Containment

Marie-Luise Angerer was a professor of Media Studies at the University of Potsdam. The focus of her research is on media technology, affect and neuroscientific reformulations of desire and sexuality. Her publications include Desire After Affect (2014, German original 2007), Choreographie – Medien – Gender (with Yvonne Hardt and Anna-Carolin Weber, 2013), Timing of Affect: Epistemologies, Aesthetics, Politics (with Bernd Bösel and Michaela Ott, 2014), numerous articles in books and journals on the topic of posthumanism and affective politics.

Ingrid Richardson is Professor of Digital Media in the School of Media & Communication at RMIT University, Melbourne, Australia. She is a digital ethnographer and phenomenologist with a broad interest in the human–technology relation and mediated embodiment, and the application of innovative research methods in these contexts. She is co-author of Ambient Play (MIT Press, 2020), Exploring Minecraft (2020), Understanding Games and Game Cultures (Sage, 2021), and Bodies and Mobile Media (Polity, 2023).

Hannah Schmedes is a PhD candidate in Gender Media Studies at Ruhr-University Bochum. She is a researcher in the project “Bicycle Media. Cooperative Media of Mobility” at the University of Siegen and an associate member of the graduate program “The Documentary” at the Ruhr-University Bochum. Her dissertation on queerfeminist infrastructure critique explores how gender politics are coded into infrastructures and platforms. “Containing: Leaks” was the topic of her M.A. in European Media Studies at the University of Potsdam, which followed a B.A. in Cultural Studies and Philosophy at the Leuphana University of Lüneburg. She is part of the feminist collective Wiki Riot Squad, where she has led writing workshops on Wikipedia’s publishing and interface policies. Recent talks and publications have explored themes of porosity, leakiness, and witchcraft in relation to gender and infrastructure.

Zoë Sofoulis, from the Institute for Culture and Society at Western Sydney University, is a retired interdisciplinary researcher with a longstanding interest in the myths and symbols of high-tech culture. Her earlier writings (under the name Zoë Sofia) focussed on science fiction, cyberculture, and electronic arts. She is more recently known for practical applications of qualitative cultural research and humanities perspectives in fields where technology and engineering predominate, especially urban water, where her papers have helped define a cultural and sociotechnical perspective on metropolitan water and demand management. When strangers ask if she has had children, Zoë is proud to say “No, but I’ve had postgraduates,” some of whom are contributors to this book.