Istvan Praet

Istvan Praet is an anthropologist based at Durham University (UK). He is the author of ‘Animism and the Question of Life’ (Routledge, 2014), in which he examines indigenous notions of humanity and life cross-culturally. In recent years Praet has been working at the interface of science and technology studies (STS) and the anthropology of science. He has conducted ethnographic research with astrobiologists and planetary scientists. He is the co-editor of ‘Familiarizing the Extraterrestrial / Making Our Planet Alien’ (Duke University Press, 2017). His latest research focuses on how scientists remake objectivity itself in the context of outer space exploration

Perig Pitrou

Perig Pitrou is an anthropologist, and a CNRS senior researcher at the Maison Française d’Oxford. He leads the team “Anthropology of Life” in the Laboratoire d’Anthropologie Sociale at the Collège de France, Université Paris Sciences et Lettres. After an M.A in philosophy at the University Sorbonne Paris I, he obtained a PhD in Anthropology at the EHESS, Paris. His project of “Anthropology of Life” involves an epistemological endeavour which articulates the different approaches used to tackle the topic of life (Ecologies of Life, Science and Technology Studies, Anthropology of Biopolitics and Forms of Life). After the publication of Les anthropologues et la vie, he is finishing the writing of a book entitled Anthropology of Life. Object and Methods.

Victor Buchli

Victor Buchli is Professor of Material Culture within the Material Culture Group at UCL and works on the material culture of Low Earth Orbit, architecture, domesticity, the archaeology of the recent past, and critical understandings of materiality and new technologies. Currently he is Principal Investigator of the 5 year European Research Council funded research project: ETHNO-ISS: An Ethnography of an Extraterrestrial Society: the International Space Station (ERC Advanced Grant, no. 833135) and is one of the theme leaders of the ESA_lab@UCL.

David Jeevendrampillai 

Dr David Jeevendrampillai is an Anthropologist of Outer Space at UCL Anthropology, Director of the Centre of Outer Space Studies and a research fellow on the ERC ETHNO-ISS project. His current research examines how seeing the Earth from space informs emergent forms of citizenship, identity and belonging. He is interested in themes of the body, architecture, infrastructure, politics, the future and anthropological methods. He works with the space industry as an anthropological consultant in a variety of positions and is interested working with different disciplines on critical approaches to Outer Space.

Delphine Mercier

Delphine Mercier is the Curator of the Ethnography Collection at UCL Anthropology. She is also a PhD candidate UCL Science and Technology Studies. Her current research focuses on the different methods to engage with objects among which approaches based on indigenous knowledge, the senses or the emotions. She has elaborated visual narratives and curated or co-curated physical and digital exhibitions and displays both in France and in the UK, and is interested in the importance of the object/the visual in balance with the text.  

Gerald Sim

Gerald Sim is a heritage practitioner based in Singapore, Jakarta, and London.  He currently works in the Singapore civil service managing state archaeological resources. He is a recent graduate of the UCL Institute of Archaeology. He has experience and interest in archaeological, art-historical, and anthropological research. He is also a freelance website and graphic designer, under the moniker Studio Selasa.