Marcus Owens is a San Francisco-based architect and urban historian. He is a founding partner of CAMO Design and holds a PhD in Landscape Architecture and Environmental Planning with an emphasis in Science and Technology Studies.
Nikolay Rudenko is a research fellow at the Centre for the Study of Science and Technology, European University, St. Petersburg, Russia and holds a PhD in Sociology from St. Petersburg State University. His expertise includes science and technology studies, digital sociology, the sociology of culture, and urban sociology. Nikolay is currently a principal investigator in the “MARTA” project that aims to map ongoing R&D activities related to autonomous vehicles in Russia and worldwide.
Nikolay Ryzhakov is a software developer and data scientist. He received an engineering degree from ITMO – Information Technologies, Mechanics and Optics National Research University, Saint Petersburg, Russia. His expertise includes machine learning and data visualization. Nikolay has been involved in several medical data analysis projects, including MRI and ECG image processing, and sleep data analysis.
Ekaterina Shmeleva has an MA in Cultural Studies, National Research University Higher School of Economics, Moscow, Russia and is the vice principal of pastoral care at Khoroshool, Moscow. She is a graduate of the “Teach for Russia” program and has written academic and popular articles about the modern urban environment in its digital and theatrical manifestations. She also organizes children’s urban camps and works for the research group “Culture of Participation: Communities and Practices” (HSE University).
Denis Sivkov is a lecturer with the Institute for Social Sciences at the Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration in Moscow, Russia. He received his PhD in Philosophy from Volgograd State University, Russia. His work is located at the intersection of STS, mobilities studies, and the anthropology of outer space.
Andrey Vozyanov is a lecturer at the European Humanities University, Vilnius, Lithuania and the European College of Liberal Arts, Minsk, Belarus. He is also a researcher at Minsk Urban Platform, currently exploring the needs and possibilities of local communities in Belarus. He defended his PhD thesis on public transport activism in Ukraine and Romania at the Graduate School for Eastern and Southeast European Studies, University of Regensburg, Germany. His latest academic publications are dedicated to political Instagram, practices of care amidst mass repressions, and media segregation within society, all explored in the context of the ongoing events in Belarus.
Oksana Zaporozhets, PhD, is an associate professor at the Faculty of Urban and Regional Development, a head of the Laboratory for Urban Sociology, National Research University Higher School of Economics, Moscow, Russia. Her current research projects focus on urban inequalities, new residential areas and large housing estates, neighboring in the big city. Her research interests also include street art and everyday mobility. She co-edited the book Microurbanism. City in Details (Moscow: New Literary Observer, 2014)
Anna Zhelnina holds a PhD in sociology from the City University of New York, USA. Her research interests include such topics as urban civic participation, the challenges of engaging neighbors in diverse neighborhoods, and the mechanisms that urban political players employ to promote their visions of a city’s future. Her doctoral dissertation, “Engaging Neighbors: Housing Strategies and Political Mobilization in Moscow’s Renovation,” explores the political developments triggered by a large-scale urban renewal project in Moscow, the competing visions of a “good city,” private and common good, and how proposed ways of achieving these goals clashed during the renovation controversy. Anna joined the Helsinki Institute of Urban and Regional Studies as a postdoctoral researcher in September 2020 to work on the theme “Urban utopias, citizenship, and alternatives”.