Kai has been a member of technical staff at RWTH Aachen University’s Computer Science Department since 1985. He holds a PhD in Computer Science from the University of Edinburgh (1998) and one in Management Studies from Erasmus University Rotterdam (2023); he is also a Certified Standards Professional. His research interests and activities focus on various aspects of ICT standards and the underlying standardisation process, with 200+ publications in this field. Kai recently retired from the Board of the European Academy for Standardisation (EURAS) after some 20 years.
 

Stella is a researcher at the German Centre for Higher Education Research and Science Studies (DZHW) in Hanover and a doctoral candidate in Media and Communication studies at the Department of Political and Social Sciences at Freie Universität Berlin. Her research focuses on the role of digital transformation in scholarly communication and evaluation. From an organizational perspective, she examines commercial and non-commercial providers of infrastructures for scholarly communication, research evaluation, and research information.

Massilia Ourabah is a postdoctoral researcher at Gent University (Belgium). She obtained her MSc in Social Sciences at the University of Amsterdam (Netherlands) and has completed her PhD at the Department of Sociology, UGent. She is a former fellow of the “Technology, the Environment, and the Future of Europe” programme at the Remarque Institute, NYU (New York). Her work is at the crossroads of Feminist STS and environmentalism.
 

Juliane Rettschlag is a research associate and PhD candidate at the Berlin Ethics Lab at the Technical University Berlin, where she works at the intersection of technology assessment, responsible research and innovation and social philosophy. The focus of her doctoral thesis is the ethics and politics of collaborative research within the context of sustainable transitions in urban mobility.

André is an interdisciplinary biologist working as a University Lecturer in the Department of Plant Breeding at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences (SLU). He is specialised in global policies and legal frameworks governing biodiversity, genetic resources and sustainable agriculture. André holds a Master of Science in Sustainable Development from KU Leuven and a Master of Laws in Environmental Law and Management from Aberystwyth University.

Sarthak Das successfully defended his doctoral thesis, “Seeds as Power: State, Science and Agricultural Practices in Odisha,” in 2025 at the Indian Institute of Technology Guwahati (India), where he had previously obtained his MA in Development Studies. Following his PhD, he was briefly affiliated with the Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad (India) as an Associate until December 2025. His doctoral research primarily examined the political economy of seed governance, scientific knowledge, and farmers’ practices in eastern India.

Xiaojing Lin is a doctoral candidate at the Integrated Research on Energy, Environment and Society (IREES) at the University of Groningen, the Netherlands. She holds a bachelor’s and a master’s degree in Economics from the Harbin Institute of Technology (Shenzhen), China. Her research focuses on economic analysis of renewable technologies (such as PV, wind, and energy storage system), and projecting the demand patterns of critical materials (lithium, cobalt, copper, etc.) for renewable energy transition.

Ira Zöller is a doctoral candidate and scientific researcher at the faculty of Philosophy at the Institute for Sociology at RWTH Aachen University, Germany. She completed her undergraduate studies (ordinary bachelor) in journalism at Griffith College Cork, Ireland. She also completed a bachelor’s program in German Studies with a minor in Sociology and a master’s program in Sociology at Goethe-University Frankfurt.