Mieke Bernink has been Head of Research (Lector) at the Netherlands Film Academy since September 2008, when she was invited to set up a Master’s programme. She thus founded the international 2-year research Master ‘Artistic Research in and through Cinema’, which she led until September 2021. Alongside her continuing interest in the combination of artistic research and pedagogy – how to teach artistic research? – her focus as Head of Research is also on creating the possibilities for makers, teachers and students to understand, develop and share their practices as research.

Albert Elings is a Dutch documentary maker and film editor. Besides art- and film school he did a master Cultural History at Utrecht University. Many of his films are characterised by a preoccupation with the aesthetics of temporality. Five of his films were screened at IDFA. Together with Eugenie Jansen he made several documentaries of which 'Foreland' won the Jury prize of the Documentary Film Festival in Yamagata. One of the last films he has been editing on is “Four Journeys’ by Louis Hothothot, opening film at IDFA in 2021.

Eugenie Jansen is a Dutch director of documentary films and fiction features and a combination between both genres. She graduated in 1991 at the Netherlands Film Academy. Her debut film ‘Tussenland’ (2002) won a Tiger Award at the Rotterdam Film Festival, ‘Calimucho’ (2008) premiered at the Berlin Film Festival, just like  ‘Above Us All’ (2014), a conceptual 3D film about mourning set against the backdrop of the Great War Heritage industry in Ypres, Belgium.

Stanislaw Liguzinski is a Research Coordinator at the Netherlands Film Academy, a co-director of the Essay Film Studio of Lodz Film School (PL), and the head VR programmer of Imagine Film Festival in Amsterdam (NL). Being a graduate of academic programmes in media, film and critical theory but also the Master of Film programme at the Nederlandse Film Academy, he combines both practice and theory to develop credible forms of practice-based research in XR and film. He wrote for major Polish media outlets, edited journals, curated programs and XR experiences for international film festivals and cultural institutions including IFFR, Go Short, Kaboom or New Horizons (PL). He is conducting research and completing a PhD on videographic forms of thinking.

Raphael Rodan is an award-winning theatre maker and storyteller. Apart from the regular drama school, he had private lessons with the Israeli theatre master Hillel Neeman, and an extensive immersion in the Meisner technique. His work has received international recognition, playing in theatres and festivals all over Europe. In 2014 together with Farnoosh Farnia and Sahand Sahebdivani, he created The Mezrab Storytelling School - working both with ancient and personal stories and examining the connection between them. Raphael also teaches regularly at the ATD, Amsterdam’s theatre school. Since 2018, together with Sahebdivani, he has been working as the Artistic Director of the Amsterdam Storytelling Festival. The vision of the festival is to link the ancient art of storytelling with today’s most current burning questions

Julian Ross is a curator, researcher and writer based in Amsterdam. He did his PhD on Japanese 1960-70s expanded cinema at the University of Leeds, and works as an Assistant Professor at Leiden University Centre for the Arts in Society (LUCAS). He’s also a guest lecturer and former mentor at the Master of Film at the Netherlands Film Academy. As a programmer, Julian has worked with Doc Fortnight, Flaherty Seminar, IDFA, International Film Festival Rotterdam (2015-22) and Locarno Film Festival (2019-20), Singapore International Film Festival (2021), Tate Modern, The Art Institute of Chicago, Kunsthal Rotterdam, Eye Filmmuseum, Tokyo Photographic Art Museum, e-flux Video & Film, Harvard Film Archive, British Film Institute and others.

Cristiana Strava is an Assistant Professor in the School of Middle Eastern Studies at Leiden University. She was trained as a visual anthropologist at Harvard where she was part of the Sensory Ethnography Lab, and received her PhD from SOAS, University of London. Her multimodal work sits uncomfortably at the intersection of ethnography, Marxist geography, and studies of the (post/colonial) state.