Karen Barad is a philosopher, physicist, and feminist scholar. They is Distinguished Professor of Feminist Studies, Philosophy, and History of Consciousness at the University of California at Santa Cruz. Barad held a tenured appointment in physics before moving into more interdisciplinary spaces. Their profound belief in the necessity for an enhanced focus on ontology in science, coupled with their background in theoretical physics and conceptual explorations of what is real, led to the development of a unique theory: agential realism. Barad is particularly recognized for this theory and is the author of "Meeting the Universe Halfway: Quantum Physics and the Entanglement of Matter and Meaning" (Duke University Press, 2007), along with numerous articles across physics, philosophy, feminist theory, and more.
Manuela Infante Güell is a Chilean theatre director, playwright, scriptwriter and musician, working internationally. She is well known for offering scenic articulations of contemporary theoretical issues, creating work that stands somewhere between music, theatre, and philosophy. Her play Estado Vegetal has toured extensively and won several prizes. At KVS she created Metamorphoses, and her next performance will premier in the autumn at KVS, in co-production with Kaaitheater. Its title: Horizon.
Maaike Bleeker is a Professor of Theatre and Performance at Utrecht University. In her work she combines approaches from the arts and performance with insights from philosophy, media theory and cognitive science to study how people make sense of what they encounter, in the theatre as well as in daily life, and in scientific practice. She's the director of the Research Institute for Cultural Inquiry (ICON) and leads projects like "Acting Like a Robot: Theatre as Testbed of the Robot Revolution" and "Dramaturgy for Devices," bridging theatre and robotics. Her monographs Visuality in the Theatre (2008) and Doing Dramaturgy. Thinking Through Practice (2003) were published by Palgrave (2008).
