Nathalie Blanc is Director of Research at the Centre national de la recherche scientifique (CNRS), France, and Director of the Laboratory LADYSS UMR 7533 CNRS (Ladyss.com). Her main contributions to research are in the area of nature in urban settings and in the field of environmental aesthetics. In 2016, two books are to be published: Formes de l’environnement. Manifeste pour une esthétique politique / Forms of the environment. Manifesto for political aesthetics (MétisPresse Editions) and Change, Uncertainty and Engagement: Art and Environment (Routledge). Between 2015 and 2019 she will be a delegate of the European project “New Materialism: Networking European Scholarship on ‘How Matter Comes to Matter’” (European Cooperation in the field of Scientific and Technical Research – COST). It should be noted that her creative activity is not limited to geographical research but also possesses a strong aesthetic dimension. This is not merely a “spiritual supplement” but an ecopoetic concern that is, more and more often, overearching her research work on nature in the city and environmental aesthetics.

Nancy Duxbury is a Researcher and Co-coordinator of the “Cities, Cultures and Architecture” research group at CES. Her current research examines strategies to integrate cultural considerations within local sustainability initiatives, and cultural mapping approaches and methodologies. She is Principal Investigator of the research project “Culturizing Sustainable Cities” (www.ces.uc.pt/culturizing). She is also an Adjunct Professor of the School of Communication, Simon Fraser University, Vancouver, Canada. Her past research has examined municipal involvement in cultural development, cultural infrastructure, cultural indicators, cultural policy, and book publishing. Recent publications include: Animation of Public Space through the Arts: Toward More Sustainable Communities (published by Almedina in 2013), Cultural Mapping as Cultural Inquiry (co-edited with W.F. Garrett-Petts and D. MacLennan; Routledge 2015), and Culture and Sustainability in European Cities: Imagining Europolis (co-edited with S. Hristova and M. Dragićević Šešić; Routledge 2015).

Ecological artist David Haley is a Senior Research Fellow in MIRIAD and Director of the Ecology In Practice research group at Manchester Metropolitan University. He is also a Visiting Professor at Zhongyuan University of Technology; Research Advisor to Transart Institute; Vice Chair of the CIWEM Art & Environment Network, Trustee of the Futures’ Venture Foundation, a member of UNESCO UK Man and the Biosphere Urban Forum, the Society for Ecological Restoration, and the Ramsar Culture Network Arts Group. As well as publishing on questions of ‘capable futures’, climate change, ecological arts and transdisciplinarity, his selected projects include: In Ginkgo Time (2015) a poem performed to question the 70^th Anniversary of Hiroshima; A Walk on the Wild Side 2004-13) / Walkabout the City (2015 on-going) urban ecology performed through acts of community walking; Making Our Futures: the Art of Sustainable Living (2008- 16) research, learning and teaching to survive Climate Change in China, Taiwan, Spain and Manchester; Life Support System (2012-13), for Hong Kongers living with Climate Change; Meantime… Desert Poetics (2012-13), a poetic mapping of global desertification from Portugal; A Dialogue with Oysters: the Art of Facilitation (2008- ongoing), a new creation myth emerging from the mingling of freshwater and rising seas; Trees of Grace (2008- cont.), a thousand-year long projectfor the Mersey Basin becoming an analogue forest.

Verena Holz is Research Associate at Leuphana University Lüneburg (Germany) and investigator in the transdisciplinary research project “The City as Space of Possibility” (www.leuphana.de/sam). There she is in charge of the research area “education, competencies, values and cultural forms of knowledge.” As a cultural scientist she works in the fields of education for sustainable development (ESD) und urban sustainable development and is specialized in linkages to cultural and artistic education. Her general research interests focus on the role of cultural science-based perspectives and their implementation in sustainability approaches as well as in formal and non-formal educational contexts. Verena is part of the network cultural education and ESD (partnership network to the Global Action Program) and member of the expert panel “ESD in Informal Education” appointed by the German Ministry of Education and Research within the framework of the Global Action Program on ESD (2015-2020). Verena coordinates a three-nation academic network on teacher education for sustainability – LeNa (www.leuphana.de/lena), which is a sub-network of the UNESCO Network “Reorienting Teacher Education towards Sustainability,” founded in 1999 at York University (Canada).

Sacha Kagan is Research Associate at Leuphana University Lüneburg (Germany) and Principal Investigator at the transdisciplinary research project “The City as Space of Possibility” (www.leuphana.de/sam) in charge of the research area “creative and artistic practices for a sustainable urban development.” He is the Chair of the Research Network “Sociology of the Arts” at the European Sociological Association (ESA RN 2), organizing the network’s 9th midterm conference (“Arts and Creativity: Working on Identity and Difference”) in Porto on September 8-10 2016 (https://esa-arts2016.eventqualia.net) and an active member of Cultura21 (founding coordinator of the international network, eBooks series editor, former vice-president of the German association) and of other scientific and artistic networks (ecoartnetwork, walking artists network, etc.). Generally, his research deals with artistic practices and sustainability as well as with urban cultures of sustainability. His research approach seeks to contribute to transdisciplinarity through the integration of social sciences, phenomenology, arts-based research, and art theory. Website: sachakagan.wordpress.com