Sabine Bitter (b. 1960) is a Vancouver-based artist, curator, educator and professor at Simon Fraser University. From 2009-13, Bitter was the coordinator of the Audain Visual Artist in Residence program and the curator of the Audain Gallery, SFU, realizing projects with Marjetica Potrč, Raqs Media Collective, Elke Krasny with the Downtown Eastside Women’s Centre, Ricardo Basbaum, Claire Fontaine and Muntadas, among others. Since 1993, Bitter has collaborated with Vienna-based artist Helmut Weber on projects addressing cities, architecture and the politics of representation and space. Working mainly in photography and spatial installations, their research-oriented practice engages with specific moments and logics of global urban change in neighbourhoods, architecture and everyday life. Engaging architecture as a frame for spatial meaning, their ongoing research includes projects like “Educational Modernism” and “Housing the Social.” In 2004, Bitter, Weber and Jeff Derksen formed the research collective Urban Subjects.

Jeff Derksen is SFU Dean and Associate Provost of Graduate Studies, Professor of English, and an associate member of the Department of Geography. He published two collections of essays, Annihilated Time: poetry and other politics(2009) and After Euphoria (2013). His related teaching and research include cultural studies, Asian North American poetics and critical theory. He is also the author of four collections of poetry: The Vestiges (2014), Transnational Muscle Cars (2003), Dwell (1994), and Down Time (1990), which won the 1991 Dorothy Livesay Poetry Award.  In 2004, Jeff formed, with the artists Sabine Bitter and Helmut Weber, the research collective, Urban Subjects, whose work on cities, militancy, and autogestion has been presented in the form of edited volumes, bookworks, curated exhibitions, public posters, situations and para-academic seminars. Jeff was a Fulbright fellow at City University of New York (1999) and research fellow at The Centre for Place, Culture and Politics (2001-2003) where he worked and collaborated with the geographer Neil Smith.

Roxanne Panchasi is Associate Professor of History at Simon Fraser University. Her teaching, research, and writing focus on modern France and empire, nuclear culture, popular music, and the history of the end of the world. She is the author of Future Tense: The Culture of Anticipation in France Between the Wars (Cornell University Press, 2009), and the founding host of New Books in French Studies, a podcast channel on the New Books Network. She was the French Historical Studies Visiting Internal Fellow at the University of Cork in 2023-24.

Thauberger is an artist and filmmaker and an Associate Professor of Visual Art at the University of British Columbia. Her artistic work involves collaborative research and is primarily concerned with the relationship between community narratives and geopolitical histories. Thauberger has produced and exhibited her work internationally including recent exhibitions at the Contemporary Art Gallery in Vancouver and the Kaunas Biennial in Lithuania.

Helmut Weber (b. 1957) is a Vienna-based artist. Since 1993, Weber has collaborated with Vancouver-based artist Sabine Bitter on projects addressing cities, architecture and the politics of representation and space. Working mainly in photography and spatial installations, their research-oriented practice engages with specific moments and logics of global urban change in neighbourhoods, architecture and everyday life. Engaging architecture as a frame for spatial meaning, their ongoing research includes projects like “Educational Modernism” and “Housing the Social.” In 2004, Bitter, Weber and Jeff Derksen formed the research collective Urban Subjects.