Giulia Champion is a Research Fellow (Anniversary Fellowship) from Italy at the University of Southampton, UK. Her main research project, entitled (Un)Mediating the Ocean investigates how the seabed is mediated in legal, financial, scientific, infrastructural and cultural documents and interventions as part of the creation of a regulatory framework for deep-sea mining by the International Seabed Authority. The project explores questions about Just Energy Transition, Civil Society engagement with the International Seabed Authority negotiations and In/Tangible Underwater Cultural Heritage. In 2022, she was a Green Transition Fellow at the Greenhouse at the University of Stavanger. She volunteers for the International Commission of the History of Oceanography and is a co-convenor for the Haunted Shores Network and the Reading Decoloniality Group and a collaborator on the Ecological Reparation Project.

Mekhala Dave is a lawyer from India and art academic based in Vienna, Austria. She is the ocean law and policy analyst/legal researcher at TBA21–Academy and a doctoral researcher in contemporary art history and theory at the University of Applied Arts Vienna. In her past and current work in legal practice, as well as in her PhD research, she advocates for a social turn in artistic practices and explores encounters located across knowledge spheres and communities in the Global South at the intersection of activism and newly shaping ocean policy. From her lived experiences across borders, she draws inspiration and spiritual guidance from water to the questions of historicity and the search for emerging “new” relations of identity and belonging.

Elizabeth DeLoughrey is a professor in the English Department at UCLA with an affiliation with the Institute of the Environment and Sustainability who works in the fields of Caribbean, Pacific Island, Indigenous, and postcolonial studies with an emphasis on ocean ecologies. She is the co-editor of multiple volumes in these fields as well as author of Roots and Routes: Navigating Caribbean and Pacific Island Literatures and Allegories of the Anthropocene. She has received awards and grants from the American Council of Learned Societies, Fulbright Fellowship (Aotearoa New Zealand), John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship, Mellon Sawyer Foundation, National Endowment for the Humanities, Rachel Carson Center for Environment and Society (Munich), a Rockefeller Residency, as well as multiple grants from the UCLA International Institute and the Burkle Center. She is currently working on two manuscripts about the oceanic imaginary and a member of the UNESCO working group on Underwater Cultural Heritage for the International Seabed Authority.

Jonathan Galka is a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Science, Technology and Society cluster of the Asia Research Institute at the National University of Singapore. He earned his PhD in the department of the History of Science at Harvard University in 2025. His first book project documents a history of the modern ocean and argues that contemporary ocean governance is deeply informed by mid-century aspirations to mine the very deep seabed for mineral ores. At NUS, he is beginning a new historical and ethnographic project concerned with the history and future of efforts to bring deep seawater onto land for the production of energy, food, and artificial cold. Writing on these topics appears in Social Studies of Science, Historical Studies in the Natural Sciences, and History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences. In Singapore, he is also affiliated with the NTU Centre for Contemporary Art on its Climate Crisis and Cultural Loss project. He maintains a long-term interest in mollusk-human histories. Work on this topic appears in Journal of the History of Biology and Island Studies Journal.

Alejandro Limpo González is a Spanish visual anthropologist exploring the media politics of ocean sensing. His research intersects media studies, environmental humanities, and Science and Technology Studies to investigate the relationships between technology, ecology, and culture. Currently, he is a PhD candidate at the Winchester School of Art (University of Southampton, UK) within the Intelligent Oceans research program, funded by the Leverhulme Trust and the Southampton Marine and Maritime Institute (SMMI).

Susan Reid is an Australian researcher and lawyer who explores multibeing ontologies with a focus on human-ocean relationships, multibeing justice, and extractivism. She is a cultural theorist, environmental philosopher, artist, and lawyer whose transdisciplinary work engages feminist and queer environmentalisms, contemporary arts, and science and technology studies. Susan was awarded a postdoctoral research fellowship with University of British Columbia’s Faculty of Critical and Creative Studies for her project: Multibeing Seas: Agencies of Resistance and Care. She is a co-founder of the online project Extracting the Ocean, and a member of both the University of Sydney’s Critical Minerals Network and Sydney Environment Institute. Qualifications include PhD, LlM (Intl Law), MA Design, and Admission as lawyer: ACT Supreme Court.

Khadija Stewart is a Caribbean ocean and climate specialist from Trinidad and Tobago. She holds dual Master’s degrees in Climate Change and Development and Sustainable Environmental Development. As the Founder of EcoVybz Environmental Creatives and EcoSeas Caribbean, she leads transformative initiatives such as Karibe Speak, Deep Sea Youth Symposium, and Thinking Beyond the Tides, using storytelling, art, and community-based advocacy to amplify Caribbean voices. Khadija currently serves as the Senior Campaigner at RISE UP for the Ocean, where she advocates for equitable, justice-centered ocean protection at both regional and global levels. She also produced The Anglerfish Chronicles, a radio series under TBA21–Academy, spotlighting deep ocean narratives through cultural and scientific lenses. Her work bridges the gap between science, policy, and lived experience, ensuring that youth and frontline communities are central to sustainable ocean governance and climate action.