Sabina Leonelli

Professor Sabina Leonelli is Chair of Philosophy and History of Science and Technology at the Technical University of Munich, where she directs the Ethical Data Initiative and co-direct the TUM Public Science Lab. Until 2024 she was Professor of Philosophy and History of Science, Director of the Centre for the Study of the Life Sciences (Egenis, 2013-2024) and lead of research on "Data Governance, Openness and Ethics" for the Institute for Data Science and Artificial Intelligence (IDSAI) at the University of Exeter, where she holds a Honorary Professorship. She serves as President-Elect of the International Society for History, Philosophy and Social Studies of Biology; Council member for the Division of Logic, Methodology and Philosophy of Science and Technology of International Union of History and Philosophy of Science and Technology; Associate Editor for the Harvard Data Science Review; and Subject Editor for Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy. She has served as Vice-President of the European Association for the Philosophy of Science (2019-2023), Editor-in-Chief of History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences (2019-2023), Open Science lead for the Global Young Academy (2014-2017). She is the recipient of a University of Tilburg Honorary Doctorate (2023), 2021-2022 Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin Fellowship and 2024 Kluge Chair in Technology and Society from the Library of Congress. Her 2016 book Data-Centric Biology won the Lakatos Award (2018) and Patrick Suppes Prize for Philosophy of Science (2022).

Robert Rosenberger

Robert Rosenberger is a professor in the School of Public Policy at the Georgia Institute of Technology and is currently serving as the President of the Society for Philosophy and Technology. He has developed a postphenomenological interpretation of the empirical data or smartphones and driver distraction, published a stack of articles on the topic, and has become an public advocate for traffic safety. This line of work has culminated in his 2024 book, Distracted: A Philosophy of Cars and Phones (University of Minnesota Press). Another central project is the critique of anti-homeless design. Through the application of these philosophical ideas, Rosenberger has developed an account of the various ways the built environment is designed to discriminate against the unhoused, and how these designs often work in conjunction with anti-homeless law. This connects up with the emerging literature on "hostile architecture," and Rosenberger is developing a postphenomenological account of hostile public-space design. See his short, polemical book on this published with University of Minnesota Press in 2017, entitled Callous Objects: Designs Against the Homeless. He is the Editor-in-Chief and co-founder of the book series "Postphenomenology & the Philosophy of Technology" (Lexington Books/Rowman Littlefield Press). He is also the editor of a collection of Don Ihde's most important works entitled The Critical Ihde (SUNY Press), as well as the interview book Philosophy of Science: 5 Questions (Automatic/VIP Press).

Jens Schlieter

Jens Schlieter is a professor in Science of Religion at the University of Bern. While his PhD in Philosophy dealt with Buddhist Philosophy of Language, his subsequent research focused on Buddhist Ethics, especially contemporary Buddhist views of bioethical questions such as, for example, stem cell therapy and human cloning. Since August 2005, Schlieter is teaching and conducting research at the University of Bern, serving there as the co-director of the Institute for Science of Religion, and co-director of the Department of Social Anthropology and Cultural Studies. From May to July 2007, Schlieter held the first "William James Guest Professorship for Religious Studies" at the University of Bayreuth. In 2025, he will become a Senior Fellow at the Center for Advanced Studies at the University of Erlangen, with a project on epistemic questions of Buddhist ethics and mediation. Together with Rolf Elberfeld, he co-founded the Research Working Group for Asian Philosophy (FAP) within the German Society for Philosophy, which has been organizing conferences since 2006. Since 2007, he is a board member of the Swiss Society for Religious Studies (SGR-SSSR). He is also co-director of the Institute for Religious Studies at the University of Bern. He is author of several books, such as What is it like to be Dead? Near-death Experiences, Christianity, and the Occult (Oxford University Press, 2018), and he served as a co-editor of the recently published book: Intentional Transformative Experiences: Theorizing Self-Cultivation in Religion and Esotericism (De Gruyter, 2024).

Shannon Vallor 

Professor Shannon Vallor is the Baillie Gifford Chair in the Ethics of Data and Artificial Intelligence in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Edinburgh, where she also directs the Centre for Technomoral Futures in the Edinburgh Futures Institute. Her research explores how AI, robotics, and data science reshape human character: our habits, virtues and capabilities. Professor Vallor advises policymakers and industry on the ethical design and use of AI, and she is a former Visiting Researcher and AI Ethicist at Google.  Her works include the edited Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Technology (2022), and two monographs, The AI Mirror: How to Reclaim Our Humanity in an Age of Machine Thinking (Oxford University Press, 2024) and Technology and the Virtues: A Philosophical Guide to a Future Worth Wanting (Oxford University Press, 2016). She currently co-directs the UKRI research programme BRAID (Bridging Responsible AI Divides), funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council. Professor Vallor is also a former President of The Society for Philosophy and Technology.