Elisabeth Schellekens is a Swedish philosopher and Chair Professor of Aesthetics at Uppsala University (since 2014). Previously, she was Senior Lecturer at Durham University (2006-2014). Schellekens is known for her works in aesthetics. Her research interests include aesthetic cognitivism and objectivism, aesthetic normativity, Hume, Kant, aesthetic and moral properties, conceptual art, non-perceptual or intelligible aesthetic value, the relations between perception and knowledge, the aesthetics and ethics of cultural heritage (esp. in armed conflict), and the interaction between aesthetic, moral, cognitive and historical value in art.[citation needed]

Schellekens was co-editor of the British Journal of Aesthetics between 2007 and 2019. She continues to serve on the journal's editorial board, and has served on a number of journal editorial boards, including the Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism and Estetika.

Iris Vidmar is an assistant professor currently employed at the Department of Philosophy, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Rijeka, Croatia. Her area of specialization includes philosophy of art and aesthetics, with particular interest at philosophy of literature, poetry and Kant’s aesthetics. Her area of expertise includes epistemology and metaphilosophy. She taught a wide variety of courses pertaining to these areas, and extending to ethics, bioethics, emotions, philosophy of sexuality and modern philosophy.
Iris Vidmar defended her PhD after completing a doctorate program at the University of Rijeka in 2013, on the topic of literary cognitivism. She continued to explore the topic ever since, with particular interest in literary forms and genres, ranging from realism to science fiction and from poetry to mystery novels. Working at the intersection of philosophy and literature, she has written on various aspects of literary experience, exploring it from ontological, epistemological and ethical perspectives. As an associate at the research project Identity, funded by the University of Rijeka, she was concerned with fictional characters, and the ways in which literary and art experiences relate to one’s notion of self. As a member of the research center dedicated to the exploration of language, she is concerned with poetry and poetic use of language. Her most recent interest extend to cognitive aesthetics, where she is exploring connections between philosophical and scientific ways of discussing art and our cognitive faculties that enable us to create it and respond to it. In her writings, she unites philosophy with literature and literary criticism, arguing for the importance of humanistic disciplines more generally. She also works in Metaphilosophy, where she is mostly interested at accounting for the particular value, role and function that philosophy has for our practical lives, and in the overall educational system. She is the lead researcher at the project entitled Literature as a domain of ethics, funded by University of Rijeka.

Marina Iosifian is a Senior Research Associate at the University of St Andrews, Scotland. She holds a PhD in Psychology from Université Paris Cité. Her work integrates experimental methods from social and cognitive psychology with questions traditionally associated with aesthetics, social anthropology, and religion, contributing to a growing interdisciplinary dialogue between psychology, the humanities, and cultural studies. Over the past five years, she has been involved in the Art as Revelation project, which investigates how works of art can function as sites of insight and meaning-making. She also contributes to initiatives that stimulate interdisciplinary dialogue on complex aesthetic questions, including the Art in Conversation seminar series.

Murray Smith is Professor of Philosophy, Art, and Film and Director of the Aesthetics Research Centre at the University of Kent. He was President of the Society for Cognitive Studies of the Moving Image from 2014–17, and a Laurance S. Rockefeller Fellow at Princeton University’s Center for Human Values for 2017–18. He has published widely on film, art, and aesthetics. His publications include Film, Art, and the Third Culture: A Naturalized Aesthetics of Film (Oxford University Press, 2017; revised paperback 2020),Trainspotting (BFI, revised edition 2021), and Engaging Characters: Fiction, Emotion, and the Cinema (Oxford University Press, revised edition 2022). Currently he is working alongside cognitive scientists on two Templeton-funded projects – ‘Art Opening Minds’ (2022-3) and ‘Character Engagement and Moral Understanding’ (2022-6) – as well as a new collection, Observing Film Art, devoted to the work of David Bordwell. 

Marc Leman is emeritus professor musicology at Ghent University (UGent), Belgium. He obtained his PhD in 1991 and worked as research professor and director of IPEM at UGent (till 2024). His research focused on the epistemology and methodology of embodied music interaction. For that purpose, he founded the ASIL (art and science interactive lab) in De Krook in Gent, a center for the study of dance and music performance, using advanced technologies.

His theoretical work resulted in diverse applications in the domain of the arts, AI-based human-machine interaction, physiotherapy and medical- and sport devices. He contributed to > 450 publications and diverse books (published by MIT Press, Routledge, Springer), was (co-)promotor of several national and international projects, and supervised >40 doctoral students. In 2015 he received the Ernest-John Solvay award from the Belgian science foundation FWO, for his work in the humanities. He was twice laureate of the Methusalem, hold the Francqui chair at UMons, and served as advisor for several international institutes. Currently, he is also very active as painter and jazz trumpetist.

Jacopo Frascaroli is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Department of Psychology, University of Turin, Italy. Before joining Turin, he held a Humanities Research Postdoctoral Fellowship at the University of York, where he also earned his PhD in Philosophy in 2022 as part of the Leverhulme-funded interdisciplinary project "Learning from Fiction". Jacopo’s work bridges philosophy, psychology, and neuroscience, with a particular focus on aesthetics as a privileged lens through which to explore the workings of the human mind. He pursues this inquiry both theoretically and experimentally. On the theoretical side, he develops integrative frameworks that connect long-standing philosophical insights with contemporary findings in cognitive science. On the experimental side, he employs behavioural, neuroimaging, and computational methods to investigate aesthetic experience and its interaction with key cognitive phenomena such as learning, attention, memory, affect, and motivation. Jacopo has published several papers in high-impact journals, co-edited a theme issue on "Art, Aesthetics, and Predictive Processing" for Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, and has two forthcoming books: Art and Learning (Mondadori, written together with Irene Ronga and Pietro Sarasso) and The Arts and the Drive for Knowledge (Cambridge University Press, co-edited with Diana Omigie and Filippo Contesi). Jacopo is also an active member of all the major international societies devoted to aesthetics and has presented his work at more than forty international conferences, ten of which as an invited speaker.cognitive science.

Sander Van de Cruys is an Alexander von Humboldt postdoctoral fellow at the Leibniz Institute for Psychology in Trier. He previously worked in the Brain & Cognition Unit at the University of Leuven on the GestaltReVision project and at the University of Antwerp. He investigates the internal rationality and computational logic in supposedly irrational or emotional thinking and behavior, whether it be in mental disorders (e.g., autism), in our emotional experience (e.g. aesthetic experience), or in belief systems (such as conspiracy theories). His theoretical and empirical work concerns the entanglement of cognition and emotion, for example in epistemic emotions such as curiosity and aha experience (sense of insight). Personal website: https://sandervandecruys.be/

Pieter Schuermans is a Belgian composer, conductor, and artistic researcher whose work explores temporal perception, structural layering, and emergent musical form. He holds Master’s degrees in Composition, Double Bass, Flute, and Symphonic Conducting from LUCA School of Arts, and completed his Doctorate in the Arts at KU Leuven in 2021 with Chaotic Pulse, Pulsating Chaos, which also resulted in a CD release on Etcetera Records.

A former principal double bassist with Collegium Instrumentale Brugense, he has an active interdisciplinary profile, notably as founder of eaRis company, dedicated to cross-media performance. As President of Composers Archipelago Flanders (ComAV), he supports the development of contemporary music in Belgium and abroad.

Schuermans is Professor of Composition and Director of Artistic Practice at LUCA School of Arts, and Special Guest Professor at KU Leuven. His current research focuses on multilayered compositional processes, interdisciplinarity, performer–composer relations, and AI in creative practice.

Christopher Earley is a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow at the University of Edinburgh and co-editor of Debates in Aesthetics. His current research focuses on how we can learn things from art, how aesthetic experiences help us work out our place in history, why we love it when artists break the rules, and how philosophy can make us more creative. As well as working in philosophy, he’s also a practicing artist and a visiting tutor at the Slade School of Fine Art.

I completed my PhD in Philosophy at King's College, London in 2020.

Currently, my research focusses on the malleability and adeptness of our perspective-taking. In particular,  our imaginative shifts, both in terms of spatial changes (imagine you are looking down on yourself) and temporal changes (imagine you are sat exactly where you are but in 10 years time). Understanding how this works help us get to grips with empathic shifts. That is, shifts into the shoes of others (whether now or at a different point in time). This knowledge contributes to our understanding of art. Because these kinds of shifts enable us, as competent appreciators of art, to disclose the affective content and value of specific works.

Alongside my research, I co-Direct the Centre for Philosophy and Arts (CPA). The Centre is a major multi-disciplinary initiative whose aim is to bring together academics, artists, curators and gallerists to explore the connections between philosophy, theory and the visual arts.