Speakers

Here you can find more information about the conference and keynote speakers. Their abstracts and the conference program is available here.

 

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Opening Lecture Speakers

Vladimír Karas / Astronomical Institute, Czech Academy of Sciences

Vladimír Karas is Research Scientist and Professor of Astrophysics at the Astronomical Institute of the Czech Academy of Sciences, which he joined in 2004. He has since then taken charge of Relativistic Astrophysics program. Before coming to the Prague section of the Institute, Vladimír held a position of Associate Professor of astrophysics at Charles University and Visiting Scientist at several places: Trieste, Rome, Paris, Gőteborg, and Baltimore.
Vladimír’s research includes topics in relativistic astrophysics. He has developed several fast numerical approaches to study the effects of strong gravity via light variations from sources near a black hole. Vladimír is also interested in the motion of stars embedded in a dense nuclear star cluster, in particular, an interaction between stars and their environment in the immediate vicinity of galactic nuclei. More recent work deals with signatures of frame-dragging in twisted shapes of magnetic field lines: an interplay between Mach and Meissner effects near compact magnetic stars.

 

Maciej Wielgus / Black Hole Initiative, Harvard University/ Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory

Maciej Wielgus holds a degree in mathematics from the University of Warsaw and a degree in robotics and automatic control from Warsaw University of Technology. He obtained PhD degree from Warsaw University of Technology in 2016 for the work on adaptive processing of interferometric fringe patterns. Some of his scientific interests involve simulations of radiatively inefficient accretion flows, accretion stability, and photospheric expansion X-ray bursts.
Maciej is currently involved in the Event Horizon Telescope project, working on data calibration and imaging algorithms. He is also involved in global radiative simulations of relativistic accretion flows.

 

Keynote Speakers

Andrea Fischer / Institute of Interdisciplinary Mountain Research, Austrian Academy of Sciences
Andrea Fischer is the head of the group ‘Man and Environment: High Mountain Areas’. Her main areas of research are glaciology, geophysics and mountain science. Long-term monitoring of mass balance and the compilation of time series of glacier inventories provide the basis for detailed process studies on the interaction of mountain glaciers and climate and its impact on local and regional hydrology. Development and validation of methods in applied glaciology, such as snow farming and snow production, augment the basic research by the consideration of socioeconomic impacts and adaption strategies to climate change.

 

Magdalena Vuković / PhotoInstitut Bonartes
Magdalena Vuković is a photo historian and curator with a focus on photography in Austria up to the 1950s. In her work she favors an interdisciplinary approach, closely collaborating with researchers from different fields. Recent exhibitions/publications: “Serving Racial Politics”: Anna Koppitz’s Photographs for Reich Minister R. Walther Darré (2017); Porträts der Entwurzelung. D’Oras Fotografien in österreichischen Flüchtlingslagern 1946–1949 (2018); Von wunderbarer Klarheit: Friedrich Simonys Gletscherfotografien, 1875–1891 (2019).

 

Kelley Wilder / PHRC, De Montfort University Leicester
Kelley Wilder is Director of the Photographic History Research Centre at DeMontfort University, Leicester. She is a photographic historian, with interests in the cultures of science and knowledge generated by photography and photographic practice. In her work, she considers the photographic practices of Nineteenth-century scientists and artists like William Henry Fox Talbot, Sir John Herschel, Henri Becquerel and others. New projects include work on Photographic catalogues and archives and Nineteenth and Twentieth-century material cultures of the photographic industry and image-making. Kelley Wilder led a working group at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, Berlin, entitled “Documenting the World” with Gregg Mitman (2009-2011). And has published various books, including “Documenting the World: Film, Photography and the Scientific Record” (with Gregg Mitman, 2016) or “Photography and Science” (2009). She is a member of European Society of the History of Photography, History of Science Society and European Society for the History of Science.

 

Dawn Wilson / Department of Languages and Philosophy, University of Hull
Dawn Wilson is a Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of Hull. She has two main areas of research: The philosophy of Wittgenstein, early and late, particularly the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. And art, aesthetics and photographic images, including work on aesthetic scepticism, time and the causal provenance of photographs, self-portrait photography and analogies between the ontology of works of music and works of photography. She is currently writing a monograph about Aesthetics and Photography which includes an original theory of the photographic process, centred on a notion she calls the ‘photographic event’. She collaborates with interdisciplinary and international research networks on projects such as “Photographs: Perception and Changes. An interdisciplinary network on photography and its reception”, “Art and the Limits of Perception (Part of the SPIN network)”, “Anglo-German Bildtheorie/Picture Theory International Research Group”, etc.

 

Conference Speakers

Camilla Balbi / Visual and Media Studies, IULM University of Milan
Camilla Balbi is a PhD student in Visual and Media Studies at the IULM University of Milan. After graduating in Modern Literature at the University of Pavia, she obtained a master’s degree in Arts, Heritage and Markets at IULM, with a thesis on the German curator Alexander Dorner and the curatorial practices of the Weimar Republic. Her major research interests cover curatorial studies, museography and art theory, with a special focus on the German and Jewish-German culture of the Twenties. She is currently writing her PhD thesis on Erwin Panofsky’s media theory. She has published several articles on Weimar Culture (Alexander Dorner in Enciclopedia Treccani dell’Arte Contemporanea, Treccani, Roma, 2019), contemporary art criticism (Non avere timore, in Aa. Vv., Atelier Pietrosanti, ed. Gli Ori, Pistoia, 2019) and Jewish Studies (La rivelazione, l’immagine, lo spazio emotivo: ricordo testuale o memoria esistenziale?, in F. Lucrezi, Apocalisse, Pontificia Facoltà Teologica, Napoli, 2016). Since June 2019, she is critic and contributor to Flash Art Magazine.

 

László Beke / Department of Fine Arts Theory, Hungarian University of Fine Arts
László Beke CSc, dr. habil, Prof. and dr. honoris causa is Professor of Art History at the Department of Fine Arts Theory at Hungarian University of Fine Arts, Budapest, Hungary; dr. honoris causa of the Romanian University of Fine Arts (Bucarest) and Senior Researcher at the Institute of Art History, Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Research Centre for Humanities; laureat of Széchenyi-Prize (of the Hungarian Government for sciences) and Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres (Paris). His main research interests include post-contemporary, contemporary and 19–20th  century art, history and theory of media. His main publications include Műalkotások elemzése (Analysis of Art Works, Tankönyvkiadó, Budapest, 1986); Művészet/elmélet (Art/Theory, Balassi, Budapest, 1994);  Médium/elmélet (Medium/Theory, Balassi, Budapest, 1997); Dadaizmus-antológia (An Anthology of Dadaism, Balassi, Budapest, 1998);   Imagination/Idea. The Beginning of Hungarian Conceptual Art (tranzit.hu, Budapest, jrp/ringier, Zürich, 2015).

 

Timothy Druckrey / Maryland Institute College of Art
Timothy Druckrey is Director Emeritus of the Graduate Photographic and Electronic Media program at the Maryland Institute, College of Art. He also works as a curator, writer, and editor. He lectures internationally about the social impact of photography, electronic media, the transformation of representation, and communication. He co-curated the exhibition Iterations: The New Image and edited the book published by MIT Press. He edited Electronic Culture: Technology and Visual Representation, co-edited (with Gretchen Bender) Culture on the Brink: Ideologies of Technology (Bay Press) and was Series Editor for Electronic Culture: History, Theory, Practice published by MIT Press. He has been Guest Professor at the University of Applied Art, Vienna (2004) and Richard Koopman Distinguished Chair for the Visual Arts at the University of Hartford (2005). 

 

Tomáš Dvořák / FAMU in Prague
Tomáš Dvořák is a historian and theorist of media and visual culture and a historian and philosopher of science interested primarily in the intersections of these fields: in media history of science and knowledge and in cross-disciplinary humanities research in contemporary media cultures. He currently works as a researcher and lecturer at the Department of Photography, FAMU in Prague.

 

Alessandro Ferraro / History of Contemporary Arts, University of Genoa
Alessandro Ferraro (Genoa, 1990), art historian, is currently a PhD student at the University of Genoa (Italy), in History of Contemporary Arts and History of Science. In the same athenaeum, he obtained a B.A. and an M.A. in Art History, with a thesis on the critical debate on photography during the Nineties in Italy. After a curatorial master’s degree at the Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, he worked for the curatorial department of Galleria d’arte moderna e contemporanea in Turin. In 2017 he received a research grant fellowship at the Stiftung Hans Arp in Berlin. His PhD thesis consists in a study of the relation between forms of abstraction in visual culture, experimental science and epistemology.

 

Agnese Ghezzi / Kunsthistorisches Institut Florence, Max-Planck-Institut
Agnese Ghezzi is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz, under the department of Prof. Dr. Gerhard Wolf.  Her work explores the connection between photography, anthropology and colonial culture in 19th century Italy. She received her PhD from IMT School for Advanced Studies Lucca, in the curriculum Analysis and Management of Cultural Heritage, with a thesis entitled “The Handbook, the Field, and the Archive: Photographic Practices and the Rise of Anthropology in Italy (1861-1911)”. In 2018, she was Visiting Researcher at the Photographic History Research Centre, DMU, Leicester. She studied Modern and Contemporary History at the University of Florence, the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, and the University of Bologna. Her research interests include the history of photography and visual studies, cultural history, history of science, museology and history of collecting, colonial history, archives and cultural heritage.

 

Valerie Jeanne-Perrier / CELSA Faculté des Lettres Sorbonne Université Paris
Valérie Jeanne-Perrier is the Director of the Human Resources Degree Program at the Graduate School of Communications of the Sorbonne (CELSA) where she also teaches on subjects pertaining to the Media and Organizational Sociology. Her research focuses on professional and editorial changes linked to the use of IT tools as sources and resources for writing in the process of structuring the production of information in the workplace.

Her work brings forward individual sociological dimensions, including the extent to which people are driven to construct their identity in the workplace.  Mediation and writing devices (Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn) play a larger role in how workers produce themselves, thus creating a new set of identities for themselves. In addition to her academic work, Jeanne-Perrier regularly participates in the research projects of the international professional association for Journalism, le Réseau d’Etudes sur le Journalisme.

 

Martin Jürgens / Rijksmuseum Amsterdam
Martin Jürgens has an M.A. in Conservation from Queen’s University and is currently Photograph Conservator at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam. His research, publishing and teaching have covered historic and contemporary photography and digital printing. The Getty Conservation Institute published his book The Digital Print – Identification and Preservation in 2009.

Lénia Fernandes / Nederlands Fotomuseum Rotterdam
Lénia Fernandes has an M.A. in Conservation and Restoration from Universidade Nova de Lisboa and is currently Assistant Photograph Conservator at the Nederlands Fotomuseum in Rotterdam. Previously, she worked at the Rijksmuseum and at the Historisches Archiv der Stadt Köln and was an intern at HTW-Berlin and the Image Permanence Institute.

Ioannis Vasallos / The National Archives London
Ioannis Vasallos has an M.A. in Conservation from the University of the Arts London and is currently Photograph and Paper Conservator at The National Archives in London. Previously, he worked as a Photographic Collections Conservator at the National Library of Scotland and as Junior Photograph Conservator at the Rijksmuseum. He also completed an advanced Icon internship in photograph conservation at the National Galleries of Scotland.

 

Stefanie Klamm / Gotha Research Centre, University of Erfurt
Stefanie Klamm is an art/visual historian and historian of science based in Berlin. Her current project deals with the history of the Gotha Collections at Gotha Research Centre of the University of Erfurt. She was a research associate in the project “Photo-Objects. Photographs as (Research-)Objects in Archaeology, Ethnology and Art History” at Kunstbibliothek Staatliche Museen zu Berlin – Preußischer Kulturbesitz, of which two books result: “Photo-Objects. On the Materiality of Photographs and Photo Archives in the Humanities and Sciences” (ed. Julia Bärnighausen, Costanza Caraffa, Stefanie Klamm, Franka Schneider, and Petra Wodtke) and “Foto-Objekte. Forschen in archäologischen, ethnologischen und kunsthistorischen Archiven” (by the same editors). She completed a dissertation on the history of archaeological visualization at the Institute of Art History and Visual Studies, Humboldt University and the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, Berlin in 2012. She was an assistant curator at Staatliche Museen zu Berlin. She received several fellowships, i.e. at Internationales Kolleg für Kulturtechnikforschung und Medienphilosophie, Bauhaus Universität Weimar; the Excellence Cluster TOPOI (The Formation and Transformation of Space and Knowledge in Ancient Civilizations) at Humboldt University, at Getty Research Institute Los Angeles, etc. Her research interests include the history of visual media (photography, drawing, cast) and archaeological practice as well as visualization practices and material culture of the sciences and humanities. She is also interested in the history of museums and collections.

 

Nadiia Kovalchuk / Museum of Kharkiv School of Photography/ Sorbonne Université
Nadiia Kovalchuk is an art historian and curator, born in Kyiv. She studied Cultural Studies at the Kyiv-Mohyla Academy, Art History at the École du Louvre and Sorbonne Université in Paris. Since 2018, she has been a researcher and curator at the Museum of the Kharkiv School of Photography (MOKSOP). Her PhD thesis (started in 2020) interrogates photographic practices in unofficial art in late Soviet Union (1964-1991). The monograph “Kharkiv School of Photography in the Game Against the Apparatus” (in Ukrainian) was published in October 2020.

 

Anaïs Mauuarin / Labex Hastec/Centre Alexandre Koyré
Anaïs Mauuarin holds a PhD from the University of Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne, entitled “Anthropology put to the test of pictures. Anthropology and Photography in France, 1930- 1960” (2018), under publication. She published several articles on the topic, coordinated a special issue of the journal Gradhiva, “Sur le vif : photographie et anthropologie” (27, 2018) and is currently conducting research on the visual culture of anthropology and the building of a colonial imaginary.

 

Maria Medvedeva / Scientific Archive, Institute for the History of Material Culture, Russian Academy of Sciences Saint-Petersburg
Maria Medvedeva is Head of the Scientific Archive at the Institute for the History of Material Culture, Russian Academy of Sciences (Saint-Petersburg). She graduated from Saint-Petersburg State University and then completed her PhD at the Institute for the History of Material Culture (specialty archaeology). She has worked in the Archive for 20 years, the last 5 as its Head. Her research interests include the history of Russian archaeology, the preservation of antiquities in Russia at the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th centuries and the role of photography in archaeology. She participated in more than 50 scientific conferences, symposiums and seminars and authored more than 80 publications on the history of archaeology, photography in archaeological studies, and the history and attribution of the archival collections of the Institute for the History of Material Culture of the Russian Academy of Sciences.

 

Michal Šimůnek /FAMU in Prague
Michal Šimůnek is an assistant professor at FAMU in Prague. Educated in media studies and sociology (Masaryk University in Brno), his research focuses on theory and history of photography and visual consumer culture. His research interests include vernacular photography, experimental photography, visual social sciences and photographic communities of consumption. He is the author of several book chapters and articles in scientific journals; he is also a translator of Geoffrey Batchen’s Photography and Dissemination: Towards a New History for Photography (NAMU, 2016) and Jussi Parikka’s What is media archaeology? (NAMU, forthcoming). Currently, he is a researcher in the project “Operational Images and Visual Culture: Media Archaeological Investigations”.

 

David Stella / Czech Globe – Global Change Research Institute, Czech Academy of Sciences/ Department of Philosophy and History of Science, Charles University in Prague
David Stella is a biologist with a four-year experience as a data analyst and coordinator of the project Psychology of male intra-sexual competition and associated neural correlates and other research projects dealing with ecology, evolutionary biology and zoology (National Institute of Mental Health, Charles University in Prague). He is involved in ecological monitoring surveys (NCA CR).

Pavel Pecháček / Department of Philosophy and History of Science, Charles University in Prague
In 2018 he graduated at Department of Philosophy and History of Natural Sciences, Charles University by defending his PhD thesis Environmental influences on the shape of ultraviolet signals in genus Gonepteryx (Lepidoptera, Pieridae)  He continues with the research of UV reflectance on the wings of butterflies and other invertebrates. In addition, he studies the history of the natural sciences, especially the period of Victorian and Edwardian England. Also, he focuses on the popularization of science, the translation of biological texts and the review of popular science books.

Karel Kleisner / Department of Philosophy and History of Science, Charles University in Prague
He graduated in biology at the Faculty of Science, Charles University, and is currently studying the theory of the biological sciences at the Department of Philosophy and History of Natural Sciences, Charles University. He participated as an editor and author in the books Biology in the Service of Appearance – On the Theoretical and Biological Thoughts of Adolf Portmann and Umwelt – The Concept of the Living World by Jakob von Uexküll. At present, he focuses mainly on theoretical biology with overlaps into entomology, psychology, anthropology, evolutionary biology, zoology, philosophy and the history of science.

 

Stig Storheil / Norwegian Water Resources and Energy Directorate
Stig Storheil is Senior Advisor and Photo Archivist at the Norwegian Water Resources and Energy Directorate. He holds a BA in Archive and Information Science from Mid Sweden University. His main publications include The Authenticity of Photography (Bachelor thesis, Mid Sweden University 2010), “Art, object or document – Photography’s role in Archives” in Hilde Lange and Ulrika Spring (red), Dissemination for the future – thoughts on the Archive (Oslo: ABM-media as 2013). He is currently contributing to the national research project: “Norwegian photographic history 1940 – 2011”.

 

Marthe Tolnes Fjellestad / Perspektivet Museum Tromsø
Marthe T. Fjellestad trained as a photographer and curator and has worked in universities, art collections and museums in the UK and Norway. As Academic Director of the Picture Collection, University of Bergen Library she focused on the use of photographs as primary source material in academic research, whole her work at Perspektivet Museum centers on contemporary documentary photography. Her main research interest is Arctic landscape photography in the context of visual geography, art and media history. Having published in Journal of Art History, Journal of Polar Geography and the Daguerreotype Journal, Fjellestad is co-author of Starman – Sophus Tromholt Photographs 1882–1883 (Forlaget Press, 2018) and co-curator of Across the West and Toward the North: Norwegian and American Landscape Photography, to be shown in various venues in Norway and the USA in 2021-2023.

 

Jennifer G. Tucker / History & Science in Society, Wesleyan University, Middletown
Jennifer Tucker is a cultural historian of science specializing in the study of technology, law, photography and visual culture. The author of Nature Exposed: Photography as Eyewitness in Victorian Science (2006), she also has published numerous articles and book chapters and recently completed a book manuscript about photography and facial likeness in the Victorian courtroom. Her current projects include a study of photographic chemistry and the Victorian alkali industry. The editor in 2009 of an issue of History and Theory about photography and history, she is co-editor of “Photography, History: History, Photography” monograph series with Bloomsbury Academic Publishing (with Elizabeth Edwards and Patricia Hayes) and co-editor of a forthcoming Photography and Law Reader. She has also served as co-editor of “Political Histories of Technoscience” for Radical History Review.

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