Containment: Technologies of Holding, Filtering, Leaking

Ingrid Richardson is Professor of Digital Media in the School of Media & Communication at RMIT University, Melbourne, Australia. She is a digital ethnographer and phenomenologist with a broad interest in the human– technology relation and mediated embodiment, and the application of innovative research methods in these contexts. She is co-author of Ambient Play (MIT Press, 2020), Exploring Minecraft (2020), Understanding Games and Game Cultures (Sage, 2021), and Bodies and Mobile Media (Polity, 2023).

Hannah Schmedes is a PhD candidate in Gender Media Studies at Ruhr-University Bochum. She is a researcher in the project “Bicycle Media. Cooperative Media of Mobility” at the University of Siegen and an associate member of the graduate program “The Documentary” at the Ruhr-University Bochum. Her dissertation on queerfeminist infrastructure critique explores how gender politics are coded into infrastructures and platforms. “Containing: Leaks” was the topic of her M.A. in European Media Studies at the University of Potsdam, which followed a B.A. in Cultural Studies and Philosophy at the Leuphana University of Lüneburg. She is part of the feminist collective Wiki Riot Squad, where she has led writing workshops on Wikipedia's publishing and interface policies. Recent talks and publications have explored themes of porosity, leakiness, and witchcraft in relation to gender and infrastructure.

Zoë Sofoulis, from the Institute for Culture and Society at Western Sydney University, is a retired interdisciplinary researcher with a longstanding interest in the myths and symbols of high-tech culture. Her earlier writings (under the name Zoë Sofia) focussed on science fiction, cyberculture, and electronic arts. She is more recently known for practical applications of qualitative cultural research and humanities perspectives in fields where technology and engineering predominate, especially urban water, where her papers have helped define a cultural and sociotechnical perspective on metropolitan water and demand management. When strangers ask if she has had children, Zoë is proud to say “No, but I’ve had postgraduates,” some of whom are contributors to this book.

Daniela Agostinho is Assistant Professor at the School of Communication and Culture, University of Aarhus. She works in the fields of visual and digital culture and artistic and curatorial research, with a particular focus on colonial archives and the care and display of contested histories. She is co-editor of the books (W)archives: Archival Imaginaries, War and Contemporary Art (Sternberg Press/MIT Press, 2020) and Uncertain Archives. Critical Keywords for Big Data (MIT Press, 2021). She co-directs the network “Reparative Encounters: a transcontinental network for artistic research and reparative practices” with colleagues from the US Virgin Islands, Ghana, Kalaallit Nunaat and Denmark.

Hélène Frichot is Professor of Architecture and Philosophy, and Director of the Bachelor of Design, Faculty of Architecture, Building and Planning at the University of Melbourne, Australia. She is the former Director of Critical Studies in Architecture, School of Architecture, KTH Stockholm, Sweden. Her recent publications include Dirty Theory: Troubling Architecture (AADR 2019), Creative Ecologies: Theorizing the Practice of Architecture (Bloomsbury 2018), How to Make Yourself a Feminist Design Power Tool (AADR 2016).

Meredith Jones is Professor of Gender Studies and Director of the Institute of Communities and Society at Brunel University London. She is a feminist scholar of the body and expert in the sociocultural aspects of cosmetic surgery—her book Beautyscapes: Mapping Cosmetic Surgery Tourism (with Ruth Holliday and David Bell) won the 2020 Foundation for the Sociology of Health and Illness Book Prize. Meredith has published widely about popular culture, visuality, fashion, and embodiment. Kardashians: A Critical Anthology (edited with Kath Burton and Donna Brien) will be published by Taylor and Francis in 2024. Her podcast, Beauty Chronicles, can be found on Spotify and via other major outlets. The updated second edition of Meredith’s monograph Skintight: An Anatomy of Cosmetic Surgery is due to be released by Bloomsbury in 2025.

Chris Otter is College of Arts and Sciences Distinguished Professor of History at the Ohio State University, where he researches and teaches the history of technology, science, health and food. He is the author of The Victorian Eye: A Political History of Light and Vision in Britain, 1800-1910 (Chicago, 2008), and Diet for a Large Planet: Industrial Britain, Food Systems, and World Ecology (Chicago, 2020). His current project is a book about the history of the earth’s technosphere.

Paul Graham Raven is a writer, researcher and critical futures practitioner, whose research is concerned with how the stories we tell about times yet to come shape the lives we end up living. A former Marie Skłodowska-Curie Postdoctoral Fellow (Lund University) and a member of the editorial board of the journal Futures, Paul is also an author and critic of science fiction, an occasional journalist and essayist, and a collaborator with designers and artists. He currently lives in Malmö with a cat, some guitars, and sufficient books to constitute an insurance-invalidating fire hazard. / paulgrahamraven.com

Helen Runting is an architectural theorist, urban planner and designer, and editor. She is a founding partner in Secretary, a Stockholm-based architecture practice, which explores the capacity of architecture to facilitate a dignified life at the scale of the population. Secretary’s work has been exhibited widely in Sweden, and in Tbilisi, Melbourne, and Tokyo. Helen regularly writes critiques, reviews, and essays; she has taught at the Estonian Academy of Arts (EKA) in Tallinn, Blekinge Institute of Technology (BTH) in Karlskrona, and both the Royal Institute of Technology (KTH) and Konstfack University of Arts, Crafts, and Design in Stockholm.

Yolande Strengers is Professor of Digital Technology and Society in the Emerging Technologies Research Lab at Monash University (Faculty of Information Technology), where she leads the Energy Futures research program. Her research spans the fields of digital sociology, science and technology studies and human computer interaction. Drawing on digital and design ethnography techniques, Yolande’s research investigates the environmental and gender impacts of emerging technologies in the home, including digital voice assistants, AI and smart home devices. Recent books include The Smart Wife (The MIT Press, 2020, co-authored with Jenny Kennedy) and Social Practices and Dynamic Non-Humans (Palgrave Macmillan, 2018, co-edited with Cecily Maller).

Nanna Bonde Thylstrup is Associate Professor on the Promotion Programme at the Department of Arts and Cultural Studies, University of Copenhagen. Her writing and teaching focus on data, machine learning and digital infrastructures. Recent books include Uncertain Archives: Critical Keywords for the Age of Big Data (co-edited with Daniela Agostinho, Annie Ring, Catherine D’Ignazio and Kristin Veel, MIT Press, 2021), (W)archives: Archival Imaginaries, War, and Contemporary Art (co-edited with Daniela Agostinho, Solveig Gade, and Kristin Veel, Sternberg Press, 2021) and The Politics of Mass Digitization (MIT Press, 2019). Nanna now leads Data Loss: The Politics of Disappearance, Destruction and Dispossession in Digital Societies, a multi-year research project funded by the European Research Council on the politics and ethics of data loss.

Dinesh Wadiwel is Associate Professor in socio-legal studies and human rights in the Discipline of Sociology and Criminology at The University of Sydney. Dinesh’s research interests include critical animal studies and disability rights. He is author of The War against Animals (Brill 2015), Animals and Capital (Edinburgh UP 2023) and co-editor (with Matthew Chrulew) of Foucault and Animals (Brill, 2016). Dinesh is also co-author, with Claire Spivakovsky and Linda Steele, of two research reports for the Australian Royal Commission into Violence, Abuse, Neglect and Exploitation of People with Disability. His essays have appeared in Cultural Studies Review, Angelaki, Political Theory, New Literary History and South Atlantic Quarterly. Dinesh is developing a new research project on animals and the State.