the experts

#6–beliefs

Pia Lamberty

Pia Lamberty is a social psychologist who researches the reasons behind people’s belief in conspiracy narratives. She is the managing director of the non-profit Center for Monitoring, Analysis and Strategy (CeMAS), which pools interdisciplinary expertise on conspiracy ideologies, disinformation, antisemitism and far-right extremism. Lamberty positions herself at the interface between science and society. Together with journalist Katharina Nocun, she has published two non-fiction books on conspiracy narratives. Their third joint book project, on the topic of esotericism, was published in autumn 2022.

Credit: CeMAS

Alexander Kaurov

“More and more scientists support Democrats”

Dr Alexander Kaurov is a research associate in the Department of the History of Science at Harvard University, a visitor in the Program in Interdisciplinary Studies at the Institute for Advanced Studies, and an affiliate research scientist at the Blue Marble Space Institute of Science. He co-founded the Earthlings Hub initiative that helps children refugees adapt to new educational environments. Kaurov’s research investigates the public’s perception of science through data-driven methods. 

Credit: Alexander Kaurov

Nicola Gennaioli

Nicola Gennaioli is professor of finance at Università Commerciale Luigi Bocconi in Milan, as well as a research fellow at the Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR) and European Corporate Governance Institute (ECGI). His work focuses on the intersection of psychology and finance. In his book A Crisis of Beliefs (2018) he looks at the psychological mechanisms at work in the financial crisis 2008.

Credit: Paolo Tonato

Katja Wiech

Dr Katja Wiech is a neuroscientist at the Nuffield Department of Clinical Neurosciences at the University of Oxford, where she leads the Pain & Mind research group. Her research focuses on pain and the impact of beliefs, preconceptions and placebo effects on pain perception. In addition to the theoretical understanding of how pain manifests itself in the brain, she is also concerned with the practical application of these findings in pain therapy.

Credit: Katja Wiech

Panos Athanasopoulos

Prof. Dr Panos Athanasopoulos conducts research at Lancaster University on experimental psycholinguistics and cognitive linguistics to gather more insight in how native and additionally acquired languages affect our thinking and perception of the world.

“If you go to a casino, don’t even dream of using your first language!

Credit: Panos Athanasopoulos

#5–space

Priyamvada Natarajan

Priyamvada Natarajan is a theoretical astrophysicist and professor at the departments of Astronomy and Physics at Yale University. She is educated in both sciences and humanities and graduated from MIT and the University of Cambridge. Natarajan is among the world’s leading experts on dark matter and black holes. She’s also actively engaged in the public debate, thinking more broadly about scientific ideas and their impact on society and culture. Her first book aimed at a broader public readership is titled “Mapping the Heavens: The Radical Scientific Ideas That Reveal the Cosmos”. Most recently, her research has focused on map-making using gravitational lensing – the celestial distortion in the shapes of galaxies – created by gravity’s bending of light, in a quest to ultimately understand the nature of dark matter. Another problem that she has actively been working on is the origin of the first black holes in the universe – exploring how and when they formed.

Credit: Michael Helfenbein / Yale University

Sebastien Moranta

Sebastien Moranta is the Coordinator of Studies at the Vienna based European Space Policy Institute (ESPI), a platform for developing positions and strategies regarding Europe’s space activities.

Credit: Sebastien Moranta

Stephanie Lizy-Destrez

Stephanie Lizy-Destrez fell for space when she was a little girl. She is now a teacher and researcher in space systems design at ISAE-Supaero, the Higher Institute of Aeronautics and Space, in Toulouse. She is head of advanced space systems and manages a team focused on the question of space debris.

Credit: Stephanie Lizy-Destrez

Vadim Lukashevich

Vadim Lukashevich is a Russian independent aerospace expert. He was a designer at Sukhoi, one of the leading aircraft development companies in Russia. Among other things, he writes about aircraft disasters in Russian trade magazines.

Credit: Vadim Lukashevich

Tony Milligan

Tony Milligan is a Visiting Research Fellow at the Department of Theology and Religious Studies at King’s College London as well as Senior Researcher with the Cosmological Visionaries project at the Department since autumn 2020. He specialises in ethics with a particular focus on how we see and relate to other people and animals, places, and political positions. In his research, he explores how we can establish viable space ethics based on pluralism.

Credit: Suzanne Watson

Gloria Meynen

Gloria Meynen is a professor of media theory at the University of Art in Linz. She gained her PhD on the two-dimensionality of surfaces at the Humboldt University in Berlin and qualified as a Professor at the Leuphana University with her monograph “Islands and Seas – On the History and Geography of Fluid Borders” (“Inseln und Meere – Zur Geschichte und Geografie fluider Grenzen”), which was published in 2020 by Matthes & Seitz Berlin. Her research interests include the theory and history of unpredictable futures, methodological study of digital humanities and – last but not least – the media history of both media theory and the Moon landing.

Credit: Gloria Meynen

Jack Stuster

Dr Jack Stuster was President and Principal Scientist of Anacapa Sciences, in California, until his retirement this year. He is a Certified Professional Ergonomist specializing in the measurement and enhancement of human performance in extreme environments. The results of his research are used by NASA and other organisations to design training, equipment, and procedures to facilitate task performance under conditions that are characterised by unusual environmental and psychological stress.

Credit: Jack Stuster

Tiago Soares

Tiago Soares is a Systems Engineer for the Clean Space program at the European Space Agency (ESA). He holds a Master of Science in Aerospace Engineering from the University of Lisbon, Portugal, and specialized in Space applications at the National Higher French Institute of Aeronautics and Space (SUPAERO) in Toulouse. In 2012, he was one of the initiators of ESA’s Clean Space program, which aims to protect the environment.

Credit: ESA

Martin Elvis

Dr Martin Elvis is a highly cited astrophysicist at the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian. His research focuses on asteroid mining and its astronomical, technical, legal, policy and ethical issues. In astrophysics he has published over 400 papers on quasars. In 2019, he published the article “How much of the Solar System should we leave as wilderness?” together with the philosopher Tony Milligan. Asteroid 9283 Martinelvis is named after him.

Credit: Martin Elvis

Alan N. Shapiro

Alan N. Shapiro is an American born, Germany based transdisciplinary theorist and lecturer teaching in the fields of media theory and science fiction studies at the Bremen University of the Arts, Germany, and the University of Applied Sciences in Lucerne, Switzerland. In 2004, Shapiro published his book on the TV series Star Trek, aiding to uplift its significance in our contemporary culture.

Credit: Alan N. Shapiro

#4 Changing Climate

Friederike Otto
Eva Horn
Richard Staley
Gernot Wagner
Anthony Patt
Nestor Ángel Pinillos
Judith Tonner
Maximiliane Sievert
Alexander Carius & Stella Schaller
Joel Wainwright

#3 Digital Transformation

Ranga Yogeshwar
Karen Gregory
Robert Trappl
Christian Montag
Gilbert Fridgen
Norbert Bolz
Sven Herpig
Philipp Hergovich
Wolfgang Drechsler
Henry Jenkins

#2 Nationalism

Julie Smith
Gudrun Hentges
Edward Kanterian
Heike Krieger
Marie-Thérèse Mourey
Silke von Berswordt-Wallrabe
Fabian Virchow
Azar Gat
Ulrich Schmidt-Denter
Ulrike Guérot

#1 Terrorism

Michaela Sonnicksen & Rainer Banse
Sebastian Gehrig
Christine Schirrmacher
Julian Wucherpfennig
Kyle Matthews
Caja Thimm
Daniela Pirazzini
Frank Furedi
Don Varn Lowman
Daniel Witte