Alma Clavin is an urban geographer and social sciences researcher in the School of Geography, University College Dublin. Over the last two decades Alma has worked for a number of public, private and non-governmental organisations in Ireland and the UK on community planning, energy and sustainability issues with a focus on grassroots practices and the relationship between green areas, health and wellbeing in densely populated urban areas. While this work is primarily rooted through the discipline of Geography, it’s interdisciplinary in practice, drawing on the fields of art, architecture, planning and design. From 2019-2021 Alma coordinated the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) – a funded collaborative action research project, creating a community-led greening strategy in Dublin city and is currently undertaking a project funded by the National Economic and Social Council (NESC) to examine place based approaches for Just Transitions. This work focuses on how we can create decent work and quality of life as we move to a low carbon economy. In collaboration with Teresa Dillon, Alma is the receipt of a Creative Ireland, Climate Action grant (Sept 2021-Dec 2022), which focuses on past, present and futures repair histories, narratives and imaginaries in Ireland.

Aishwarya Tipnis is an award winning architect, educator and heritage conservationist based in New Delhi. In 2016, her work was recognised by the UNESCO Award for Heritage Conservation in the Asia-Pacific Region  and in 2018 she was conferred Chevalier Des Arts et Des Lettre (Knight of the Arts and Letters), by the Government of France in 2018 for her outstanding commitment to preservation of French Heritage in India. In 2019, she co-founded Jugaadopolis a social innovation enterprise to work with youth in making the rich tangible and intangible heritage of India relevant in the contemporary context through a process of co-creation. She is a published author and currently visiting faculty at the School of Planning and Architecture, New Delhi.

Chloé Mikolajczak is a campaigner for the Right to Repair European campaign and a climate justice activist working to make European policies greener and fairer. She coordinates a network of more than 80 members in 18 European countries including civil society organisations, repair businesses, community repair initiatives and public institutions fighting for longer lasting and more repairable products. She also hosts The Burning Case podcast aimed at making the link between EU policies and the most pressing issues of our time more understandable and accessible.

Dawn Giles supports the production of TALES OF CARE AND REPAIR on the UK side. Originally studying Fine Art and Painting and photography, Dawn has over twenty years experience as an art  curator, producer and manager. Relocating to Bristol in 2016, Dawn has returned to her arts roots, working as maker and mender using techniques from drawing, print and textiles. Embracing the delights of pattern making, repetition, and decoration her work explores and make connections between art, craft and ideas of labour and leisure.

Felipe Schmidt Fonseca is a Brazilian activist and free/open advocate turned researcher, working on the OpenDoTT project and living currently in Berlin, Germany. His current research topic is waste prevention through collective practices of reuse in cities and regions. In the last fifteen years Felipe was a co-founder and leader of a number of community and networking initiatives dedicated to critical thinking (and making) in the crossroads between culture, science, technology and society. Some examples are Tropixel, MetaReciclagem, CulturaDigital.BR, Bricolabs, Rede//Labs, Lixo Eletrônico, Ciência Aberta Ubatuba, UbaLab. Felipe is a PhD candidate in the School of Design at Northumbria University.

Dr. Francisco Martínez is an anthropologist dealing with contemporary issues of material culture through ethnographic experiments. Francisco currently holds the post of Associate Professor at Tallinn University and convenes the Collaboratory for Ethnographic Experimentation (EASA Network). In 2018, he was awarded with the Early Career Prize of the European Association of Social Anthropologists, which supported his research in repair cultures and he has published of two monographs – Ethnographic Experiments with Artists, Designers and Boundary Objects (UCL Press, 2021) and Remains of the Soviet Past in Estonia (UCL Press, 2018). Francisco has also edited several books, including Peripheral Methodologies (Routledge, 2021); Politics of Recuperation in Post-Crisis Portugal (Bloomsbury, 2020), and Repair, Brokenness, Breakthrough (Berghahn, 2019), He has also curated different exhibitions – including ‘Objects of Attention’ (Estonian Museum of Applied Art & Design, 2019), and ‘Life in Decline’ (Estonian Mining Museum, 2021).

Fred Paulino is a Brazilian artist, designer, researcher and curator. He holds a bachelor in Computer Science from UFMG (Federal University of Minas Gerais) and postgraduate studies in Contemporary Art at UEMG (State University of Minas Gerais / Guignard School). He is the catalyst of the referential Gambiologia project, which since 2008 investigates art and technology in dialogue with education and popular culture, especially around the themes of improvisation and reuse. His works have been shown in many countries such as USA, Austria, Colombia, Cuba, Spain, South Africa and Japan. He is the editor-in-chief of Facta Magazine and curated three editions of “Gambiologos” exhibitions. He has been the coordinator of independent education programs such as Favela Hacklab.

Josh Lepawsky researches the geographies of discards as well as those of maintenance and repair. Questions that inform his research include where and how are contemporary discards made? Where do they travel and where do their effects accumulate? Who gets what discards, where, how, and under what conditions? He is also interested in how maintenance and repair, broadly conceived, might offer both literal and figurative lessons for figuring out how to live well together in permanently polluted and always breaking worlds.

Dr Julia Corwin is Assistant Professor in Environment in the Department of Geography and Environment at the London School of Economics and Political Science. She is an urban ethnographer who studies economies and local cultures of waste and repair. Her research has focused on global flows of electronic ‘waste’ and their revaluation through economies of repair and re-manufacturing in India, conducted through a patchwork ethnography of local markets and their role in global electronics trade networks. She is beginning a new research project on electronics repair in London. Julia holds a PhD in Geography from the University of Minnesota. Prior to her entry into academia, she worked on urban environmental issues in New York City for the Department of Sanitation and the Department of Parks and Recreation.

Linda Brothwell is a British visual artist. Her multi disciplinary practice casts her as a maker of objects, tools and publicly sited interventions. She considers what it means to make something by hand that takes ‘care’ as its core, to not only make the ‘thing’ but to make the tools to make the thing, to spend months or years immersed in the techniques, the materials and the stories of a place. Linda’s ‘Acts of Care’ series initiated a repair movement in the arts and earned recognition through international gallery support, the Jerwood Makers Open, and a place on the Design of the Year shortlist. In 2019 she travelled to Japan as a Churchill Fellow researching ‘The Lifecycle of Tools in Japanese Culture’. Brothwell’s testimony to the value of craft skills and tools was celebrated in an award-winning co-produced BBC4 documentary Handmade in Hull in 2017. She has exhibited globally with Palais de Tokyo, representing the UK at Cheongju Craft Biennial and EXD biennial. Her work is included in the V&A and RCA permanent collections and private collections worldwide and she currently lecturers at The Royal College of Art, London.

Pedro Belasco is a bachelor in Social Sciences by the University of São Paulo – USP and Specialized in Design for Social Development IDIN/D-Lab/MIT/UFPA. He conceived and acted in projects related to the themes of social participation and dissemination of digital culture such as “Repair Cafes”, developing communication and knowledge management projects using the web as a platform and applying accessibility standards. Since 2016, he has been a member of the IDIN International Development Innovation Network.

Nicolas Nova is a researcher, writer and design researcher. An anthropologist of technology active in the field of contemporary cultures, interaction design and futures research, Nicolas is co-founder of the Near Future Laboratory, a design fiction agency based in Europe and California, and Associate Professor at the Geneva University of Arts and Design  (HEAD – Genève), where he teaches digital anthropology, ethnography and design research. He is also associate researcher at médialab SciencesPo in Paris. Nicolas holds a PhD in Social Sciences (University of Geneva), and a PhD in Human-Computer Interaction from the Swiss Institute of Technology (EPFL, Switzerland). He was previously visiting professor at ENSCI – Les Ateliers (Paris) and Politecnico di Milano, visiting researcher at the Art Center College of Design (Pasadena, CA), the Institute of Sociological Research at the University of Geneva, and co-founder/curator of Lift, a series of international events about digital culture, design and innovation.

Ravi Agarwal is the founder-director of the environmental NGO Toxics Link, which has pioneered work on waste and chemicals over the past three decades. Toxics Link has played a key role in issues relating to environmental health at various levels, including helping formulate policies and regulations for bio medical waste, municipal solid waste, electronic and electrical waste, hazardous waste, chemicals in products, POPS, and also to establish several best practice models on the ground. Alongside  Agarwal is also an artist, writer, and curator. His work has been exhibited at Havanna Biennial (2019), Kochi Biennial (2016), Sharjah Biennial (2013) and Documenta XI (2002) etc. He has authored and edited articles, books and journals including the recently published ‘The Crisis of Climate Change, Weather Report’ (2021, Routledge) edited with Omita Goyal and the chapter ‘Alien Waters’ (2021) in The Routledge Companion to Contemporary Art, Visual Culture, and Climate Change (edited by T.J Demos, Emily Eliza Scot and Subhankar Banerjee). Ravi was awarded the WHO-IFCS Award for Chemical Safety (2008) and the Ashoka Fellowship (1997). He lives in New Delhi and is an engineer and MBA by training.

Romana Abreu is a cultural producer, one of the co-heads of  MASTERp la n o collective and co-founder and curator of the podcast A-MIG, a nomadic platform that broadcasts mixtapes and sound experiments of emerging artists from Brazil and around the world. She also heads projects that seek to share the knowledge and challenges related to the independent cultural production in Belo Horizonte.

Satish Sinha is the Associate Director of Toxics Links, a leading environmental group working on issues of waste and chemicals and a veteran from India Air Force. For over two decades he has been an active campaigner and advocates for sustainable development. Under Satish’s leadership, Toxics Link has made a significant contribution towards shaping the current Municipal and e-Waste rules for India, with his work impacting extensively on changing the landscape of mercury management in India and the region. Satish holds a visiting faculty position at and is a prominent member on discourses relating to circular economy and the Right to Repair in India.

Sahil Gochhayat is the Programme Officer for Toxics Links and is passionate about the field of urban ecology. Concerned about the rate of human development and its impact on the environment, Sahil views collective effort, education and awareness as crucial in changing mindsets and behaviours, so that all species can enjoy a better future. A keen nature photographer and editor outside of his work at Toxics Links, Sahil enjoys tending to plants and nature treks. Sahil holds a MA in Ecology, Environment and Sustainable Development from The Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS) in Guwahati and a BA in English Literature from Delhi University.

Susan Evans joined Green Alliance in September 2021 as a senior policy adviser, leading the organisation’s work on resource efficiency and the circular economy. Her current projects look at how to make better use of the tax system to support a just transition, and how to ensure sustainable supplies of the critical raw materials needed for low-carbon technologies. Susan was previously policy manager at Zero Waste Scotland, where she led a team providing circular economy policy support to the Scottish Government. She worked on policies and regulations including restrictions on single-use plastics, reforms to extended producer responsibility and the early development of a Circular Economy Bill for Scotland. Prior to that, Susan worked for over eight years with the Economist Intelligence Unit, first as an in-house analyst in Hong Kong and later as an external contractor, after starting her own research business in Edinburgh. Building on her background as a China analyst, she conducted a number of research projects related to global trade and development, including responsible supply chains, before turning her attention to the circular economy and domestic environmental policy. Susan has a degree in Chinese from the University of Edinburgh and a masters in international relations from the University of Nottingham. She is also a trained adviser at her local Citizens Advice Bureau.

Teresa Dillon is an artist and researcher. Her performative and site-based practice explores techno-civic entanglements and their associated spatial relations in urban contexts with a focus on cultures of survival, care, repair, maintenance and healing. In 2018 she co-founded Repair Acts – a practice-based research programme that explores repair cultures in a pluralistic and collective manner and since 2013, directs Urban Hosts – a programme the explores alternative urban futures. Teresa’s work has been published in various contexts and she has participated in numerous exhibitions, art residencies, conferences and seminar programmes, with recent performance and academic writing exploring the relation between ritual, artistic practice and posthuman legalities. A Humboldt Fellow, Teresa is a member of the Berlin-based spatial collective, Soft Agency and she currently holds the post of Professor of City Futures at the School of Art and Design, UWE Bristol.