Aslıhan Demirtaş

Aslıhan Demirtaş is the founder of KHORA Office, an expanded architectural practice focused on research, art, and ecology, originally established in New York and now based in Istanbul. Her practice is collaborative, transdisciplinary, and multi-scaled, producing buildings, landscapes, installations, exhibitions, and research across different fields and boundaries. Before establishing her practice, she had a long collaboration with Pritzker Prize winner I. M. Pei as the lead designer for the Museum of Islamic Arts in Doha, Qatar, and Miho Chapel in Japan. She has led studios, workshops, and lectured at several universities, including Parsons School of Design at The New School, Istanbul Bilgi University, Harvard Graduate School of Design, MIT, and Bauhaus-Universität Weimar. In 2022, Demirtaş served on the technical evaluation commission for the 15th Aga Khan Award for Architecture. She is currently working on Graft, a book that explores the relationship between modernity and nature through hydraulic structures, to be published by Salt with support from the Graham Foundation. She is a member of the Initiative for the Protection of the Historical Yedikule Urban Gardens and a founding member of the ANATOPIA cooperative.

Thierry de Duve

Historian and philosopher of art Thierry de Duve is Evelyn Kranes Kossak Professor at Hunter College, City University of New York. His English publications include Pictorial Nominalism (1991), Kant After Duchamp (1996), Clement Greenberg Between the Lines (1996, 2010), Look—100 Years of Contemporary Art (2001), Sewn In the Sweatshops of Marx: Beuys, Warhol, Klein, Duchamp (2012), Aesthetics at Large, Volume One: Art, Ethics, Politics (2018), and Duchamp’s Telegram, From Beaux-Arts to Art-in-General (2023). Two volumes of his Essais datés, published in French by Mamco in Geneva, have appeared in the last few years: Vol. I, Duchampiana, in 2014, and Vol. II, Adresses, in 2016. He is presently working on Volume Two of Aesthetics at Large, titled Farewell to Romanticism.

Jacob Lund

Jacob Lund is Associate Professor of Aesthetics and Culture and Director of Centre for Research in Artistic Practice under Contemporary Conditions at the School of communication and Culture, Aarhus University. He is editor, with Geoff Cox, of the book series The Contemporary Condition with Sternberg Press (since 2016) and was Editor-in-Chief of The Nordic Journal of Aesthetics 2007-2023. Lund has published widely within aesthetics, art studies, critical theory, and comparative literature. Currently he is engaged on the research project Artistic Practice under Contemporary Conditions, running 2022-2026 and made possible by an Investigator Grant from the Novo Nordisk Foundation: https://cc.au.dk/en/apcc. His most recent authored book is The Changing Constitution of the Present: Essays on the Work of Art in Times of Contemporaneity (Sternberg, 2022).

Jale N. Erzen

Jale Nejdet Erzen, painter (MFA, Art Center College of Design, Los Angeles, 1974); art historian (Ph.D. Istanbul Technical University, Faculty of Architecture, 1981); Fulbright Scholar 1985; has received a French Museums tour scholarship in 1982 and a contemporary German art tour scholarship in 2006. Since 1974 has been teaching design, art and aesthetics courses at the Faculty of Architecture, Middle East Technical University, Ankara; She is presently teaching at İzmir University. She has been the editor of the Boyut and Dimensions ne arts journals 1980-1984; recipient of the French Ministry of Culture’s Arts et Lettres Chevalier honor; recipient of Contribution to Turkish Architecture prize 2008; General Secretary of IAA 1995-98; Second Vice President and Vice President IAA (International Association of Aesthetics) 2007-2016; Organizer of the 17th International Congress of Aesthetics in 2007 and editor of two proceedings books of the Congress; editor of IAA Yearbook 2003, 2008 and 2012 with Ra aele Milani; President and founder of the Turkish SANART Association for Aesthetics and Visual Culture between 1991 and 2011 except fr two years; has lectured in Japan,Asia, Europe and USA on aesthetics, Turkish and Islamic art and architecture and has many books and international publications on these subjects. She has been visiting professor at Osaka University, University of Bologna and at Koper Slovenia. 

Eray Çaylı

Eray Çaylı, PhD (University College London, 2015), is Professor of Human Geography with a Focus on Violence and Security in the Anthropocene at University of Hamburg. His work interweaves geography, anthropology, and material/visual culture to explore the role that physical environments and their images play in political violence and defiance in Turkey and its environs, and among their diasporas. His publications include the monographs Earthmoving: Extractivism, War, and Visuality in Northern Kurdistan (2025, University of Texas Press), Victims of Commemoration: The Architecture and Violence of Confronting the Past in Turkey (2022, Syracuse University Press), İklimin Estetiği: Antroposen Sanatı ve Mimarlığı Üzerine Denemeler [Climate Aesthetics: Essays on Anthropocene Art and Architecture] (2020, Everest; in Turkish; expanded edition reprinted in 2023), and the anthology Architectures of Emergency in Turkey: Heritage, Displacement and Catastrophe (2021, Bloomsbury/I.B.Tauris). He is one of the editors of the Journal of Visual Culture.

Rüstem Aslan

Rüstem Aslan, born in Istanbul in 1965, graduated from Istanbul University’s Department of Prehistory. He earned his Ph.D. in Prehistoric Archaeology from the University of Tübingen (Germany) in 2006, under the supervision of M. Osman Korfmann. He began his academic career at Çanakkale Onsekiz Mart University (Turkey). A member of the Troy excavation team since 1988, he directed a survey project (2007-2011) focused on mapping the Bronze Age settlement system around Troy. In 2013, he became the director of the Troy excavation. His recent seminars have covered the archaeological topography and the archaeology of Troy. He is a prolific author in his field.

Alan Wenham-Prosser

Born in Wales in 1944, Alan Wenham-Prosser developed a lifelong passion for music and philosophy alongside a successful engineering career. From a young age, he studied music and explored religious texts, including the Quran. After pursuing civil engineering and becoming a prominent engineer in London, he retired in 2001, becoming a Freeman of the City. In 1964, he began studying Vedanta philosophy, leading to a profound encounter with a mystic in 1965. He married in 1971 and raised three children who share his philosophical interests and practice Mevlevi traditions. Driven by a deep connection to Mevlevi music since 1976, he traveled extensively to Istanbul, joining a Mevlevi group. He studied with renowned Turkish musicians, mastering Ney, Kudüm, and Tanbur. He formalized his musical studies with a Master’s (1996) and Doctorate (2006) in music from Middlesex University. Dr. Wenham-Prosser continues to study and perform traditional Mevlevi Ayinler.