Taqi Shaheen is a film-maker and media artist based in Pakistan whose work crosses mediums and defies genre distinctions to fashion witty and curious observations of contemporary South Asian cultures and mediascapes. Since 2004, he has been working closely with artists, designers, musicians, and performers to produce collaborative works using artistic practices, pedagogic alternatives, and creative investigations to address the experiences of learning and the dilemmas of education in the developing world. As a director and curator, his previous works include a documentary series on artists as educators, Lessons on Lessons (TMN, 2016), The Petman Girls (TMN, 2012), Whose Pakistan is it anyway? (TMN, 2010), Morris Mata (2009), Kundun (ILO/BBC/PTV, 2004), and Congregation of the Distressed (2005).

Annelys de Vet is a Belgium based Dutch designer and initiator, running a practice for gentle power and radical imagination. The work explores the role of design in relation to the public and political discourse. From 2009–19 she headed the master in design ‘Think tank for visual strategies’ at the Sandberg Instituut Amsterdam—where she earned an MDes herself in 1999. She founded the inclusive design label ‘Disarming Design from Palestine’ that develops, presents, and sells useful products from Palestine. Since 2003 de Vet initiated a series of subjective atlases that map countries from a human perspective. Previous editions covered Palestine (2007), Mexico (2011), Hungary (2011), etc.