) to Scott (2012) can be seen as ‘re-occupation’ of one of mankind’s oldest spatial metaphors, life as a sea-faring voyage. Hartmann’s research interests include the history of ideas as well as film studies, spectatorship and science fiction. He is an active member of two academic groups in which he discusses his findings: “Formatting of Social Space” (KIT), and “Concepts of Space 1600/1900”. He has been a visiting assistant at Yale University and has taught graduate courses on theories of media culture, space- and time travel in science fiction films, and on figurative speech. His most recent publication is ‘Der erste Raumschiffbruch der Filmgeschichte: G. Méliès’ Filme metaphorologisch betrachtet’, in: Lars Schmeink and Hans-Harald Mueller (eds.): Fremde Welten: Wege und Räume der Fantastik im 21. Jahrhundert (2012).

Matthias Hurst

Bard College Berlin (D)

Matthias Hurst studied German literature and language, art history and psychology at Ruprecht-Karls-Universität in Heidelberg. He received his MA in 1993, his PhD in 1995 and his Habilitation in literature and film studies in 2000. He taught German literature, comparative literature and film studies at Universität Heidelberg (1996–2001) and as a guest lecturer at the University of Reading (1998) and the Université Paul Valéry in Montpellier (1999). Hurst has published on narration in literature and film, film adaptations of literary works, film interpretation and genre films. In Heidelberg he was also working on the pilot project ‘Studien-Coaching,’ a newly developed, highly individual and personality-based form of student counseling (2001-2003). Since 2003 Matthias Hurst has been teaching at Bard College Berlin (formerly ECLA European College of Liberal Arts, Berlin), since 2011 as Professor of Literature and Film Studies.

Patrick Kilian

Universität Zürich (CH)

Patrick Kilian is a PhD candidate in History at Universität Zürich and, since October 2013, a research assistant in the research project ‘Spaces of Knowledge: Cold War Astronautics and Meteorology in the Public Sphere, 1945–1990.’ His dissertation on the “Body History of Spaceflight in Popular Media during the Cold War” is supervised by Professor Philipp Sarasin. Kilian has studied history and philosophy at Universität Mannheim from 2007 to 2012, where he also taught a seminar after his graduation. He has recently published Georges Bataille, André Breton und die Gruppe Contre-Attaque: Über das ‘wilde Denken’ revolutionärer Intellektueller in der Zwischenkriegszeit (2013).

Cathleen Lewis

National Air and Space Museum, Washington, DC (USA)

Cathleen Lewis is Curator of International Space Programs and Spacesuits at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Air and Space Museum, specializing in Soviet and Russian programs. Lewis has completed both a bachelor’s and a master’s degree in Russian and East European Studies at Yale University and completed her dissertation for her PhD in History, “The Red Stuff: A History of the Public and Material Culture of Early Human Spaceflight in the USSR, 1959–1968,” at George Washington University in 2008. Her current research is on the history of the public and popular culture of Russian fascination with the idea of human spaceflight in the Soviet Union. She has written about the artifacts in the Smithsonian’s Soviet and Russian collection and has published articles comparing the Soviet and American approaches to exhibiting spaceflight during the Space Race and the history of film portrayals of spaceflight prior to Yuri Gagarin’s historic flight. She is also working on a comparative history of the development of American and Russian spacesuits.

Joe Maiolo

King’s College London (UK)

Joe Maiolo is Professor of International History in the Department of War Studies at King’s College London. He holds BA and MA degrees in History and Philosophy from the University of Toronto, and a PhD from the London School of Economics. He is the editor of The Journal of Strategic Studies, co-editor of The Strategy Reader (2nd edn. 2014), a member of the editorial board of Intelligence & National Security, and a fellow of the Royal Historical Society. He is also an editor of the Cambridge History of the Second World War. His most recent book is Cry Havoc: The Arms Race and the Second World War, 1931–41 (2010).

Natalija Majsova

University of Ljubljana (SI)

Natalija Majsova is a third year PhD candidate at the University of Ljubljana. She is a researcher at the Centre for Cultural and Religious Studies and teaching assistant at the Department of Cultural Studies. Her research interests include Russian and Soviet film, as well as cultural studies and film theory. Her PhD project focuses on outer space in contemporary Russian film. It examines the topology, narratives, and imagery of outer space (kosmos) in Russian film of the past decade (2001–2011) from the perspective of Bakhtinian cultural studies, underscoring the polyphony of various discourses and images that constitute kosmos in Russian film today, rather than focusing on the infamous ideology of (post)Soviet outer spatial conquest. Natalija Majsova is a junior member of the COST working group In Search of Transcultural Memory and collaborates with the Cultural Centre for European Space Technologies in Vitanje, Slovenia. At present, she is also a visiting doctoral student at the Emmy Noether Research Group ‘The Future in the Stars: European Astroculture and Extraterrestrial Life in the Twentieth Century’ at Freie Universität Berlin.

Michael J. Neufeld

National Air and Space Museum, Washington, DC (USA)

Michael J. Neufeld is a Museum Curator in the Space History Division of the National Air and Space Museum, Smithsonian Institution. From 2007 to 2011 he served as Division Chair. Born and raised in Canada, he has four history degrees, including a PhD from Johns Hopkins University in 1984. Neufeld has written three books, The Skilled Metalworkers of Nuremberg (1989), The Rocket and the Reich (1995), which won two book prizes, and Von Braun (2007), which has won three awards, and has edited four others. He has appeared on numerous television and radio programs, notably on the History Channel, PBS, NPR, BBC and the German ZDF.

Regina Peldszus

European Space Agency, Darmstadt (D)

Regina Peldszus is a design researcher focusing on human-technology interaction issues in complex sociotechnical systems. She is currently an Internal Research Fellow at the European Space Agency, based in the Advanced Mission Concepts Office at the European Space Operations Centre. Her current research interests include system characteristics in view of failure and resilience; fidelity of live simulation environments; and synthesis of operational evidence and scenario approaches in models and simulation. She holds a PhD in design research with a focus on aerospace from Kingston University, London, and an MA in design studies from Central Saint Martins, London. She has completed related programs at the International Space University and the Swedish Institute of Space Physics in Kiruna. Peldszus has also been a guest lecturer at the Architectural Association School of Architecture, the Royal College of Art, the International Space University, and the University of California, Los Angeles.

Markus Pöhlmann

Zentrum für Militärgeschichte und Sozialwissenschaften der Bundeswehr, Potsdam (D)

Markus Pöhlmann is a senior historian at the German Armed Forces Centre of Military History and Social Sciences (ZMSBw) in Potsdam. He studied history, English literature and communication studies at the universities of Augsburg, Galway and Bern. He has taught at Munich (LMU), Bern and Potsdam. In 2007, he held a Leverhulme Visiting Fellowship at the University of Salford. He has been a staff member of the ZMSBw since 2008. His major fields of research are twentieth-century German military history, the history of military intelligence, and the relationship between the military and the media. He is currently preparing a history of the tank in Germany between 1890 and 1945. His publications include Kriegsgeschichte und Geschichtspolitik: Der Erste Weltkrieg. Die amtliche deutsche Militärgeschichtsschreibung, 1914–1956 (2002); ‘German Intelligence at War, 1914–1918,’ in: Journal of Intelligence History 5 (2005); and ‘Planet Terror: Krieg und Bürgerkrieg im Zombiefilm seit 1968,’ in: Mittelweg (2010).

Robert Poole

University of Central Lancashire, Preston (UK)

Robert Poole is a British historian and author of Earthrise: How Man First Saw the Earth (2008). He is currently Guild Research Fellow at the University of Central Lancashire, an Associate of the Centre for the History of Science, Technology and Medicine, University of Manchester, and an Associate Member of the Emmy Noether Research Group ‘The Future in the Stars: European Astroculture and Extraterrestrial Life in the Twentieth Century’ at the Friedrich-Meinecke-Institut of Freie Universität Berlin. Recent publications include ‘The Challenge of the Spaceship: Arthur C. Clarke and the History of the Future, 1930–1970’, in: History and Technology (2012); ‘2001: A Space Odyssey and the Dawn of Man,’ in: Peter Kramer (ed.): Stanley Kubrick: New Perspectives (2014); ‘What was Whole about the Whole Earth?,’ in: Simone Turchetti and Peder Roberts (eds.), The Surveillance Imperative: The Rise of the Geosciences during the Cold War (forthcoming); and ‘The Myth of Progress: 2001: A Space Odyssey,’ in: Alexander C.T. Geppert (ed.): Post-Apollo: Outer Space and the Limits of Utopia (forthcoming).

Alex Roland

Duke University, Durham, NC (USA)

Alex Roland is Professor of History Emeritus at Duke University, where he taught military history and the history of technology for 29 years. During the current academic year he is the Charles Boal Ewing Professor of History at the US Military Academy at West Point. From 2011 to 2012 he was visiting professor of history at the School for Advanced Air and Space Studies at the US Air University. From 1973 to 1981, Roland was a historian with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. His publications include Model Research: The National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, 1915–1958 (1985); A Spacefaring People: Perspectives on Early Spaceflight (2005; ed.); Men in Arms: A History of Warfare and Its Interrelationships with Western Society (1991; with Richard A. Preston and Sydney F. Wise); and The Military-industrial Complex (2001). His November 1985 article, ‘The Shuttle: Triumph or Turkey?’ in Discover Magazine established his reputation as a critic of America’s manned spaceflight program. He is a former president of the Society for the History of Technology.

Diethard Sawicki

Verlag Ferdinand Schöningh, Paderborn (D)

Diethard Sawicki is the directing editor for history at Ferdinand Schöningh publishers (Paderborn). His doctoral thesis (2002) is a history of ghost-seeing and spiritualism in Germany, 1770–1900. Since then he has published mainly on cultural history, specializing in the relationship of esotericism, utopianism and technology since the eighteenth century. His publications on the twentieth century include ‘Vom Magnetismus zur Techgnosis: Konjunkturen und Transmutationen der Magie im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert,’ in: Jan Assmann and Harald Strohm (eds.): Magie und Religion (2010); ‘Das wunderbare Leuchten einer erneuerten Welt: Wilhelm Reichs Bioexperimente und seine Entdeckung der Orgonenergie,’ in: Alexander C.T. Geppert and Till Kössler (eds.): Wunder (2011); ‘“Dirty Thinking:” Moderne Esoterik als theoretische und methodische Herausforderung,’ in: Monika Neugebauer-Wölk et al. (eds.): Aufklärung und Esoterik: Wege in die Moderne (2013); ‘Weltraum – Orgon – Mensch: Wilhelm Reichs Kosmologie, Atomangst und Medien in den USA der 1950er Jahre,’ in: Eva Johach and Diethard Sawicki (eds.): Übertragungsräume: Medialität und Raum in der Moderne (2014).

Isabell Schrickel

Leuphana Universität, Lüneburg (D)

Isabell Schrickel is a PhD candidate at MECS Institute for Advanced Study in Media Cultures of Computer Simulation at Leuphana Universität in Lüneburg. She studied at the universities of Berlin and Basel and received her MA in 2010 with a thesis on the media history of weather forecasting. Between May 2011 and April 2013, she worked as a research associate at the DFG-funded project ‘Zeit – Bild – Raum: Das Projektionsplanetarium zwischen Medienästhetik und Wissensrepräsentation’ at Technische Universität Berlin. She has taught seminars both at Humboldt-Universität Berlin and at Leuphana Universität. Her research at MECS focuses on the influence of computer simulations on the knowledge cultures of climate research.

Kai-Uwe Schrogl

European Space Agency, Paris (F)

Kai-Uwe Schrogl is the Head of the Relations with Member States Department in the Director General’s Cabinet of the European Space Agency (ESA) at its headquarters in Paris. From 2007 to 2011, he was the Director of the European Space Policy Institute (ESPI) in Vienna, a European think tank for space policy. He has been a delegate to numerous international forums and recently served as the chairman of various European and global committees, including the ESA International Relations Committee and two United Nations Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space, UNCOPUOS, plenary working groups of the Legal Subcommittee, the one on the launching state and the other on the registration practice, both leading to UN General Assembly Resolutions. Kai-Uwe Schrogl has written or co-edited 15 books and more than 130 scholarly articles and reports in the fields of space policy and law as well as telecommunications policy. He is Vice President of the International Institute of Space Law, member of the International Academy of Astronautics (recently chairing its Commission on policy, economics and regulations) and the Russian Academy for Cosmonautics as well as Corresponding Member of the French Air and Space Academy. He holds a doctorate degree in political science and is an Honorary Professor of international relations at Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen.

Michael Sheehan

University of Swansea, Wales (GB)

Michael Sheehan is Professor of International Relations at the University of Swansea and Director of the Callaghan Centre for the Study of Conflict. He was formerly Professor of International Relations at the University of Aberdeen, where he was Director of the Scottish Centre for International Security and Director of the Space Policy Research Unit. He is the author of ten books and numerous articles on international security, including Arms Control: Theory and Practice (1988); The Balance of Power (1995); New Dimensions of Security in Central and Southeastern Europe (1998, co-ed.); International Security (2000); International Security: An Analytical Survey (2005); The International Politics of Space (2007); and Securing Outer Space (2009, co-ed.). His current research focuses on the ethical and legal implications of anti-satellite warfare and on understandings of security by the Sami of arctic Europe.

Tilmann Siebeneichner

Freie Universität Berlin (D)

Tilmann Siebeneichner is Research Associate in the Emmy Noether Research Group ‘The Future in the Stars: European Astroculture and Extraterrestrial Life in the Twentieth Century’ at the Friedrich-Meinecke-Institut of Freie Universität Berlin. He holds a degree in philosophy and history, and graduated from the Georg-August-Universität Göttingen in 2011 with a PhD dissertation on the workers’ militia in the GDR. From 2010 to 2012 he worked as a research associate at the Graduiertenkolleg ‘Generationengeschichte’ in Göttingen. Recent publications include Montagen zur Herrschaftspraxis in der Klassischen Moderne: Alltagshistorische Perspektiven und Reflexionen (2012, co-ed.); and Proletarischer Mythos und realer Sozialismus: Die Kampfgruppen der Arbeiterklasse in der DDR (forthcoming). His current research focuses on the militarization of outer space in the 1970s.

Eva-Maria Silies

Freie Universität Berlin (D)

Eva-Maria Silies is a research coordinator in the research division of Freie Universität Berlin. Previously, she worked as a research associate at Leuphana Universität Lüneburg and at the department of history at Universität Hamburg. She received a scholarship from the research training group ‘Generationengeschichte’ at Georg-August-Universität Göttingen and completed her PhD in 2009. Her PhD thesis dealt with the history of the contraceptive pill in Western Germany and was published as Liebe, Lust und Last: Die Pille als weibliche Generationserfahrung in der Bundesrepublik, 1960–1980 (2010). Eva-Maria Silies has published a number of articles on the history of sexuality, the cultural history of the Federal Republic of Germany in the 1960s and 1970s, and on gender history.

Simon Spiegel

Hochschule der Künste Zürich (CH)

Simon Spiegel studied German literature and linguistics, film studies and history at Universität Zürich and Humboldt Universität in Berlin. He completed his PhD dissertation at the Institute of Cinema Studies at Universität Zürich from 2003 to 2006, which examined the poetics of the science fiction film. The dissertation was published as Die Konstitution des Wunderbaren: Zu einer Poetik des Science-Fiction-Films (2007). Since then he has held teaching assignments in film studies on science fiction film, genre theory, Stanley Kubrick, the American independent film and theory of screenwriting. In 2010 he published Theoretisch Phantastisch: Eine Einführung in Tzvetan Todorovs Theorie der phantastischen Literatur. From 2011 to 2013 he was an assistant lecturer at the Institute for the Performing Arts and Film at the Hochschule der Künste Zürich. Since May 2012 he has been a researcher in the interdisciplinary Swiss National Science Foundation research project ‘Analog/Digital,’ which focuses on the emotional impact of traditional film stock vs. digitally recorded films.

Dierk Spreen

Leuphana Universität, Lüneburg (D)

Dierk Spreen completed his Habilitation in 2006. From 2008 onwards he held various deputy professorships in sociology, sociology of media and communication studies at the universities of Paderborn and Lüneburg. Spreen is the deputy chairman of the Gesellschaft für Kultur und Raumfahrt. Among his publications are Die dritte Raumrevolution (2012, co.-ed.) and Kultur und Raumfahrt (forthcoming, co-ed.).

Philipp Theisohn

Universität Zürich (CH)

Philipp Theisohn is Professor of Literary Studies in the German Department at Universität Zürich. He studies and teaches European and German literature from the thirteenth to the twenty-first century, and currently specializes in the relation between prognostics and poetics. He is project director of ‘Conditio extraterrestris,’ which explores the galaxy as space of literary imagination and communication from 1600 to the present.

Patryk Wasiak

University of Wrocław (P)

Patryk Wasiak is Lecturer at the Institute for Cultural Studies of the University of Wrocław in Poland. He holds an MA in sociology and art history from Warsaw University and a PhD in cultural studies from the Warsaw School of Social Sciences and Humanities. His PhD thesis was on transnational contacts of visual artists within the Soviet bloc, and he has also done research on social aspects of computerization in socialist Poland. He has received fellowships from the Volkswagen Foundation, the Zentrum für Zeithistorische Forschung Potsdam, the Netherlands Institute of Advanced Study, and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. His research interests include the cultural and social history of the Cold War. He is also an affiliate of the ‘Tensions of Europe: Technology and the Making of Europe’ research network.