Unconfererence Bios

in alphabetic order

Invited Speakers

Dr Richard M. Stallman

Dr Luiz Guilherme Vergara

Dr Johan Soderberg

Dr Gabriele de Seta
Gabriele de Seta is a media anthropologist. He holds a PhD in Sociology from the Hong Kong Polytechnic University and was a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Institute of Ethnology, Academia Sinica in Taipei, Taiwan. His research work, grounded on ethnographic engagement across multiple sites, focuses on digital media practices and vernacular creativity in China, Hong Kong and Taiwan. He is also interested in experimental music scenes, internet art, and collaborative intersections between anthropology and art practice. More information is available on his website http://paranom.asia
Harriet Poppy Speed and Dr Lynn Jones

Dr Gregory Sholette


Scientific Committee

Helene Black is an artist, educator, cofounder and treasurer of the interdisciplinary NGO NeMe. Since 1992, she lives and works in Limassol, Cyprus. To date, she has 16 one person shows, numerous group shows both in Cyprus and abroad. In addition, on behalf of NeMe, she has curated, co-curated, organised and project managed exhibitions, conferences, seminars, workshops and open calls. She is the Director of a Private Art School she founded during 1995 which focuses on adult education encouraging and preparing mature age students to pursue long distance university courses or attend local universities.

Yiannis Colakides (AAdipl) is a practicing architect and co-director of Colakides and Associates, Architects and Engineers. He is the co-founder and president of the Cyprus registered cultural NGO NeMe. He has long experience in designing, detailing, managing and building architectural projects but also organising, art-directing, coordinating and curating international and national exhibitions, conferences, seminars, workshops and publications.Since 2007 he is a peer reviewer of Leonardo Abstracts Service (LABS), and since 2018 a peer reviewer for Leonardo Journal. He is one of the administrators of the support forum of Texpattern, an open source CMS, and a member of its development team. He is currently co-editing the book Reflections and Actions at the Edge of Digital Citizenship, Finance, and Art to be published by Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences later this year.

Marios Isaakidis (Prometheas) is a hacktivist developing Open Source tools that secure our digital freedoms. As a PhD student at University College London, he is researching the intersection of privacy, anonymity and decentralization. In the past, he has lead development of eQualitie’s CENO censorship circumvention tool, contributed to the Freenet anonymous publishing platform, and represented communities such as Mozilla and fedora.

Leandros Savvides holds a bachelor degree in international politics / sociology (Manchester Metropolitan University, 2011) as well as master degree in social and political thought (Sussex University, 2012). He successfully defended his thesis “3D printing: politics, material hacking and grassroots innovation” in the summer of 2018, at the University of Leicester.His research interests involve theoretical and ethnographic approaches to Science and Technology studies, particularly in relation to political economy and social movements.

Gabriele de Seta is a media anthropologist. He holds a PhD in Sociology from the Hong Kong Polytechnic University and was a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Institute of Ethnology, Academia Sinica in Taipei, Taiwan. His research work, grounded on ethnographic engagement across multiple sites, focuses on digital media practices and vernacular creativity in China, Hong Kong and Taiwan. He is also interested in experimental music scenes, internet art, and collaborative intersections between anthropology and art practice. More information is available on his website http://paranom.asia

Niki Sioki holds a PhD in Typography & Graphic Communication from the University of Reading, UK . She combines professional and research expertise having worked for more than 20 years in the academic and medical Greek publishing sector. Niki is currently Assistant Professor at the University of Nicosia, Cyprus, where she teaches typography, print and digital publishing, and design research. As a researcher her interests concentrate on the history of Greek graphic design and printing, book design, typography, and print culture in Cyprus. Her work so far is well documented in academic publications, proceedings, presentations in international conferences and in popular media. She is a member of a number of professional associations and scholarly societies in the UK, Greece, Cyprus and Germany. For a list of published papers and articles you may visit: https://unic.academia.edu/NikiSioki


Unconference Chairs

Chrystalleni Loizidou (nee) [Unconference Chair] has been battling a Google addiction for over a decade and has been trying to make up for it with free software advocacy (Wednesday night vigils with hack66.info since 2013) as well as open and collaborative work in art and academia (PhD in Humanities and Cultural Studies with the London Consortium, 2014). She organised her first unconference in 2011 (THATCamp Cyprus) which was attended by around three people as well as her uncle. She has been organising and reviewing hackathons since 2012, and these days is concerned with the fate of Open Government Data and the abuse of transparency discourse towards privatisation. Her conventional scholarship deals with politics of memory, public space, public art, and their activist interventions. Aside from teaching artists and designers to read and write theory at university level, she spends time processing the politics of personal writing, as well as coordinating and co-curating things between art, life, and love with Evanthia Tselika and reaphrodite.org. She confesses astonishment at how this powerful dream of an Unconference on Art, Tech, Commons, and Freedom is actually coming true, and would like to bring her baby son to as much of it as possible.
allonan.com | eimaste.net

Evanthia Tselika [PhD] [Unconference Chair] is Assistant Professor and Fine art program coordinator at the University of Nicosia. Her research is focused on contemporary art, the urban context, social movements, community processes and socially engaged art practices. She develops and researches social and public art practices and has worked, exhibited and collaborated with various art centres and museums locally and internationally. Currently she is co-ordinating commons related art and technology research and public art practices, under the Interreg Balkan Med funded programme Phygital (Greece- Albania- Cyprus, 2017-2019) together with Chrystalleni Loizidou, with whom she set up the research art collective Re Aphrodite in 2010. She has been involved in co-conceiving and producing the European Cultural Foundation Shaping Common paths (2017-2018) project and was principal researcher and curator in the Cyprus iteration of the Artecitya platform by Artos Foundation, Creative Europe, in the displaced housing estates in Nicosia. In 2019 a collective volume publication she is co-editing on contemporary art and Cyprus is due to be published by Bloomsbury. Information on art projects, articles and exhibitions can be found on http://evanthiatselika.com.

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