## NOTE ON CONTRIBUTORS

MAMI  AOTA is  an  Assistant  Professor  in  the  Department  of Philosophy at Sophia University, Japan. She got her PhD degree at the University of Tokyo in 2018. Her research field is environmental aesthetics and everyday aesthetics. She is now specifically interested in the aesthetics of everyday life in cities. She has published her research both in Japanese and English. Most recently in English she has published the papers 'The Artistic Value of CommunityEngaged Art: From the Perspective of Environmental Aesthetics' ( Aesthetics 27 , 2023, ' Aesthetics and Environmental Humanities-The Fieldwork on Ourselves' (Max Ryynänen and Zoltán Somhegyi (eds.) Aesthetic Theory Across the Disciplines , Rowman&Littlefield, 2023), 'Past-Oriented and Future-Oriented Frames of Familiarity: Aesthetic Experience in Everyday Environments' ( Contemporary Aesthetics 22, 2024).

ARNOLD BERLEANT is Professor of Philosophy (Emeritus) at Long Island University and past President of the International Association for Aesthetics. His work ranges over issues in aesthetics, ethics, social philosophy, and especially the aesthetics of environment. He is the author of numerous articles as well as nine books, and is the founding editor of the online journal, Contemporary Aesthetics .

CHRIS DUNN is  a  recent  Fulbright  scholar  with  an  NSF-Arctic Research Grant focused on the project, ' Applying the Environmental Humanities to Conservation Management and Policy in Iceland.' A key aspect of this investigation was the ongoing conflict between conservation and renewable energy development in Iceland's Central Highland. Chris completed a PhD in Environmental Studies from the University of Colorado-Boulder in 2021 and has taught at Rocky Mountain College in Montana, the Colorado School of Mines, and as a contract instructor for the U.S. Navy in Japan and for six months on the open ocean. Chris is also a writer, photographer, and outdoor adventurer. For more, see chrisdunnonplanetearth.com SOPHIE ERLUND is a Danish born artist living and working in Berlin and Munich. In her practice, Erlund has long explored a variety of themes and questions about the more-than-human, creating sculptures, installations and complex soundscapes, which deal with the central theme of transition and understanding the world through the irrational mind, and in particular our ongoing entanglement with artificial  intelligence and its impact on our psychology. Sophie Erlund's work has been exhibited in galleries and institutions across Europe and the US since graduating from Central St. Martins College of Art and Design, London (UK) in 2003. Sophie Erlund is represented by PSM, Berlin (DE) and she is Professor of Art in Architecture at TU Munich. Since 2019 she has been a core member of the interdisciplinary research project Experimenting,  Experiencing, Reflecting (EER) funded by The Carlsberg Foundation.

JOACHIM AAAGARD FRIIS is a PhD fellow in art curating at the University of Agder. His research focuses on ecological aesthetics in contemporary art and literature as well as affect theory, queer theory and media studies. His work has been published in journals like Surveillance  and  Society , Slagmark , Journal  of  Arts  and Communities , and Journal of Art History .

GARRISON GERARD is a composer of electroacoustic and concert music. His work explores intersections between ecology and music. His music has been presented internationally with performances by groups such as [Mod]ular Ensemble, Fort Worth Symphony, and Nu Atmospheres Ensemble. An ardent collaborator, he has been commissioned by ensembles and soloists such as Andrew Cook, Spencer Byrd, the Avenue C Project, Atelier Piano Quartet, and Amorsima String  Trio.  In  2023  Gerard  served  as  Fulbright  Fellow  at  the University of Iceland. Gerard currently serves as Assistant Professor of Music at the University of North Carolina at Pembroke. In addition to composition, Gerard is a conductor, pianist, trumpeter, improviser, and avid advocate for new music. He is a founding member of the Nu Atmospheres Ensemble and conducts the NOVA New Music Ensemble at the University of North Texas. Gerard completed his Doctoral degree in Music composition from the University of North Texas and received a Bachelors in Piano from Harding University in Searcy, Arkansas.

ALEXANDRA HAYES is a lecturer at Auburn University in Auburn, Alabama. She writes mostly on aesthetic virtue and philosophy of dance. Her life is shaped by her deep love of natural beauty and Orthodox spirituality.

KAT HEIMANN is an interdisciplinary scholar with a training both in Philosophy and Cognitive Neuroscience. She is an Associate Professor  at  Centre  for  Educational  Development  at  Aarhus University. As a researcher she is working empirically, with experience both in quantitative and qualitative approaches and a specialization in the micro-phenomenological method. She has worked extensively in the field of the arts, exploring and co-creating audience-experiences as well as artistic processes within the framework of  several art-science collaborations. Her deep passion for teaching has finally led her to move to the field of higher education research and training where she is co-designing and studying inclusive transformative learning spaces.

ANNE KØLBÆK IVERSEN , PhD, is a researcher, curator, editor, and writer based in Copenhagen. She is currently conducting the research project Crip Time: Art of Impairment, Withdrawal, and Impatience in a collaboration between O-Overgaden - Institute of Contemporary Art and the University of Copenhagen, funded by the New Carlsberg Foundation. In 2021-23 she conducted the research project Aesthetics of Shame, Infrastructures of Desire , affiliated with Aarhus University and funded by The Novo Nordisk Foundation. The article in this issue is part of this research. She has written and co-edited a number of publications, including: Jane Jin Kaisen - Community of Parting (Archive Books, 2020) with Jane Jin Kaisen; Algorithm (Antipyrine, 2023) with Lotte Løvholm, 'Visualizing the Invisible, Imagining the (Im)possible', in ARKEN Bulletin (2020) and 'Touching, morphing, splicing. Articulations of bodily complexities and new erogenous terrains in contemporary Danish arts practices,' in Transformative Feminisms (De Gruyter Verlag, 2025 (forthcoming).

MARTEINN SINDRI JÓNSSON is a philosopher, specialised in curatorial studies and art management, and active across artistic and cultural  fields  through  practice,  collaborations,  publishing  and research, most recently as lecturer at the Iceland University of the Arts (IS), University of Bifröst (IS) and as Marie-Curie fellow at Zeppelin University (DE). His PhD, Infrastructures of the Public Sphere (2024),  was  written  within  the  Horizon  2020  FEINARTnetwork and focuses on socially and politically engaged art and curatorial  practice  in  the  New  'New  Germany.'  Currently,  he  is working across different artistic and academic projects on cultural infrastructures and coloniality, climate disinformation and design, as well as the geopolitical constellation of the New 'New Europe.'

SARAH KOLB is an art theorist, philosopher, and curator based in Vienna  and  Linz,  Austria.  With  her  current  research  project Topologies of Artistic Research. Relational Knowledge in Art and Theory, she is FWF Senior Scientist at the University of Arts Linz. Sarah Kolb is a founding member and co-head of both the transdisciplinary  project  and  online  platform  Mycelial  Space  and  of Viktoria--Space for Artistic Research and Social Design in Vienna. Research interests include transdisciplinary studies, topologies, relational knowledge, collaborative learning, and new materialisms. She is author of many publications and co-editor of The Logic of the Imaginary . Diagonal Sciences after Roger Caillois , German edition, two volumes (August Verlag, 2018 and 2024).

MORTEN KYNDRUP is professor of Aesthetics and Culture at Aarhus University since 1995. I.a. he was chairman of Nordic Society for Aesthetics (2007-17); founder and executive director of AIAS, Aarhus Institute of Advanced Studies (2011-19); board of trustees, The New Carlsberg Foundation (2006-23). He was the main editor of the book series  Æstetikstudier I-VII (1995-2000).  Books  include Det Postmoderne (1986), Framing and Fiction (1992), Riften og Sløret. Essays over kunstens betingelser (1998) and Den æstetiske relation (2008).  He  is  currently  working  on  a  book  about  'The  (New?) Boundaries of Art.'

CHRISTIAN REFSUM is Professor of Comparative Literature at the University of Oslo. He is the leader of the research group Aesthetics of Friendship, based in Oslo. His latest article is 'Event: Or, How Foucault  Used  Baudelaire  to  Enlighten  Kant,' In Temporal Experiments:  Seven  Ways  of  Configuring  Time  in  Art  and Literature . (Routledge, 2023). He has written Kjærlighet som religion [Love as Religion. Passion and Longing in the Film and Literature of the 2000s] (2016) and co-edited Living Together -Roland Barthes, the Individual and the Community (2019).

ANDREAS ROEPSTORFF is a Professor in Cognition, Communication, and Culture at Aarhus University, Denmark, Dept. of Clinical Medicine and School of Culture and Society. He is also the Founder and former Director of the Interacting Minds Center at Aarhus University  and  is  currently  the  Director  of  Aarhus  Institute  of Advanced Studies. He works at the intersection of anthropology and clinical medicine, originally trained in social anthropology. Andreas Roepstorff is the co-founder, with artist Olafur Eliasson, of the interdisciplinary  research  project Experimenting, Experiencing, Reflecting (EER) funded by The Carlsberg Foundation with Olafur Eliasson.

MAX RYYNÄNEN is Principal Lecturer (equivalent of Reader in the UK, but based on pedagogical merits) in Theory of Visual Culture at Aalto University Finland, and adjunct professor of aesthetics at the universities of Helsinki, Jyväskylä, and Eastern Finland. He is the ex-president of the Finnish Society of Aesthetics, Finland's representative in the Nordic Society of Aesthetics, and the current Chair for the Society of Dialogical Aesthetics. Ryynänen's research is based on an extended way of using aesthetics and mingling with cultural studies, film studies, and idea history. The methodological outreach is global, ranging from American pragmatism to Indian philosophy, and phenomenology/hermeneutics to Japanese aesthetics. His last book, Realism, Myth, and the Vernacular in Pasolini's Film  and  Philosophy (Palgrave,  2024)  provides  a  philosophical analysis of Pier Paolo Pasolini's life work, focusing on e.g. his cultural philosophy and aesthetic interests. Currently, Ryynänen works on a monograph on the aesthetics of martial arts and works e.g. on editing a book on the philosophy of Gianni Vattimo. For more, see homepage: http://maxryynanen.net.

YURIKO SAITO ,  PhD, is Professor Emerita of Philosophy at the Rhode Island School of Design, USA, and Editor of Contemporary Aesthetics ,  an open-access, peer-reviewed journal. Her research areas are everyday aesthetics, Japanese aesthetics, and environmental aesthetics. She has lectured widely on these subjects, both within the United States and globally, and her writings have been published as book chapters, journal articles, and encyclopedia entries. She also published Everyday Aesthetics (2008, Oxford University Press), Aesthetics of the Familiar: Everyday Life and World-Making (2017 , Oxford University Press, awarded the 2018 Outstanding Monograph Prize by the American Society for Aesthetics), and Aesthetics of Care: Practice in Everyday Life (2022, Bloomsbury).

OLE MARTIN SANDBERG is a postdoctoral researcher in philosophy at the University of Iceland. He specialises in environmental philosophy, including climate, and philosophy of nature and biology. He also works at the Icelandic Museum of Natural History on understanding and communicating the nature and value of biodiversity.

YRJÖ  SEPÄNMAA is  Professor  Emeritus  of  Environmental Aesthetics at the University of Eastern Finland. His main research themes deal with applying aesthetics in real-world situations, but he also has dealt with questions related to the concept of beauty, and the margins of art and philosophy of literature. His ongoing research deals with the future of environmental aesthetics and environmental aesthetic civility and good life. The monograph, The Beauty of Environment: a General Model for Environmental Aesthetics, originally published in 1986 in Helsinki, was republished in Texas, USA in 1993 and translated and published in Korean (2000) and in Chinese (2005). Mr. Sepänmaa organized an international conference series on environmental aesthetics (1994-2009), followed by a book series of 7 volumes. He was the President of the XIII International Congress of Aesthetics titled Aesthetics in Practice (Lahti, Finland 1995).

NICK  SHEPHERD is  Associate  Professor  of  Archaeology  and Heritage Studies at Aarhus University and Extraordinary Professor at the University of Pretoria. His latest volumes are Walking as Embodied Research: Drift, Pause, Indirection (Routledge  2024), Rethinking  Heritage  in  Precarious  Times:  Coloniality ,  Climate Change and Covid-19 (Routledge 2023), and Colonial and Decolonial Linguistics: Knowledges and Paradigms (OUP 2020).

SUE SPAID has been active as a curator and art writer for nearly 40 years. In addition to having published five art books on art and ecology, Spaid has published philosophy papers on climate change, hate speech, AI, biodiversity, and hydrological justice. She published her first monograph, The Philosophy of Curatorial Practice: Between Work and World, in 2020 and her next monograph Making Values Explicit: On Being Moved to Do, Act, Care and Change arrives in 2025.

BRYNDÍS SNÆBJÖRNSDÓTTIR and MARK WILSON are a collaborative art partnership. Their 25-year interdisciplinary art practice is research-based, exploring issues of history, culture and environment in relation to both humans and non-human species. Working very often in close consultation in the field, with experts including professionals and amateurs, they use their work to test cultural constructs and tropes, and human behaviour in respect of ecologies, extinction, conservation and the environment. With a particular focus in the north, their projects and artworks have nevertheless been commissioned, generated and exhibited internationally and as frequent speakers at conferences worldwide, their works have been widely discussed in texts across many disciplinary fields. In 2019 they received a substantial grant from the Icelandic Research Fund (Rannís) for their project Visitations: polar bears out of place. They received the Icelandic Art prize 2022. Their artwork is installation-based using a variety of media including photography, video, text, drawing, objects and sound.

Bryndís Snæbjörnsdóttir is Professor of Fine Art at the Iceland University of the Arts and Mark Wilson is Professor Emeritus at the University of Cumbria, UK. Snæbjörnsdóttir/Wilson: www.snaebjornsdottirwilson.com.

ZOLTÁN SOMHEGYI is an art historian with a PhD in aesthetics and a  Habilitation  (venia  legendi)  in  philosophy.  He  is  Associate Professor of Art History at the Department of Philosophy of the University of Szeged in Hungary. As a researcher, he is focusing on the aesthetics of ruination and decay as well as environmental aesthetics and landscapes. In addition, he is also interested in contemporary arts and art criticism. He served as Secretary General of the International Association for Aesthetics (IAA) (2016-2022), and continues to act as the Association's Website Editor. Since 2023, he has also  held  the  position  of  Deputy  Secretary  General  of  the International Council for Philosophy and Human Sciences (CIPSH). His  current  research  project, Art and Catastrophe -Challenging Aesthetics Around Environmental Destruction , is supported by the János Bolyai Research Scholarship of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences through a three-year grant (2024-2027). Among his recent books are Reviewing the Past. The Presence of Ruins (Rowman & Littlefield  International,  2020); Aesthetic  Theory  Across  the Disciplines (Rowman  &  Littlefield,  2023;  co-edited  with  Max Ryynänen); and The Routledge Companion to The Philosophy of Architectural Reconstruction (Routledge, 2024; co-edited with Lisa Giombini). www.zoltansomhegyi.com

JAN LØHMANN STEPHENSEN is  an Associate Professor at the Department  of  Aesthetics  &  Culture  at  Aarhus  University.  His research explores cultures and practices of participation, democracy and the public sphere, creativity and its diffusion into non-art related spheres like work life, economics, policymaking, university research agendas and digital technologies, and with the notion post-creativity especially  AI.  His  most  recent  research  projects  are ChatDemocracy (2024-) and Machine-Characters: The Choreographed Subjectivity of Platform Media Performance (2025-, w/ UK artist Anneke Kampman).

SAMUEL E. TEPPER is currently working as a Scientific Assistant on the interdisciplinary research project Experimenting, Experiencing, Reflecting (EER) funded by The Carlsberg Foundation. He is also a practicing jazz musician and has worked as a music teacher and as a statistician and full-stack developer in scientific publishing. He holds a Master's degree in Interdisciplinary Social Sciences from the University of Chicago and a Bachelor's degree in Psychology from Yale University.

ANETTE VANDSØ is  Associate Professor and co-director of the research program in Environmental Media and Aesthetics at Arts, Aarhus University. She is currently the PI of the project 'Hidden Plant Stories,' which collaborates with the Hirschsprung Collection and Ordrupgaard art museum, funded by Velux Fonden. With a departure  in  aesthetics  and  culture,  she  works  within  acoustic ecology and plant humanities.

CORDULA VESPER is Associate professor in Cognitive Science and Cognitive Semiotics at the Department of Linguistics, Cognitive Science and Semiotics at the School of Communication and Culture at Aarhus University in Denmark and working with the Interacting Minds Centre at Aarhus University. Since 2019 she has been a core member of the interdisciplinary research project Experimenting, Experiencing, Reflecting (EER) funded by The Carlsberg Foundation.