Irina Aristarkhova was born in Moscow, Russia, in 1969. She is Professor at the Stamps School of Art & Design and the Digital Studies Institute, College of Literature, Science and the Arts, at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. She has published widely on the intersection of gender, technology and culture. In her monographs Hospitality of the Matrix: Philosophy, Biomedicine and Culture (Columbia University Press, 2012, Russian translation 2017) and Arrested Welcome: Hospitality in Contemporary Art (University of Minnesota Press, 2020, online edition at https://manifold.umn.edu/projects/arrested-welcome), Aristarkhova has developed novel feminist approaches to theories and practices of hospitality. Prior to her move to the US, Aristarkhova led the Cyberarts and Cyberculture Research Initiative at the National University of Singapore (2001-2005). In 2002 Irina Aristarkhova, together with Faith Wilding, Coco Fusco and Maria Fernandez, curated "Undercurrents" - an online discussion list about cyberfeminism, art, new technologies, postcoloniality and globalization. Aristarkhova’s writings have been translated into German, Chinese, Slovenian, Serbian, Romanian, Portuguese, and Greek. Aristarkhova’s current research project focuses on creative and activist digital citizenship and new forms of power.

Catherine Knight Steele is an Assistant Professor of Communication at the University of Maryland - College Park and was the Founding Director of the African American Digital Humanities Initiative (AADHum). She now directs the Black Communication and Technology lab (BCaT) as a part of the Digital Inquiry, Speculation, Collaboration, & Optimism Network funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

Her research focuses on race, gender, and media, with a specific emphasis on Black culture and discourse in traditional and new media. She examines representations of marginalized communities in the media and how groups resist oppression and practice joy using online technology to create spaces of community.

Catherine’s research on the Black blogosphere, digital discourses of resistance and joy, and digital Black feminism has been published in such journals as Social Media + Society, Information, Communication and Society, and Feminist Media Studies. She is the author of Digital Black Feminism (NYU Press 2021), which examines the relationship between Black women and technology as a centuries-long gendered and racial project in the U.S.

Twitter: @SteeleCat717