Biographies team COMPOS(T)INGBiographies team COMPOS(T)ING

Anthony Heidweiller is an associate professor at the Academy of Theatre and Dance but also an opera singer and former director of the Opera Forward Festival of the Dutch National Opera & Ballet. He is currently researching the relationship between regeneration and breath. Within the KUO’s Lifelong Learning group, he leads research on how to place regenerative arts education on the national sector agenda.

Jay-j Taukave is a PhD candidate at UvA whose research relates to his position as part of the International Maritime Organisation’s Pacific delegation and the use of Indigenous cultural practices from Rotuma, his island home in Fiji, in diplomacy and negotiations for oceanic climate justice.

Úna Henry is the dean of Willem de Kooning Academy and the director of its Research Centre. She is also a researcher, curator and representative board member of ELIA, where she chairs the Art & Ecology working group. She is an advocate for the importance of the arts and their transformative pedagogies, she is dedicated to fostering connections between education, practice and theory at the intersection of civic engagement, environmental and cultural thinking.

Anke Jongejan is a senior lecturer and researcher at the School of Design HKU. She recently co-developed a minor in art and ecology. She focuses on the knowledge created in the creative process and how the secret forces of creativity, reciprocity and interconnectedness can be a blueprint for being ecological.

Laura Cull Ó Maoilearca is professor of performance philosophy at the University of Amsterdam and Professor at the Academy of Theatre and Dance (ATD). She co-directs Climate Imaginaries at Sea, which speculates on possible futures in and around water through artistic research. She leads the Art Alliance in the movement Imagining Climate Justice in Minor Key and is a member of the cross-institutional working group Regenerative Art Education. Her research focuses on transformative encounters between performance, philosophy and non-human animals, including her book Interspecies Performance (2024), co-edited with Florence Fitzgerald-Allsopp.

Annemarie Piscaer is a PhD candidate in the Doctoral Program at KU Leuven and a designer, researcher and lecturer at CARADT, St Joost. Fascinated by dust, both as air pollution and as a tangible consequence of human choices, she investigates the systems that drive these decisions. Through materials and craftsmanship, her work seeks to unravel and illuminate these complex dynamics.

Delfina Fantini van Ditmar is research professor at CARADT where she leads the Regenerative Art and Design research group. She is also a senior researcher at the Royal College of Art, where she co-directs the UKRI-funded Becoming Regenerative Lab. Delfina has a BA in biology and a PhD from the Royal College of Art. Driven by an interest in ecological thinking, reflective practices and ‘inter-relations’ as a systemic response to the environmental collapse, Delfina’s critical practice explores the material ethics of care and the necessary paradigm shift in design.

Klaas Kuitenbrouwer is a senior researcher at Nieuwe Instituut and director of the Zoönomic Institute. With a background in history, art, digital culture and DIY communities, he works at the intersection of ecology, culture and technology.  At the New Store in the Nieuwe Instituut, he is developing the Regenerative Label - a means of assessing the regenerative performance of various products and services.

Shailoh Phillips is co-founder of Reschooling with, a transformative learning community for earth-based practices. An artist, writer, educator and activist, she creates participatory interventions and has worked in the cultural field for over 15 years. She cultivates imaginaries to help us tune into, perceive and act in response to crisis. As a fractal systems thinker, she explores how large-scale issues manifest in everyday life and how inner work ripples out into systemic change.

The content curators of this symposium are Anke Jongejan, Annemarie Piscaer, Delfina Fantini van Ditmar, Klaas Kuitenbrouwer, Laura Cull Ó Maoilearca, Martijn van Gessel and:

Aldje van Meer is a senior lecturer at WDKA, specialising in educational development and research in new making practices for art and design. She has an MFA in digital media design and has worked as a cross-media artist and designer. She now coordinates and supervises research within the Stations, interdisciplinary learning environments for research through making. She has recently set up the Living Station, an educational programme and lab where students explore how to make and collaborate with ‘living’ and biological systems.

Phyllis Wong is the project leader and co-curator of this symposium. Trained as an architect, she is a systemic thinker, visual artist, educator and researcher at WdKA. She holds a MA in Master Design from Piet Zwart Institute. Her research topic, Learning to (un)learn, focuses on cognitive (un)learning, the practice of care and how to design accessible and participatory methods within ecological dimensions to transition towards regenerative practice. Phyllis is also a certified member of The Regenerative Practitioners community of Regenesis.

Tim Verhoeven, Judy Wetters and Marieke Feldhaus