Ute Meta Bauer is since June 1 Professor Emerita at Nanyang Technological University Singapore (NTU). She served as over a decade as Founding Director and since 2024 as Principal Research Fellow at the NTU Centre for Contemporary Art Singapore (NTU CCA Singapore). She was Founding Co-Director of the recently established Max Planck NTU Centre for Biocultural Worlding (Singapore/Berlin). She was Chair / Co-Chair of the Masters in Museum Studies and Curatorial Practices (MA MSCP) programme since 2016. Her work as educator and curator over the past ten years has focused on Climates. Habitats. Environments. At the NTU CCA she curated and co-curated The Oceanic (2017/2018), Trees of Life. Knowledge in Material (2018), and The Posthuman City (2020). In 2022, she served as curator for the Singapore Pavilion at the 59th Biennale di Venezia, featuring artist Shubigi Rao. Her recent large scale projects include the 17th Istanbul Biennial (2022), co-curated alongside David Teh and Amar Kanwar, and the artistic direction of the Diriyah Contemporary Art Biennale 2024. She is a Trustee of the Art Foundation TBA21 and is a board member of the Käte Hamburger Kolleg, University of Kassel (Germany). Bauer was recently conferred an Honorary Doctorate of Art and Design by Aalto University School of Arts, Design and Architecture, Helsinki, Finland.

Madeleine Collie is visiting researcher under the Climate Transformation Programme (2024–2027). Collie is a curator, writer, and researcher who creates platforms for the circulation of creative knowledges engaging with the politics and poetics of plants in contemporary art. She initiated the Food Art Research Network in 2020 as a platform for peer learning and slow, curatorial research. She is co-editor of Earth Ethics: Art, Institutions and Regenerative Practices (Monash University Publishing, 2025), lead editor of a forthcoming volume based on the long-term research exchange Follow the Plants (2023–25), and co-editor of Tastes of Justice: The Aesthetics and Politics of Food in Asia and Australia (Routledge, 2026). She was awarded a PhD in Art History, Theory and Curatorial Practice from Monash University in 2025 and holds an MRes in Curatorial/Knowledge from Goldsmiths, University of London.

Awalludin is a fisherman and owner of Bunda Homestay in Pengudang Village, Teluk Sebong District, Bintan Regency. Since childhood, he has lived and played in the Pengudang mangrove forest. He once worked for the Pengudang Village Government. He enjoys the marine world and currently focuses on tourism and coastal fishing. 

Dr Nisha is a Research Fellow in the Coral Geomorphology Group at the Earth Observatory Singapore, NTU. She specializes in palaeoecology and geochemistry analyses of peat and sediment from different forests. Her research focuses on reconstructing past environmental and ecological changes using multi-proxy approaches, including pollen, charcoal, stable carbon and nitrogen isotopes, and geochronology indicators. Currently, her work investigates tipping points in Singapore’s mangrove ecosystems in response to Holocene sea-level changes. By integrating field observations, laboratory analyses, and quantitative data interpretation, her research aims to improve understanding of long-term coastal ecosystem dynamics and contribute to the conservation and restoration of mangrove. 

Dr Timothy Shaw is a Senior Research Fellow at the Earth Observatory of Singapore, Nanyang Technological University with more than 10 years experience in sea-level and coastal environmental change research working in the United Kingdom, United States and now Singapore. His research focuses on investigating intertidal environments such as mangrove forests to reconstruct and understand how and why sea level has changed in the past which provides an important foundation for understanding how coastal ecosystem may respond to future sea-level rise over the 21st century and beyond.  

Hari Vishnu is a Senior Research Fellow at the National University of Singapore. His research spans machine learning for underwater applications, bio-acoustics, and impulsive noise processing, applied across tropical waters with snapping shrimp noise and polar regions dominated by glacier melt sounds. He received his Ph.D. from Nanyang Technological University, and was a Visiting Fellow at Scripps Institution of Oceanography (2019–2021). His current focus includes acoustic bio-diversity assessment, the acoustics of melting ice and distributed acoustic sensing. Hari also serves in Secretary/Deputy Secretary roles on the IEEE Oceanic engineering society leadership, is Chief Editor of their outreach magazine Earthzine, and plays a leading role in organizing Singapore AUV Challenge, one of the largest student marine robotics competitions in Asia and Europe.

Henrique Bravo is a marine ecologist at Nanyang Technological University (Singapore), specialising in the diversity, ecology, and conservation of coral-associated invertebrates in Southeast Asian reefs. His research examines invertebrate-coral interactions through field surveys, laboratory work, and statistical tools to assess their roles in reef health and resilience. Currently, he investigates these dynamics in turbid reef systems and how these relationships may respond to different global change pressures.

Riovie D. Ramos is a paleoclimate researcher whose work uses coral-based records to better understand past climate and ocean change. In her Ph.D. work, she used corals to reconstruct past changes in sea surface temperature, salinity, and surface ocean circulation to investigate drivers of climatic and oceanographic variability in the Southeast Asian marginal seas. As a postdoctoral researcher, she now extends this work to the reef scale, exploring how Indo-Pacific reefs responded to past sea-level and environmental change to inform projections of their future.

Ibu Hayat is an active member of the community-led mangrove nursery in Pengudang Village, Bintan. She is born and raised in the village.  

Henky Irawan is a marine scientist and lecturer at Raja Ali Haji Maritime University (UMRAH), Indonesia, with over a decade of experience in aquaculture innovation and coastal ecosystem management. His work focuses on advancing restorative aquaculture, integrating ecological restoration with sustainable production systems. He has led research on mangroves, seagrass, coral reefs, and commercially important species such as grouper and seaweed, producing impactful innovations including hydroponic mangrove propagation and engineered reef structures. Henky’s research aligns aquaculture practices with blue carbon strategies, biodiversity conservation, and community-based coastal resilience. He actively promotes ecosystem-based approaches that enhance habitat recovery while supporting livelihoods, particularly in Indonesia’s archipelagic regions. With a strong academic and leadership background, he contributes to bridging science, policy, and community implementation.

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Unfolding through visual, narrative, and performance, ila’s artistic practice revolves around urgencies for repair, care, and mutual support. Negotiating alternative nodes of experience, her works reconfigure and merge speculative fiction with factual histories, informal archives and collective experiences, conceiving them as sites for empathy and connectivity.

Courtesy of Dewi Marie Vincoy.

Iwan Winarto runs the community space, Pengudang Mangrove School in Bintan, Indonesia and has started various ecotourism initiatives to support the Pengudang village including mangrove tours, restoration projects and homestays. The Pengudang Mangrove school focuses largely on educating locals and tourists on the importance of protecting mangrove forests that face local and existential threats and initiates mangrove restoration projects around Bintan Island.

Johanes Jamil, widely known as Jembol, is a third-generation descendant of the Orang Suku Laut community who settled in Kawal, Bintan, and currently serves as head of the community in Kampung Masiran. Deeply connected to Orang Laut families across Bintan and Lingga, he carries forward generations of maritime knowledge, cultural traditions, and community leadership. After completing school, Johanes received a scholarship to study Religious Education and Philosophy at Sanata Dharma University in Yogyakarta. He later returned to Bintan, where he joined the Island Foundation in 2024 as a local facilitator supporting children’s education. Passionate about culturally grounded learning, Johanes believes education should strengthen mindsets without erasing identity. Today, he teaches at learning centres across Bintan, while also working as a religion teacher, avid football player, and dedicated dancer.

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Dara Duka, more widely known as Mak Dara, is a former fisherwoman and Joget Dangkung performer from Dompak, a small island in Tanjungpinang, Riau Islands. She was born in Dompak in 1953. After marrying and having children, she became affectionately known as Mak Dara, pronounced “Mak Dare” in the Malay dialect of the Riau Islands. In her village, Mak Dara is known for her dedication to preserving the traditional arts of the Riau Islands, especially Joget Dangkung. Beyond performing, she has also carefully recorded and safeguarded old Malay pantun that form an important part of this performance tradition. In recognition of her dedication, Mak Dara has received an award for her role in preserving Malay pantun and the art of Joget Dangkung.

Rudi is a coral restoration practitioner and dive professional based in Bintan, Indonesia. He holds a degree in Fisheries from the Maritime university in Tanjungpinang and works with Bintan Black Coral in Teluk Bakau, Bintan, while also collaborating with Bintan Resorts in the Bintan Beach International Resort (Lagoi) area. Through his work, he leads coral transplantation initiatives, monitoring activities, and educational programmes that connect reef conservation with diving, tourism, and community engagement.

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Kak Wa ode Masnia has been living in Pengudang since she was young. She is part of a group of women running eco-tourism activities, such as cooking workshops, to tourists. Her specialty is the dodol dessert, a recipe she learnt from her grandmother.   

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Zarina Muhammad is an artist, educator, and researcher whose interdisciplinary practice moves across performance, installation, moving image, sound, text, and participatory encounters. Her work critically re-examines oral histories, ethnographic literature, and historiographic narratives of Southeast Asia, exploring the entangled terrains of ecocultural cosmologies, haunted historiographies, mythmaking, and geo-spirited landscapes. Working through long-term, multi-sited research, she investigates how myth, ritual, environmental change, geology, weather systems, and embodied forms of sensing shape contemporary ways of knowing and inhabiting the world. Moving between artistic, scientific, and spiritual methodologies, her practice brings together field-based inquiry, collaborative exchange, material experimentation, and live relational processes. Her recent projects navigate between data and divination, drawing together monsoon systems, shipwreck histories, ritual theatre, spectral landscapes, and ecological archives to consider how worlds are sensed, remembered, and continually remade. Her work has been presented internationally at institutions and biennales including the 15th Gwangju Biennale, Kochi-Muziris Biennale, Diriyah Contemporary Art Biennale, Lahore Biennale, and the Singapore Biennale. She is the recipient of the 2022 IMPART Art Prize and participated in the inaugural STAR Residencies programme by NTU Centre for Contemporary Art Singapore and the Earth Observatory of Singapore.

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Stephanie Jaina Chia is a writer, filmmaker, and curator. Her work explores time, memory, grief, and unreliable narration, often through film and non-fiction creative writing. She is the co-founder of Poster Room, a Singapore-based arts collective dedicated to film programming and critical writing. Stephanie holds a BA (Hons) in English Literature and Art History and has previously worked in New York. She will be undertaking the MA Experimental Humanities and Social Engagement at New York University from 2026, where she hopes to develop her filmmaking practice and environmental humanities research.

Taufik Afdal is an English–Indonesian translator, interpreter, researcher, and lecturer based in Tanjungpinang, Bintan Island, Indonesia. Holding a Master’s degree in Linguistics from Universitas Sumatera Utara, he has been a professional member of the Association of Indonesian Translators since 2014. With extensive experience serving both local and international clients, he specializes in translation, interpreting, localization, and cross-cultural communication. He currently lectures in the Department of English Education at Institut Agama Islam Miftahul Ulum Tanjungpinang. His academic and professional work bridges language, culture, and education, and he has published research in translation studies while actively contributing to multilingual communication and international collaboration.