Bejenaru, Matei képzőművész, a romániai Iasiban megjelenő Periferic Biennial elindítója. A Periferic 1997-ben előadó-művészeti fesztiválként indult, majd nemzetközi kortárs művészeti biennálévá nőtte ki magát, amely saját műfaját Iasi történelmi, társadalmi-politikai és kulturális kontextusának vitafórumaként határozza meg. Matei Bejenaru – Iasi-beli művészek és filozófusok egy csoportjával közösen – 2001-ben létrehozta a Vector Association elnevezésű kortárs művészeti intézetet, amely a helyi művészeti kezdeményezéseknek hivatott helyi és nemzetközi megjelenési lehetőséget biztosítani.  Tagja továbbá a Vector – Art and Culture in Context című magazin szerkesztőségének; ez a kiadvány fő témájaként a dél-kelet európai, átalakulóban lévő országok, valamint a közel-kelet konfliktusoktól sújtott térségének helyi művészeti és kulturális helyzetét vizsgálja.
Matei Bejenaru művészként társadalmi kérdésekkel foglalkozik, azt vizsgálja, hogy a globalizáció milyen hatást gyakorol a posztkommunista országokban kialakuló munkakörülményekre, a gyorsan változó életstílusokra és gondolkodásmódokra.

Belchem, John After finishing his doctorate at the University of Sussex under the supervision of Asa Briggs, John Belchem taught in further education before taking up his first university appointment in New Zealand. In January 1980 he moved back to the UK to take up a post at the University of Liverpool where he has remained ever since. Much involved in the city’s inscription as a UNESCO World Heritage Site and its attainment of European Capital of Culture status, he was awarded a Leverhulme Major Research Fellowship for three years, 2004-2007, enabling him to complete a set of major publications on the history of Liverpool, attesting to his status as an ‘honorary scouser’.  Having completed a three-year term as Pro-Vice Chancellor of the University of Liverpool, he is now Director of the newly-established Institute of Cultural Capital. 

Bianchini, Franco In October 2007 Franco Bianchini began working in his post as Professor of Cultural Policy and Planning, in the Faculty of Arts and Society at Leeds Metropolitan University. He was a Research Fellow at the Centre for Urban Studies, University of Liverpool (1988-1992). From 1992-2007 he was a Reader in Cultural Planning and Policy and Course Leader for the MA in European Cultural Planning at De Montfort University in Leicester. He has acted as advisor and researcher for organizations including Arts Council England, the UK government's Department for Culture, Media and Sport, the Council of Europe and the European Commission. He has been invited to give lectures, mainly on urban cultural policy issues, in many European countries and also in Japan, China, Colombia and Australia. From 2003-2008 he collaborated with the Liverpool Culture Company in developing "Cities on the Edge", a cultural co-operation partnership involving Liverpool and five other European port cities (Bremen, Gdansk, Istanbul, Marseilles and Naples), which formed a part of the Liverpool 2008 European Capital of Culture programme. His current research interests include: "The role of culture in urban regeneration" (with a particular focus on port cities); "Cultural diversity and inter culturalism as resources for innovation in urban policy", and "The cultural impacts of globalization in contemporary European cities" (with special regard to the problems of standardization and loss of local distinctiveness).

Bodó Balázs (1975), economist, assistant lecturer, researcher at the Budapest University of Technology and Economics, Department of Sociology and Communications, Center for Media Research and Education.
He was a Fulbright Visiting Researcher at Stanford Law School in 2006/7.He is a Fellow at the Center for Internet and Society at Stanford. He is the project lead for  Creative Commons Hungary and a member of the National Copyright Expert Group.His academic interests include copyright and economics, piracy, media regulation, peer-to-peer communities, underground libraries, digital archives. He has advised several public and private institutions on development projects of digital archives, content distribution, online communities, business development.

Boyer, Bryan is an architect. He obtained his degree at Harvard GSD and previously at the Rhode Island School of Design. Currently he works at the Sitra, the Finnish Innovation Fund where he is Design Lead in the Strategic Design Unit, primarily responsible for the Helsinki Design Lab. He is also on the senior editorial team at Archinect, one of the most well known online professional magazines. He has taught, lectured and published extensively. Before his life as a designer he was an entrepreneur and wrote web software.

Foth, Marcus associate Professor is Principal Research Fellow with the Institute for Creative Industries and Innovation, Queensland University of Technology (QUT), Brisbane, Australia, and team leader of the Urban Informatics Research Group. He received a QUT Vice-Chancellor's Research Fellowship (2009-2011), and a Smart Futures Fellowship from the Queensland State Government (2009-2011), co-sponsored by National ICT Australia (NICTA). He was awarded the inauguralAustralian Business Foundation Research Fellowship on Innovation and Cultural Industries 2010 sponsored by the Aurora Foundation. He was an ARC Australian Postdoctoral Fellow (2006-2008), and a 2007 Visiting Fellow at the Oxford Internet Institute, University of Oxford, UK. Dr Foth's research explores human-computer interaction design and development at the intersection of people, place and technology with a focus on urban informatics, locative media and mobile applications. The high quality of his research work has attracted over $1.7M in national competitive grants and industry funding since 2006. Dr Foth has published over 70 articles in journals, edited books, and conference proceedings. He is the editor of theHandbook of Research on Urban Informatics (2009), and is currently co-editing the book "From Social Butterfly to Engaged Citizen" for MIT Press (2010). He is the conference chair of the 5th International Conference on Communities and Technologies 2011 in Brisbane.

Girard, Christophe

Herreros, Juan PhD Architect, Senior Professor and Director of the Thesis Program at the Madrid School of Architecture, as well as a Visiting Professor at Columbia University in New York. He has previously taught at EPFL in Lausanne, Architectural Association in London, SOA at Princeton and ITT in Chicago. Throughout the years he has held numerous lectures, courses and international seminars as well as research workshops. In 1984, he founded, together with Inaki Abalos, the office Abalos&Herreros, in 1992 the Multimedia International League LMI and in 2006 he founded his current office, Herreros Arquitectos through which he pursues his professional, teaching and pedagogical activity. His work has been widely published and awarded ( COAM Award; the award of Urbanism and Architecture of the City Council of Madrid; he has been selected for the Spanish Architecture Biennale, finalist for Mies Van der Rohe Award, finalist in FAD awards, and winner of the Solutia Design Award).

His work has been displayed in collective exhibitions such as the ones promoted by the MOMA and individual exhibitions (AA London, IIT Chicago...). Two of them stand out, “Grand Tour”, in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria and ICO in Madrid. Amongst his books the most notable areTower&Office (with I. Ábalos, MIT Press),Isla Ciudad (Actar), Palacios de la Diversión (Mairea), PTb-Cedric Price(Ministerio de Fomento-COAM), Vivienda SXXI (Casa Encendida-Actar) along several monographic compilations of his work.His recent work has been published by the architect’s council of Tarragona (AT#18) and Summa magazine of Buenos Aires. HerrerosArquitectos is currently working on projects in Spain, Norway, USA, Panamá, Mexico and Uruguay. Juan Herreros has received the International Fellowship of the RIBA (Royal Institute of British Architects), the Medal of Fine Arts from the city of San Lorenzo de El Escorial and has been nominated for the 2010 Medal from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

Heur, Bas van I am a post-doctoral researcher at the Maastricht Virtual Knowledge Studio within the Department of Technology and Society Studies, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, Maastricht University. Broadly speaking, my main research interest is in the politics of urban development and the role of research in engaging with and analyzing urban development strategies and their effects. I have published on creative/cultural industries, music networks, conflict and the politics of scale, cultural political economy, small cities, the digitization of heritage, urban laboratories, and the built environment of higher education and research.
After doing my BA and MA in Cultural History at Utrecht University and the Humboldt University in Berlin, I started my PhD in Media and Communications at Goldsmiths College, University of London. Relocating to Berlin, I was a DFG-Fellow at the Center for Metropolitan Studies and received my PhD from the Department of Earth Sciences of the Free University in Berlin. I have also taught at Utrecht University and Goldsmiths College and now teach courses on BA and MA level within the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences of Maastricht University. Before coming to university, I completed Intermediate Vocational Training (MBO) and one year of Higher Vocational Training (HBO) in building construction. In addition to my academic work, I try to maintain active connections with the cultural sector as well as policy makers through consultancy work and the organization of and participation in workshops and other events.

Knierbein, Sabine works as Assistant Professor at the Interdisciplinary Centre for Urban Culture and Public Space (SKuOR) in Vienna,Austria. SkuOr is a lateral unit of the Faculty of Architecture and Planning at the Vienna University of Technology. Sabine Knierbein has background in Open Space Planning (FH) and Landscape Architecture. Her current research focusses on economy of attention as a driving force of changes in public urban space.

Meggelen, Bert van Bert van Meggelen (Born 21 04 1946 Vlaardingen, The Netherlands) Since 2002 owner director of the bureau Maat-werk, for urban projects & cultural planning. Between middle 1998 and the end of 2002 he was Intendant ( artistic and general director) of R2001, Rotterdam cultural capital of Europe. Between 1980 en 1998 he was active in the education of architects, of which between 1988 en 1998 as dean of the Academy of Architecture and urban design in Rotterdam ( with branches in Arnhem and Groningen). This were also the fields of research he was working in, besides extensive research on the innovation of architectural education. He initiated and commissioned international projects and manifestations in the fields of architecture and urban planning. He studied sociology ( Erasmus University Rotterdam) and history and specialised in sociology of housing and living ( Utrecht), and programs on the critical theory of Frankfurt School ( social science as a critical theory of society and culture).

Mimica, Vedran

Patassini, Domenico (1949, professor, Faculty of planning, University Iuav Venice - Italy) Dean of the Faculty of Planning since 2004 and Director of Phd Programme on New Technologies and Spatial Information at the University Iuav in Venice, he has taken part as planner in the preparation of programmes and plans at local and regional level in Italy and abroad. Most of training, consulting and research activities are dealing with process, performance and impact evaluation within complex decision practices. He was President of the Italian Evaluation Society (Associazione Italiana di Valutazione) in 2003/4 and is still member of the Editorial Board of the Society’s Review (Rassegna Italiana di valutazione). As a professional consultant, he moves in five evaluation domains: cooperation policies to social and economic development, mainly in African countries (Ethiopia, Somalia, Niger, Central Africa Republic, South Africa and Senegal) with reference to capacity building, training of urban managers , land management, legalization of informal settlements and planning, public and private service reform; European programmes within Interreg, Alpter and Fse funds (ex ante and in itinere evaluation); strategic environmental evaluation of city and regional plans, including landscape and lagoons (Morphological Plan of the Venice Lagoon);  implementation of Regional Planning Laws (see Veneto Region) and design of a Monitoring and Evaluation System on plans and their spatial effects; evaluation of projects in protected areas, terraced landscape, integrated management of waste disposal, brownfield development, transport and mobility planning.

Raffin, Fabrice szociológus, a párizsi S.E.A. Europe – Sorbonne Nouvelle Egyetem kutatási igazgatója.  Szakterületei az európai városfejlesztés és kultúrpolitika. Társszerzője a The Factories: Conversions for Urban Culture (Bikhaüser, Basel, 2002), illetve szerzője a Friches industrielles – Un monde culturel européen en mutation című kiadványoknak. http://www.fabrice-raffin.com

Rouillard, Dominique építész (művészettörténet PhD), a párizsi Ecole Nationale Supérieure d'Architecture Paris-Malaquais (ENSAPM) tanára, a LIAT (Laboratoire, Infrastructure, Architecture, Territoire) kutatólaboratórium tudományos igazgatója,  a párizsi Architecture Action építészeti és várostervezési iroda alapító tagja. A Pompidou Központ számos kiállításában működött közre tudományos konzulensként (Les années 50, La Ville, Archigram). Radical Architettura című munkája megjelenése óta (Centre G. Pompidou 1993, ford. Monacelli Press 1999), építészettörténeti kutatásainak fő témája a kortárs építészet és infrastruktúrák közelmúltja.  
A szimpóziumhoz kapcsolódó utóbbi publikációk: Superarchitecture. Le futur de l’architecture 1950-1970 (ed. La Villette 2004), La métropole des infrastructures (ed., Picard, 2009), Imaginaires d’infrastructure (ed., L’Harmattan, 2009).

Russell, Richard Director of External Relationships and Development, Arts Council England
Arts Council England works to get great art to everyone by championing, developing and investing in artistic experiences that enrich people’s lives.
As the national development agency for the arts, we support a range of artistic activities from theatre to music, literature to dance, photography to digital art, carnival to crafts.
Great art inspires us, brings us together and teaches us about ourselves and the world around us. In short, it makes life better.

Svob-Dokic, Nada is Scientific Adviser (Full Professor) in the Culture and Communications Department, Institute for International Relations, Zagreb. She has wide and in-depth professional experience in the area of cultural, science, technology and public policy issues and she has led numerous research projects in the areas of cultural and technological development, transition, cooperation and exchange. She has been principal researcher on research projects such as ‘The Creative and Knowledge Industries in the Countries in Transition’ (2001-2006) and ‘Global Influences and the Local Cultural Change’ (2007-2012). In 2000 she established and coordinated the international project on Redefining Cultural Identities (2000-2007) that was initially supported by the EU. Dr. Švob Đokić has published over 300 articles, studies, monographs, research reports and books in Croatian, English, French or other languages. Dr. Švob Đokić teaches at the University of Zagreb, Faculty of Philosophy, and the University of Rijeka, Cultural Studies Department. She has been consultant to UN organizations (UNDP, UNESCO, ISDRI); to EU agencies (EACEA, EU Research Directorate L) and to the Council of Europe (Comité Directeur de la Culture – CDCULT), on issues such as technical cooperation, the position of women in development projects, EU cooperation with third countries, regional cultural and scientific cooperation, and cultural policies. She was one of the founders and initiators of the Culturelink Network that was set up during her mandate as director of the Institute for International Relations.

Szczesny, Jakub Varsóban él, gyermekkorát és diákéveit Algiers-ban, Párizsban és Barcelonában töltötte.
Építészeti tanulmányait a barcelonai Escuela Tecnica Superior de Arquitectura, a párizsi Ecole d'Architecture Paris la Defense, valamint a varsói Warsaw Institute of Technology egyetemeken végezte. 
Egyaránt dolgozik önálló építészeti praxisában, illetve a Centrala tervezőtagjaként, a lengyelországi civil szektorral szoros együttműködésben.
2009 óta városépítészeti szakértőként működik közre Varsó 2020-ig tartó kulturális fejlesztési programjának kidolgozásában, illetve a lengyel főváros által a 2016-os Európa Kulturális Fővárosa programra benyújtandó pályázat összeállításában.
Vendégelőadóként és kritikusként a jeruzsálemi Bezalel School of Architecture és a barcelonai IAAC tanára, továbbá Lengyelországban is számos hallgatói műhely vezetője.
Meggyőződése, hogy az építőművészet és a dizájn előremutató szerepet játszik a társadalmi feszültségek feloldásában. A propagandaművészet kedvelője.

Szokolai Zsolt fejlesztési szakember
Szakmai tapasztalat
2010 –  Európai Bizottság, Regionális Főigazgatóság, Városfejlesztés és területi kohézió, Brüsszel
Program menedzser – EU-s politikák
2009 – 2010 Nemzeti Fejlesztési Ügynökség, Regionális fejlesztési programok Irányító Hatósága, Budapest Stratégia tervezési osztály vezetője
2002 – 2009 Dél-Dunántúli Regionális Fejlesztési Ügynökség, Pécs
2007 – 2009 Fejlesztési igazgató
2004 – 2007 Tervezési osztály vezetője
2004 – 2005  Európa Kulturális Fővárosa Pécs2010 Pályázati Kabinet, fejlesztési szakértő
- Kulturális kulcsberuházások megvalósíthatósági tanulmányai elkészítésének koordinálása
- "Közterek és parkok" közterületfejlesztési kulcsprojekt elkészítésének vezetése
2002 – 2003 Turisztikai, városfejlesztési és közlekedési tervező, külügyi koordinátor
2001 – 2002 VÁTI Stratégiai tervezési iroda, Budapest

Takáts József

Waal, Martijn de is a consultant specialized in the relation between technology, media and society. His areas of expertise: • Digital Culture, Technology & Society • Globalization, Localization, Media & Cultural Identity • Technology, Journalism, Civil Society and Public Sphere • Locative and Mobile Media • Urban Culture and Urban Development. His affiliations: University of Groningen (New Media, Public Sphere and Urban Culture research project), University of Amsterdam (teaching), Dutch Cultural Broadcasting Fund (board member), Virtueel Platform (board member).