Lauren Beukes is an award-winning South African novelist who also writes screenplays, TV shows, comics and journalism. Her novels, including Zoo City, Broken Monsters and The Shining Girls have been translated into 26 languages. @laurenbeukes

Adrienne Maree Brown is the Co-editor of Octavia’s Brood: Science Fiction from Social Justice Movements. She is a writer, social justice facilitator, healer, doula and pleasure activist living in Detroit. @adriennemaree

Antonia Carver is Director of Art Dubai. Based in the UAE since 2001, she has written extensively; was an editor and projects director at Bidoun (2004-2010); and on the programming committees for the Dubai and Edinburgh film festivals. @antcarver

Germano Celant is the Artistic and Scientific Superintendent at Fondazione Prada in Milan. Celant is the author of more than one hundred publications, including both books and catalogues and has curated hundreds of exhibitions in the most prominent international museums and institutions worldwide. He has been a contributing editor of ArtForum since 1977 and a contributing editor of Interview since 1991.

Mishaal Al Gergawi is a writer, director of the Delma Institute and co-founder of Cinema Akil. Mishaal lives in Dubai and Abu Dhabi. @algergawi

Saeed Al Gergawi is a member of the Emirates Mars Mission’s Strategic Planning Team. He is also part of the research team at the Mohammed Bin Rashid Space Centre which acts as the science and technology consultants for the space centre and the government. Saeed is a columnist and often discusses concepts and ideas of futurology, technology, science and space. @Saeed_algergawi

John Gerrard is an artist living and working in Dublin, Ireland and Vienna. He is best known for his commitment to large scale works that take form, of real-time computer simulations. These frequently refer to structures of power and networks of energy that have made possible the expansion of human endeavor in the past century. His recent solo presentations include Solar Reserve, installed at Lincoln Centre in association with the Public Art Fund in 2014. @jegerrard

Alice Gorman is a space archaeologist who studies the human material record in Earth orbit and throughout the solar system. She is a member of the Executive Council of the Space Industry Association of Australia. Her work has twice been selected for The Best Australian Science Writing anthology. She tweets as @drspacejunk and blogs at Space Age Archaeology. @drspacejunk

Joana Hadjithomas & Khalil Joreige are lebanese filmmakers and artists, producing cinematic and visual artwork that intertwine. They have directed multi awarded documentaries and fiction films such as Khiam 2000-2007, A Perfect Day, I Want to See or The Lebanese Rocket Society, Their latest art project focusses on Internet Scams.

Mohammad Al Hammadi is a writer whose work encompasses science fiction, drama and paranormal crime subjects. His published works include The Last Day, Professor Mcaydey’s Notes, Bongani the Healer and A Murder at the Capital’s Suburbs. Al Hammadi was the recipient of the first place prize of the Emirates Novel Award 2014-2015. His most recent work The Search for the Sun’s Kingdom competed in the Katara Prize for Arabic Novel.

Hasan Hujairi (born 1982) is a composer, sound artist, and researcher who lives and works between Seoul (South Korea) and Manama (Bahrain). His works explore his interest in historiography, maritime cultures, technology, and the dissemination of knowledge. @hujairi

Christine Sun Kim uses the medium of sound through technology, performance, and drawing to investigate her relationship with sound and spoken languages. Selected exhibitions and performances have been held at: Sound Live Tokyo, Tokyo; White Space, Beijing (solo); Carroll/Fletcher, London (solo); nyMusikk, Oslo; and the Museum of Modern Art, New York. Kim was awarded TED and MIT Media Lab Fellowships. @chrisunkim

Glenn D. Lowry became the sixth director of The Museum of Modern Art in 1995. A strong advocate of contemporary art, Lowry leads a staff of 750 and directs an active program of exhibitions, acquisitions, and publications. His publications include: Contemporary Art and Islamic Culture (2009); and The Museum of Modern Art in This Century (2009).

Sohrab Mahdavi is a writer and translator. Since 2000s, when he edited a web magazine, tehranavenue.com, he has been working by and at large with visual artists. He is currently dedicating most of his time to Nafas NGO, an environmental organisation growing out of the hopeless situation that a Tehrani is facing in a city drugged by smog and mugged by wealth.

Sophia Al Maria is an artist and writer. In 2015 she was a fellow at the Sundance Screenwriting Lab and her book The Girl Who Fell to Earth was published in Arabic translation. She is currently working on her first solo show in North America for the Whitney Museum curated by Christopher Lew. @SophiaAlMaria 

Noura Al Noman was born in Sharjah, the cultural capital of the UAE, Noura Al Noman began writing at 45 years of age. She wrote the Award winning “Ajwan”, one of a handful of science fictions novels in the Arab world. Book two, “Mandaan” was launched in January 2014, and she is working on the third book in the series.

Hans Ulrich Obrist (b. 1968, Zurich, Switzerland) is Co-Director of the Serpentine Galleries, London. Prior to this, he was the Curator of the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris. Since his first show World Soup (The Kitchen Show) in 1991, he has curated more than 250 shows. @HUObrist

Monira Al Qadiri is a Kuwaiti visual artist based in Amsterdam, born in Senegal and educated in Japan. Her work tackles questions around gender identity, the materiality of oil, and the receding aesthetics of sadness in the Middle-East region. She is also a founding member of the artist collective GCC. @moniraism

Ibrahim Hamza Al Qasimi leads the education and media outreach programme at the Mohammad Bin Rashid Space Centre. Al Qasimi was assigned as the Project Manager of Nayif-1 the UAE’s first CubeSat mission in 2014. In 2014, he became Head of Strategic Research at MBRSC. @Ialqasimi

Sheikha Hoor Al Qasimi President and Director of the Sharjah Art Foundation, is a practicing artist who received her BFA from the Slade School of Fine Art, London (2002), a Diploma in Painting from the Royal Academy of Arts (2005) and an MA in Curating Contemporary Art from the Royal College of Art, London (2008). In 2003 she was appointed curator of Sharjah Biennial 6 and has continued as the Biennial’s Director since that time. @HoorAlq

Sultan Sooud Al Qassemi is a commentator on political, social and economic issues in the Middle East. His columns appear in Financial Times, Foreign Policy, The Independent and the Guardian. Al Qassemi is an MIT Media Lab Director’s Fellow and the founder of Barjeel Art Foundation in Sharjah, United Arab Emirates. @SultanAlQassemi

Noah Raford is the COO of the Dubai Museum of the Future. In addition to developing the research agenda and creative direction for the Museum, his team also identifies emerging opportunities, develops strategic partnerships, and prototypes future initiatives. He is also a techno DJ. @nraford

Nada Raza is from Karachi and researches art from South Asia at Tate Modern in London. Raza was guest curator Abraaj Group Art Prize (2014) and her past lives include Iniva, Green Cardamom, and projects in the UAE and Pakistan. Her curatorial project for the Dhaka Art Summit, The Missing One, flirts with the convergence of futurism, sci-fi, dystopia and enchantment via works of art made between 1922 and the present. @Tate

Yasmina Reggad is an independent curator and writer based between London and Athens. She holds an MA in Middle Ages History from the Sorbonne University and is presently Programme Curator at aria (artist residency in algiers). She is the curator of Art Dubai Projects Commissions and A.i.R Dubai 2016. Reggad is curating The Unbearable likeness, a solo show by Abdelkader Benchamma at IVDE gallery opening on 14th March 6, 2016. @YasReggad

João Ribas is Senior Curator and Deputy Director of the Serralves Museum of Contemporary Art in Porto. He was previously Curator of the MIT List Visual Arts Center and of The Drawing Center, New York. Ribas is the winner of four consecutive AICA Exhibition Awards (2008-11) and of an Emily Hall Tremaine Exhibition Award (2010). His recent publication, In the Holocene, is published by Sternberg Press, 2015. @serralves_twit

eL Seed is an artist whose work incorporates elements of graffiti and traditional Arabic calligraphy. His art has been shown in exhibitions in Paris, Berlin, São Paulo, Chicago, Dubai, and on the walls of many cities including Paris, Melbourne, London, and New York. eL Seed is a recent TED fellow and was also the first artist from the Arab world to collaborate on a product for Louis Vuitton. @elseedart

Ahmed Bin Shabib and Rashid Bin Shabib are both urbanists and are the founders of Cultural Engineering – an institution that has tasked itself over the last 10 years with advancing the urban identity of the contemporary gulf in Dubai. Cultural Engineering was nominated for the Agha Khan awards for architecture in 2010. Both Ahmed & Rashid hold degrees from the University of Oxford in urbanism. @AhmedbinShabib @rashidshabib

Anna Della Subin is an essayist and a contributing editor at Bidoun. Her work has appeared in the London Review of Books, The New York Times, The White Review, Harper’s, and Tank, among other places. Her e-book Not Dead But Sleeping is published by Triple Canopy in January 2016. @annadella

Hito Steyerl is a German filmmaker, writer and artist. Her contemporary work, which includes films, essays and lectures, explore issues of media technology and globalization with a focus on the proliferation of image migration and image politics. Her latest solo exhibitions include Bank, Shanghai 2015; KOW gallery, Berlin; Artists Space, New York; ICA, London and the 2015 Venice Biennale German Pavilion. @HitoSteyerl

Murtaza Vali is a critic, curator, editor and Visiting Instructor at Pratt Institute, Brooklyn, USA. He most recently curated ‘Geometries of Difference: New Approaches to Ornament and Abstraction’ at the Samuel Dorsky Museum of Art at SUNY New Paltz and ‘Accented’ at the Maraya Art Centre in Sharjah. @murtazavali

Francesco Vezzoli is one of the most successful Italian contemporary artists in the world today. His works have been selected for the Venice Biennale (four times), the Whitney Biennial and PERFORMA. He had solo shows, among others, at: NewMuseum, Guggenheim, MoMA PS1, Tate Modern, Fondazione Prada, MOCA (LA), QMA (Doha).

André Vida is a composer, lyricist and saxophonist based in Berlin. Vida collaborated with Anri Sala in the making of “To Each His Own In Bridges” premiered at The Havana Biennial and Frieze Sculpture Garden in 2015. His saxophonic work includes collaborations with Anthony Braxton, Elton John, Cecil Taylor and many others.

WTD is an independent publication that uses narratives, conversations and visual essays to reflect on the built environment of the present-day Middle East. These temporary parameters represent an attempt to initiate a discourse that highlights architecture, urban thought processes and their relationship to the societies in which they are created. Promoting wishful thinking and cynical critique since 2012. @WTDMag