Jasbir K. Puar is Distinguished Faculty of Arts Professor in the Social Justice Institute at the University of British Columbia. She is the author of the award-winning books The Right to Maim: Debility, Capacity, Disability (2017) and Terrorist Assemblages: Homonationalism in Queer Times (2007). Her articles have been published in journals such as Social Text and South Atlantic Quarterly, mainstream venues such as Al-Jazeera and The Guardian, and translated into more than 15 languages. Dr. Puar is also co-author of exhibitions for the Sharjah Architecture Triennial (2019) and the Sharjah Art Biennial (2023). In 2019 she received the Kessler Award from the Center for Gay and Lesbian Studies (CLAGS) at CUNY, which recognizes lifetime achievement in and impact on queer research and organizing.

A native from South Africa, Jordache A. Ellapen is an anti-disciplinary Black studies scholar with expertise in the visual and performing arts cultures of Africa and the African Diaspora. He is the recipient of numerous awards including the Feminist Studies Claire G. Moses award for Most Theoretically Innovative article published in 2021 for “Siyakaka Feminism: African Anality and the Politics of Deviance in FAKA’s Art Praxis.” He is the author of Indenture Aesthetics: Afro-Indian Femininities and the Queer Limits of South African Blackness (Duke University Press, 2025). Ellapen is Associate Professor of Black Studies and Associate Chair of the Frederick Douglass Institute and Department of Black Studies at the University of Rochester.