FEDERICA ZAMBELETTI / KOOZ We’re so glad to have the chance to talk about the Nieuwe Instituut research fellowship programme. Thank you all for allowing us to share and build upon that knowledge. So Marina and Katía, you formed the fellowship programme together almost ten years ago. What guided the founding of this project within the wider context of the Nieuwe Instituut?

MARINA OTERO VERZIER Ten years ago — I can't believe it. When I started working at the Nieuwe Instituut, Katía was already there and there was an existing Fellows programme. The fellows were appointed directly, often through a connection with a forthcoming exhibition or programme. In certain ways, we felt that this model did not allow us to challenge the institutional framework. Of course, the institution was open to other voices, but through quite a filtered and controlled agenda. At the same time, we thought that research practices were rather instrumentalised: research would be mobilised for a predetermined outcome. So we proposed another take on this: a fellowship program organised via an open call, and that would allow people to follow their own research interests, without the constraint of an outcome.

We put more emphasis on the research methodology and the topic rather than the output. That was quite unique, because in the landscape in which we were operating, money for research must be carefully justified before it is awarded: you have to know whether something is going to be a publication, an exhibition, a product or whatever. We decided that no, research doesn't always have to be linked to an end product. Actually, if you look at basic, scientific research is open to indeterminate results. So we decided to go that way; it was not easy, but we managed to convince the Instituut of this approach as a way to bring new voices, new ideas, even new formats; that a certain fiction with the institutional framework could be desirable.

KATÍA TRUIJEN Indeed. When Marina arrived, there wasn’t yet a dedicated research department, instead there were different ways in which researchers were involved at the Instituut, indeed often more in instrumental ways. With every project we worked on, we asked what it actually means to do research in a public institution. What does it mean to work with academics, with artists, with all those who are involved with research in a non-academic environment — but within this framework of a state-funded cultural institution, as a place to make research public, and to do research in public.

Each iteration of the fellowship gave us an opportunity to reflect upon what it means to do research today, in the conditions that we are confronted with, whether that’s in terms of national funding, societal conditions or the political positions we hold.We also considered what it means to do interdisciplinary research, in the context of architecture, design and digital culture, and what it takes to bring these different strands in conversation with one another — it’s been really nice to see how these conversations evolved. Each of the fellows have followed very their own particular trajectories, with distinct moments of expression, gathering, and ways of using their time to do research, whether this involved six months of archival research — to really spend time on reading and thinking — or whether it was through connecting more with people in and around the institution and its network. So I think the role of the institute varied greatly for every fellowship.

MOV There were frameworks or conditions that we were very passionate about. One was to have no clear output, because we were more interested in the process and what people might find out during the process. Secondly, researchers received funding even without achieving a clear outcome. That was very interesting — especially as we wanted to offer a decent amount of funding. So basically we started on like €12,000 — later that increased as well. The idea was to give money to people, without knowing exactly what they are going to do with it. We thought it was okay if a fellow used the money to pay the rent, because there are moments in your life that you need money to pay rent — that doesn't mean that you are not going to do anything of value. But maybe a fellowship in a cultural institution for researchers ought to account for the difficulties and the precarities in the field.

Personally, I've always been extremely driven and hard working — but there was a moment when I received a little travel grant from Columbia University and I spent it on my rent, otherwise I couldn't survive in New York. There are so many people who ought to be supported, and who will do the work — it’s a matter of trust. Basically, institutional constraints generally represent a lack of trust in the people they pay, as they require so much paperwork or other bureaucratic proofs — meaning that you have to justify whether you are worth that trust.

We tried to reverse that logic and say “we trust you”. We also tried to make the open call as open as possible — and at the same time, precise in what we were looking for. We were interested in methodologies for new forms of research, to look at other ways of being in the world, basically. That’s what we are asking for: reimagining how we live together. We took a gamble on that, hoping that it could play well — but we were also open to failure.

We also found it interesting to analyse the responses. This allowed us to see whether we were receiving greater numbers of proposals from the same country, city or university. Why is that interesting? Perhaps it allows us to see that we are putting too much emphasis on the written component of the application, or that the topics that we are emphasizing connect to a particular school of thought. That helps us to broaden our reach, so people don’t think that these types of opportunities are not for them — for instance, because it's too academic. So over the years, we started to adjust things: allowing welcoming videos instead of texts; allowing people to communicate how they want — and to share this opportunity with as many people as possible. That was a beautiful learning process for us, always trying to think what can be improved.

KT Exactly. Sometimes former fellows have even helped us to shape the open call for the following year, or participate in the juries. Also, from the very first iteration, we'd never asked applicants for a CV or for letters of recommendation. Of course, during COVID we had a lot of remote fellowships, which actually allowed people to do field research in their own geographies. Sometimes we were more interested in establishing a conversation between loosely thematic approaches. Other times, people could connect through methodologies or ways of working. One year we specifically invited collectives, which I think is also something that continued.

MOV Yeah. Perhaps Katía, Federica and Delany can explain this to a greater degree, but the point is that we try to offer a form of hospitality, which many institutions are not designed to give. Mostly, you impose institutional structures to host people. For instance, you have a contract and assignments. What happens when you host someone whose research has no predetermined output, who joins a research department without a fixed idea of where they are going? That requires a form of friendship, solidarity and generosity that is very difficult to articulate within the daily life of an institution — and we did our best. As coordinators of the programme, Katia, Delany and Federica went beyond their responsibilities as researchers at the Nieuwe Instituut — it was an investment of time and love that was quite incredible.

DELANY BOUTKAN The term friendship that you use resonates so much with how we imagined to approach the fellowship… Federica and I tried to continue the amazing work that Marina and Katía set up in the institute after they left. Even though those who leave – never really leave the research team! The fellowship is and always has been a moment to start developing a relationship between the research team and the fellow. The six months of the fellowship are in a somewhat formal framework, they function within an agreement of sorts, with a set budget from an institution for example. But at the same time it's also very much about getting to know each other as people and as practitioners. I like the way Federica often puts it: we try to meet the researchers and the research where it's at. It takes time for us as a research team to figure out what you can do for somebody.

That’s why it’s always very important for us to ask the fellows, what do you need from us? Are researchers coming with a preconceived idea of how they want to engage with the institution, or are they open to different forms; do researchers prefer to have monthly meetings where, as we did with previous fellows, we listen to the sound of rain pre recorded by the fellows as part of their research for example? Or maybe fellows are more curatorial with their engagement; they will host specific sessions about aspects of their topic. It’s about allowing for that flexibility in how you meet each other, what conditions the way that you meet each other and how you can host.

MOV There were some tricky moments related to migration processes and visas. Some fellows arrive from places they may wish to escape; they are automatically cast in the image of those who want to remain “illegally”, so to speak. The challenges and the possibilities of making people feel at home required different forms of engagement — from convincing legal or financial teams, to mitigating any risks that the institution perceives and so on. This is not specific to the Nieuwe Instituut, but rather any institution that attempts to be bulletproof. Risk is always within a particular range of the possible — but you don't want too much risk, especially in an institution that depends on government funding. Navigating all of that is very draining — again, convincing people and the institution to extend trust, in many different ways — especially while making people feel at home, at the same time. These two things are extremely difficult: one requires a cognisance of structures of bureaucracy and persistence, while the other requires more or less the opposite: being open, accommodating, generous and understanding. This combination is so unique and I'm always in awe to see how Katía, Federica and Delany have been doing that work. That’s really at the core of the success of the fellowship program.

FEDERICA NOTARI Well, first of all, thank you — also, on behalf of Delany and Katía — for the kind words. It’s really lovely to hear that it comes across, but it really does come from this space of love for the practice that we're in — which is this weird notion of nurturing practice-based research within an institution. Whenever we get to engage with people situated within other contexts — in collectives, or decades-long practice experiences — where they practice forms of research, it's incredibly exciting.

But it's also interesting that you note, for instance, how we put out these official open calls. They're not as formal as many other open calls, because we don't ask for CVS or letters of recommendation — but they still are on an official website; they require time, space and a level of engagement that is nevertheless institutional. Then from the first moment we meet with them, all of a sudden we’re people — the fellows are meeting Delany, Katía, Marina. The shift occurs right at the moment that you kind of engage; it feels very natural and effortless, but it is a shift of tone when you actually meet the workers behind the institution and the open call.

DB That's also why conversations like this are also so important — especially for a ten year anniversary, to create moments of reflection and acknowledge everyone that has worked on the fellowship over the years. I've been working for about five years now with the fellows, part of which has overlapped with Marina and Katía. But there are also fellows who predated Federica and I in coordinating the programme. At a certain point, they became names on a list — but it was really important for us to bring that sensitivity back, which Marina, Katía and Federica describe. The most helpful thing the fellowship can do is to allow researchers time – to connect and to be open to all kinds of modes of research practice. To learn from all the fellows across ten years of incredible work, including the mistakes that were made, will help us to understand how we can be even better hosts. The nature of cyclical open calls doesn't always allow you to do this in-depth reflection — that's why we also decided to take a year off from it.

FN Yes, to get time to harvest and digest. It’s been so interesting to look back and talk to cohorts whom we didn't have a chance to meet at the time. Particularly for us, what happens in that encounter when independent collective research practices actually meet the institution — how does that change or or shape their research practices?

KT It's interesting that you also reflect upon what it means to host, and how to foster forms of mutual learning. I mean, the world has changed a lot right since 2016 [when we began]. What does it mean to have a fellowship program in the context of the current political context, both in and beyond the Netherlands, in and beyond Europe, against the background of the current government and political tendencies at large…. A lot of funding and fellowship opportunities are really under pressure. We had more than two hundred applications for our first iteration, but I think that only continued to grow — which really shows the need for these opportunities. But that's a whole other story.

MOVThere was a demand to declare why we should invest in a fellowship program, or how such fellowships would help shape the agenda of an institution. For instance, when we started out, the Nieuwe Instituut itself was relatively young: it came out of a merging of three other institutions, and it was still finding its soul. That’s possibly why the first fellows were clearly directed towards an output; they were trying to position the Instituut in a certain direction. What we were proposing was to leave it open, which is risky. When you’re at a point when you have to explain who you are as an institution, then having external voices coming in with different ideas creates noise. We were interested in making that risk the core of the institution; a place where things were cooking, and where new ideas, new forms of institutional practice, new forms of research, new ideas around architecture, design and digital culture could happen. That should be the soul of the institution.

KOOZ I read a conversation in which you were very critical of the idea of talent. I wanted to understand how you decided to engage with certain practices — especially as you don’t look at CVs or recommendations — as well as the freedom and openness it enabled.

FN To answer the first question very practically: we are not the sole stakeholders to decide that. We receive applications which are shared across the research team. Each application is read by at least three researchers, and a pre-selection meeting is held across a full day. These are the most exciting days of the year, because it really sets the tone for what is to come. It's a moment for us to engage with the urgencies out there, to keep our ears and minds open to what is moving people to apply — which is, of course, entangled within the context of global dynamics. After a short list is made, we have an external jury. So it's really a multi-vocal and multi-perspectival process.

MOV In the Netherlands, there is a government policy around talent development. In a way, I understand and it is powerful, because it incentivises people to grow professionally. A lot of grants go in that direction. At the same time, talent is somehow defined by certain ideas of success, or through connections that are forged — which can make it a very privileged metric. Not everyone has access to that type of support. So we asked ourselves what is talent, after all — and how is talent actually constructed? Is it something with which you are suddenly illuminated? Or is talent something that is developed because you have the support and the care around you, allowing you to develop your skills. We believe that everyone has the skills. At the beginning, it's true that the fellows had an academic career, with a very high level of proficiency. Some of them have joined the core team; others have worked on flagship projects for the Instituut and so on. Yet, we also wanted to remain open to other skills, knowledges and other ideas of success.

So then how do you judge a proposal? Are we aware of our own bias? We started analysing and identifying trends in the submitted proposals. As Federica was saying, this allowed us to learn so much from what people were thinking, reading and imagining all over the world, that was incredible. Then we wondered about the requests for the open call: should we ask for graphics, or a video? Maybe a video would really help people who are better at speaking than writing? It’s so complicated to be fair! I can say we tried to deconstruct our own forms of bias. Let's be honest, even if we try our hardest, there are biases in the end.

DB This deconstruction also relates to the ‘pillars of the institution’ and for the Nieuwe Instituut, that’s architecture, design and digital culture — but the fellowship completely deconstructed even those pillars. It’s not that we can only work with people who identify themselves as architects; even the terminology of architecture, design and digital culture, don't evoke the same sort of practice across different contexts. Design in Northern Europe is understood and practiced differently than it is in for example Latin America. These notions, terminologies and vocabularies that describe these pillars have been deconstructed by the fellows, in many ways.

We're also not claiming that we found the perfect model for what a fellowship is or should be. You can problematise the format of an open call and the selection process endlessly for example. So many people work on their application for weeks and weeks, only to not be selected in the end. But how do we, as workers that create open calls, genuinely take into account the reality of those applying for such funding and fellowships? How do we go about creating open calls and fellowship infrastructures in the best way possible, especially noting the increasing demand on these financial infrastructures? Again, we're not doing it perfectly, but having conversations like this is so important to figure out how we can do it better, and which other organisations and practitioners we can learn from… We're also speaking to colleagues from other institutions and organizations that host fellows, for example, to learn from the challenges that they have faced.

FN For instance, I think there's a big distinction to be made between openness and accessibility; you can have an open call, but it doesn't mean that it's accessible, right? We could go into that another time, as it’s a larger topic.

KOOZ Reflecting on different geographies that you managed to engage with: what did it mean for a person to actually be in Rotterdam or in South America or West Africa? How did this proximity or distance shape one's interaction with the Nieuwe Institute?

KT That’s something that we always try to find out together with the fellows. It’s always a mutual conversation, where we tried to find out what the methodology of the fellowship could be. For some people, they need to be on site and connect with the institution; in some cases fellows proposed seminar sessions, or contributed to the Thursday night program. Sometimes it involved songwriting for a project that became part of the Dutch pavilion at the Venice Biennale. At some point, Marina and I started the Reading Room program — which was quite beautiful — and in which many fellows came together to share their research. Sometimes it developed into a party and sometimes it was a slow reading session together. These different rhythms that each fellowship contained, but also the types of collaboration that followed, were just so diverse. So it's hard to say — we could give all kinds of examples. What do you remember?

DB I clearly remember this moment of the COVID pandemic that fundamentally shifted my perspective of what a fellowship can mean. We tend to ask fellows if they would like to spend some time with us in Rotterdam — not as a requirement, but because we value meeting them physically. The fact that we could not bring anyone to The Netherlands at that time forced us to rethink what it means to support research practices that are based elsewhere. I still reflect on this a lot, and how much it taught us in terms of different forms of interaction; how, as an institution, we don’t always have to be involved with someone’s research or the events they organise. Of course, when someone’s research is in proximity to the building, that communication may happen more naturally — but if someone is on the other side of the world, working on a situated research, that distance can also lead to something very meaningful. The situation sparked such beautiful conversations, ones that continue till this day. For example, what does it mean for a researcher embedded in a specific cultural context or community to be funded or supported by a Dutch cultural institution? These kinds of questions allow for honest discussions about what institutional support really entails. We may not have answers, but I find it beautiful that these different forms of proximity to the institution sparks these important conversations.

FN On the subject of “meeting research where it’s at”, and understanding that culture — the Dutch have been great at drawing on and extracting culture from other sites, other areas of the world, other peoples. It’s also the first step towards discussions of [re]distribution…

MOVI really like that you are taking the time to reflect on the fellowship. Obviously after a whole decade, there is a smoothness or slickness in how you operate. When you run this fellowship several times, you identify things that work well, and they stay. What we all like is the idea that things could be otherwise. Even in what Katia was describing with the Reading Room, there was a lot of playfulness in what it means to do research in a museum. Why don't we just explore? That doesn't mean that you don't take it seriously, especially the fact that you're working with public funding, you are representing a cultural institution — but at same time, sometimes you just don't know, and you can test things. Often the things that we came across are a bit weird, but it worked well. The need and experimentation for people to gather and engage in different ways was quite unique. Not all institutions actually allow you to play, even under the guise of a temporary pilot project. But when inertia sets in and things are assumed as part of what the institution does, they don't allow you to reflect.

Obviously it's very exhausting to be questioning everything that you do, all the time. It's impossible to be that way every day; it causes a lot of insecurity, and then you cannot make things happen. But I think that a little bit of insecurity — a little bit of testing, of things that might or might not work — is so important for public institutions, because they should not be risk averse. They must be open to changes and risks and so on. That’s something I believe. The fact that after ten years, instead of saying this is done, we found a formula that works perfectly well — which is what most institutions do — this fellowship programme wants to stop, reset. Is it actually working too well? Is that good or bad, are we missing something, or falling into certain traps? I love that you are taking the time; this is exactly how institutions can change and stay relevant. Otherwise they are there, they are powerful, they are important. Are they relevant? Not always.

DB Exactly. As you say, Marina, the moment that processes become too smooth within institutions, the alarm bell rings a bit. It can feel like a repetitive train — but where are we actually going? What is so beautiful is that, both during the fellowship and whenever we reflect back on it with the fellows so many questions and points of insecurity arise — for all of us — which are actually the points where you feel like the possibility for [learning] exists. I hesitate to use the word growth, because that sounds like one is capitalising on the moment. But even if having a fellowship without an end result is amazing — a researcher might still be sitting with the complexity of not working towards an end result. Being given that trust can be both liberating and complicated, in a way, and it's interesting to continue exploring how to navigate that together. What I also appreciate about the fellowship is that it seems to operate on a different kind of time scale. Unlike the often rigid timelines institutions follow, which are usually output-driven, the fellowship allows for a more process-oriented approach. And as you know, that kind of openness can create its own forms of insecurity.

KOOZ As you said, the world is changing, right? So the world within which the Nieuwe Instituut operated 10 years ago is very different to that in which it is operating now. Looking back and maybe ahead too, how can the fellowship be a tool through which you ground the relevancy of the Nieuwe Instituut?

KT To be honest, the first thing that comes to mind is an attempt to be a bit modest. To listen to all those voices who find themselves in different conditions and geographies, and learn what it can also mean to do research. To be open, as Marina was saying.

MOVAt that time when I moved from Columbia University in New York to the Netherlands, it was a big change. I was coming from a very academic institution where standards of research were pretty well defined. I worked at Studio x, which was a network of research laboratories all over the world. It was a beautiful idea from Mark Wigley, of how to decentralise the university, understanding that the research processes, ideas and knowledge that comes from many places in the world are perhaps even more relevant to imagine the future than what happens on campus at Columbia University. But it was not without conflict, because at the end, there was always the academic standard, the forms in which you quote, how you write, that determine how you actually validate research.

So when I moved to the Netherlands, I thought okay, I'm not in a university. I'm in a museum. Who knows what research in a museum could be? Let's try. I had Katia next to me, who is equally crazy. We were imagining things like, why don't we divide the month into lunar cycles? So when the moon is waxing, we do research, and when waning, we just rest. It was amazing. But to be honest, the reason I'm not working full time for an institution right now is, as Katia said: I want to stay modest. I want to keep a level of feeling humble.

Sometimes when you direct an institution, you get used to power. In my case, I again needed to be one of those researchers who applies for fellowships. I needed to somehow recover that freshness that we had at the beginning at the Nieuwe Instituut. I felt that if I continued, I would be working through inertia. I chose to work more closely with communities, with activism, with forms of engagement that are very situated and less institutionalised. I needed to recover that enthusiasm and a little bit of naivety, of craziness. I know that Federica, Delany and Katia found their own ways of keeping that. I think we are all trying because we don't want to become bureaucrats at an institution where we get comfortable. It sounds good, our signature says that we are the director of something — but that's not what we are here for.

DB I agree with your ideas of humility and staying humble. I also relate to the feeling of not knowing what institutions are supposed to be right now, and maybe that's the starting point. Maybe it's for all institutions and everyone engaging with them, in whichever way, to sit with that question and not to jump to conclusions too fast. In relation to the fellowship, for three years of the ten [years of the fellowship] we have a new General and Artistic director at the Nieuwe Instituut — Aric Chen — who has prompted the idea of the institution as a testing ground, and what it means for cultural institutions to go beyond being representative or conversational platforms only. How can they test out other ways of existing in the world? Which in turn prompts the question, how does that relate to research practices? Again, that's not an answer, it's just another ongoing question to work through together — because also the moment that institutions don't ask these questions anymore, they risk becoming rigid and stagnant.

FN I'm also going with trying to stay humble, and also staying connected — because it's so easy to get lost in the day-to-day. For me, the fellowship was really a way to find connections outside the four walls of the institution, the same organisations, seeing the same people at the same parties. For me, the fellowship kept us both connected and humble; it helped us learn. It helped us understand that there are people doing much more important work in their communities than we do. That's what I hope we keep doing, which is understanding the institution as a porous space. That porosity requires labour, it requires maintenance, and I like that Marina brought up bureaucracy, because our roles within the fellowship sometimes really are bureaucratic roles. But then it's our responsibility as cultural workers to make sure that we keep that bureaucracy connected to something real, so that the institute remains porous.

MOV Okay, what you just said about the testing ground, that was the focus of the fellowship programme at the beginning: to create these testing grounds that could become the heart of the institution. In a way, instead of being a pilot project that could be halted immediately, that kind of ambition has now permeated the entire institution. Through Aric saying that this testing is perhaps the most important thing to do, you can see a clear trajectory that tracks the phases we went through in the institution, in ourselves and even in society and the planet at large. We had the open call on the theme “revolution.” Then we had “burnout,”. Then we went through “regeneration,” thinking about new institutional practices. The next phase is to test new grounds, and now the testing grounds is the project that the Institute proposes as itself, a place that has always been reinvented, which is always in flux.

In that sense, the fellowship programme managed to introduce a very particular resonance in the solidity or the structure of the institution, creating something that is now an institutional practice in itself. That’s why the fellowship program has to be reinvented now, because if the attitude of the fellowship program becomes the institution, then the role of the fellowship has to change. And that's the question for Delany and Federica…

DB As you mentioned, the initial research fellows were invited because there was no research department. Since then, the research team has grown in size within the institution itself. So that creates a question: what then is the role of the fellowship? This is both why we're having this conversation, and also where the commissioned essays and conversations with previous fellows and institutional colleagues come in. We're really eager to celebrate the ten year anniversary of all the work that has been done, as well as to learn from our previous fellows — not only about their fellowship experience, but their general research practice, and how it might have continued over the years after their fellowship. There's so much value in having a fellowship trajectory without an end result, and in that faith that something at some point in your practice will come out of it – even without us knowing.Ten years down the line, it is important for us to reflect on the moment and see what we've learned, as well as to gather and celebrate all the incredible people with whom we've had the privilege of working over the last decade.

KOOZ What’s beautiful is that by not controlling every single part, you were able to go with the flow of where each project brought. Let's see where that same attitude might lead in the coming months and years. As a spectator, it's been quite phenomenal to see the development of both the fellowship, and the kinds of discourse that the Nieuwe Institute continues to engage with, through different formats. Thank you for this generous exchange.

MOV Thank you so much.

Bios

Dr. Marina Otero Verzier is Dean’s Visiting Assistant Professor at GSAPP, Columbia University, where she leads the Data Mourning clinic, exploring the intersection between digital infrastructures and climate catastrophe. A 2022 Harvard Wheelwright Prize winner, she collaborates with scientific institutions such as the DIPC Supercomputing Center on developing prototypes like Computational Compost. She contributed to Chile’s first National Data Centers Plan alongside "Resistencia SocioAmbiental – Quilicura" and other local communities on the front lines of extractivism. Otero authored En las Profundidades de la Nube (2024), proposing new paradigms and aesthetics for data storage, integrating architecture, preservation, and digital culture. Previously, she headed the MA Social Design at Design Academy Eindhoven (2020-2023) and directed research at Het Nieuwe Instituut (2015-2022). Her curatorial work includes Wet Dreams (2024), Compulsive Desires (2023) among many others; she has co-edited Automated Landscapes (2023), Lithium: States of Exhaustion (2021), More-than-Human (2020) and several other titles.

Katía Truijen is a media researcher, curator and musician. Her work is concerned with bringing people together around practices of listening, archiving, and rehearsing alternative urban, technological and ecological futures. Katía is part of Loom, practice for cultural transformation, and co-founder of interdisciplinary platform //\ hoekhuis. She curates the context programme for Rewire festival and Ultima festival, and is research tutor at the Studio for Immediate Spaces at the Sandberg Instituut. Between 2014 and 2021, Katía developed research projects and public programmes at the Nieuwe Instituut.

Delany Boutkan is a researcher, editor, and curator with the Nieuwe Instituut’s Research team, where she coordinates the annual International Call for Fellows and has led various collaborative research projects and public programs. Her recent work focuses on language as a design material, exploring its practical, theoretical, and pedagogical dimensions within design and architecture. In 2022, Delany initiated Design Drafts, a Nieuwe Instituut writing and publishing network dedicated to investigating and drafting alternative languages for writing design. Delany curated the ‘5th Floor Talks’ lecture and debate series at Design Academy Eindhoven. Her writing and editing have been featured in a range of publications, including Extra Extra Magazine, PIN-UP, Metropolis M, Disegno Journal, and Kunstlicht Journal. She is the co-author of the up-coming publication Remapping Collaborations (2025) and currently sits on the editorial advisory board of MacGuffin Magazine and the governance board of Design Platform Rotterdam.

Federica Notari is a researcher and programmer at Nieuwe Instituut with a focus on practices of place-making, epistemologies of knowledge, and sonic infrastructures. Since 2021, she has co-coordinated the annual Nieuwe Instituut Call for Fellows and the Tilting Axis Fellowship, chairing jury meetings and contributing to its ongoing development. She has also worked as a researcher on the Workwear exhibition (2023) and New Store for Dutch Design Week (2023). Recently, she has been engaged in research projects such as New Currents: Indian Ocean Futures, particularly exploring labour migration and the sonic materialities of mobility. In November 2023, she initiated Through Sounds, a project that investigates the infrastructures of sound. At Leiden University, she led the MediaLab+, a multimedia digital research lab, alongside teaching visual research methodology courses. She has also served as a thesis supervisor at the Rietveld Academie in the DesignLab department. Federica is the founder of events and collectives Words off the Page and Discoteca Amore.

Federica Zambeletti is the founder and managing director of KoozArch. She is an architect, researcher and storyteller whose interests lie at the intersection between art, architecture and regenerative practices. In 2022 Federica founded KoozArch with the ambition of creating a space where to research, explore and discuss architecture beyond the limits of its built form. Prior to dedicating her full attention to KoozArch, Federica collaborated with the architecture studio and non-profit agency for change UNA/UNLESS working on numerous cultural projects and the research of "Antarctic Resolution". Federica is an Architectural Association School of Architecture in London alumni.