Judith Ackermann is a research professor for digital and networked media in social work, and head of the “Digital Participation and Inclusion Lab” (dpi-lab) at the University of Applied Sciences Potsdam. Her research focuses on the potential of digitalisation for society and culture. Since 2017, she has been part of the leading team of the research project “Postdigital Art Practices in Cultural Education” (PKKB) and since 2019 of the project “Digital Inclusion in the Context of Social Anxiety Disorders” (DISA). Judith Ackermann is part of the academic advisory board of the “Academy for Theatre and Digitality” at Theatre Dortmund. She has been an actress in children’s theatre at Horizont Theatre Cologne since 2014, and initiator of the international urban games festival “playin’siegen” since 2015. She undertakes science communication on TikTok as @dieprofessor since August 2020.

https://www.tiktok.com/@dieprofessorin, https://www.fh-potsdam.de/person/person-action/judith-ackermann/

Anuja Ghosalkar is the founder of Drama Queen—a Documentary theater company in India. Her practice focuses on personal histories, archival absences & blurring the hierarchies between audience & performer—to extend the idea of theater to create audacious work. Iterations around form, process, modes of media, sites, technologies, reclaiming narratives on gender & intimacy are critical to her performance making & pedagogy. Her work has been programmed by the University of Oxford, Jawaharlal Nehru University, Forum Transregionale-ZMO, Frankfurt University. She co-curated an international workshop series on Documentary Theater—with Gob Squad, Boris Nikitin, Rimini Protokoll. She also co-curated VR performances for the Serendipity Arts Virtual 2020.In the past, she was programme officer at India Foundation for the Arts, film programmer for Experimenta. She is an Art Think South Asia Fellow (2017–18) and has written on film and performance for Nang Magazine, Art India, Bioscope, Hakara.

Martina Leeker is a scholar in media studies and theatre studies. She was a guest professor at Bauhaus University Weimar, at the Centre for Digital Cultures Leuphana University Lüneburg, and at University of the Arts Berlin. She teaches internationally at various universities, mainly in media studies, theatre studies, cultural studies, and research with art. Her research, and publishing is on: digital cultures, theatre and digitality, art and technology, performativity, posthuman education, mimesis, and critique. She works as a director and dramaturg. She is also a performer, doing lecture performances with artificial figures in academic contexts, in theatres and in social media. In educational contexts she undertakes research in speculation-labs. https://martina-leeker.de/, https://projects.digital-cultures.net/e-i/.

Kai Tuchmann works as a dramaturge, director and academic. He is developing his approach of theatre in close collaboration with artists from China and India. His stagings and dramaturgies were invited, among others, to I Dance Hong Kong, Zürcher Theaterspektakel, Kunstfest Weimar, Festival d’Automne à Paris, and Wuzhen Theatre Festival. Thematically, these works examine the afterlife of the Cultural Revolution in present-day China, the effects of urban development on the population of migrant workers, and the application of digital technologies. Kai is a visiting professor at Beijing’s Central Academy of Drama – for which he has developed, together with Li Yinan, the curriculum for the first Dramaturgy program in Asia. He has been a Fulbright Scholar at The Graduate Center, City University New York and he is a Fellow of the Mellon School of Theater and Performance Research at Harvard University.