Bénédicte Savoy is an art historian who often intervenes in current political and cultural debates. An expert on European cultural heritage and translocal cultural exchange, she is committed to the decolonisation of thought in the social and academic field. In 2016 she received the renowned Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prize of the German Research Foundation. To a wider public, she became known with a        seminal report on the restitution of colonial artifacts, written together with Felwine Sarr and commissioned by French president Emmanuel Macron. In 2019, she curated, together with David Blankenstein, a much-acclaimed exhibition on the Humboldt brothers at the German Historical Museum. Savoy teaches art history at the College de France and at the Technical University of Berlin. 

Director Milo Rau creates a unique theatre that consistently blurs the boundaries between art, critical commentary and political intervention. His pieces have repeatedly triggered controversial public debates. He is constantly developing new formats between theatre, film and discourse, working together with activists around the world to intervene in urgent political conflicts. In 2015 Rau gathered 60 witnesses and experts for his Congo Tribunal in the Congolese civil war zone. When the Corona crisis developed into a worldwide pandemic, he, together with his team and indigenous environmental activists was in the Brazilian rainforest rehearing for the piece Antigone in the Amazon. In 2007 he founded the IIPM – International Institute of Political Murder. Milo Rau has received numerous awards for his work, including the Prize of the International Theatre Institute in 2016. Since 2018 he has been artistic director of the Dutch Theatre Gent. 

Philosopher and cultural journalist Catherine Newmark deals with questions of power, inequality and gender in philosophy. Her latest book Warum auf Autoritäten hören? (Why Listen to Authorities?) analyses the question of how authority is socially constructed – a question that has become pertinent in times of the Coronavirus. Newmark is a radio journalist for Deutschlandradio Kultur and editor for Philosophie Magazin.