Short Biographies

Keynote Speakers

Heitor Alvelos (Director of Futureplaces, Professor of Design)
A Ph.D in Design (Royal College of Art, 2003, titled: The Fabrication of Authgenticity: graffiti beyond subculture) and Master in Visual Communication (School of the Art Institute of Chicago, 1992), he has pioneered the implementation of Design Research in Portugal, both as member of the Scientific Board for Humanities and Social Sciences of the National Foundation for Science and Technology, as well as Director of ID+ (Institute for Research in Design, Media and Culture) on behalf of the University of Porto.

Mario Caeiro (Professor and "Arte na Cidade" book author)
PhD in Visual Arts and Intermedia from the Polytechnic University of Valencia . Information Communication ( ESBAL ) with second degree in Modern Languages ​​and Literatures - variant of Portuguese and German Studies and MA in German Studies ( FCSH- UNL) and Postgraduate Diploma in Urban Design ( CPD / FBAUL / University of Barcelona.

Peter Bengtsen (PhD in Art History and Visual Studies, Lund University, Sweden)
One of my main areas of interest is street art as an artistic and social phenomenon. I have been writing about street art academically since 2006. In 2014 I published a book on the topic entitled The Street Art World. My research on street art has led to an interest in the publicness of public space in general and spatial justice in particular.More recently, I have also been working within the field of visual ecocriticism. In this research, I investigate how themes like biocentrism, anthropocentrism and anthropomorphism are treated in visual art and how this may influence the relationship between human beings and the environment.

Lachlan MacDowall, Centre for Cultural Partnerships, University of Melbourne, Australia
Dr Lachlan MacDowall is an artist and researcher in the Faculty of the VCA and MCM at the University of Melbourne, Australia.His research examines modes of urban informality such as graffiti and street art. He has published widely in this area and works closely with artists, local governments, heritage agencies and galleries.

Pauline Foessel  (Underdogs gallery, Lisbon, PT)*
Underdogs is a cultural platform based in Lisbon, Portugal that aims at creating space within the contemporary art scene for artists connected with the new languages of urban-inspired graphic and visual culture, fostering the establishment of partnerships and collaborative efforts between creators, cultural agents, exhibition venues and the city, contributing to establish a close relationship between these and the public. Created in 2010 and consolidated in its present form since 2013, the Underdogs project rests on three complementary areas: an art gallery; a public art programme; and the production of original and affordable artist editions.

Jacob Kimvall, Stockholm University, Sweden
Art historian and former graffiti writer Jacob Kimvall studies different ways of describing and framing graffiti in four historical and cultural contexts: The graffiti writing on the Berlin wall; the Zero Tolerance on graffiti in Stockholm during the 1990s; The interactions between subcultural graffiti and the cultural and commercial interest of the institutional art world in the 1970s and 80s; The collecting, organizing and publishing of images by graffiti enthusiasts. His PhD thesis published on book with the title "The G-Word" visualize how different institutions, public and commercial interests have acted to influence and affect the understanding of graffiti as both art, crime and a broad socio-cultural phenomenon.

Erik Hannerz, Lund University, Sweden
Erik Hannerz earned a Ph.D. in Sociology from Uppsala University. Hannerz’ research interests include cultural sociology, subcultures, urban sociology, and ethnography. He is currently working as Assistant Professor in Sociology at Lund University on a project on graffiti writers’ perception and use of space, mapping out spatial and temporal heterogeneities within the subculture. In his PhD thesis Performing Punk he investigates the ordering and structuring of style and behavior among punks in Sweden and Indonesia, pointing to how the subcultural centers on plural definitions of both what punk should be and what it should be against. The thesis was reworked and published by Palgrave in 2015. Hannerz is a faculty fellow at the Center for Cultural Sociology, Yale University.

Magda Sayeg (yarn bombing, author, Austin, USA)
Considered to be the mother of yarn bombing, Magda's 10 year body of work includes the widely recognized knitted/crocheted covered bus in Mexico City as well as her first solo exhibit in Rome at La Museo des Esposizione . Her work has evolved to include large scale installations around the world including commissions and collaborations with companies such as Commes Des Garcon, CR Fashionbook, Absolut Vodka, Insight 51, Mini Cooper, Gap, Smart Car. She continues to  participate in shows such as Milan's Triennale Design Museum, Le M.U.R. in Paris, and the National Gallery of Australia, among others. Her installations have also been featured prominently at American monuments to contemporary culture, such as The Standard Hotel, South By Southwest, and the Austin City Limits Festival. Magda has most recently expanded her artwork to encompass new mediums and techniques as with her solo show in Rome which explored the usage of lighting with knitted material. She continues to expand her boundaries by joining integrated media company 1stAveMachine as one of their directors which will serve as a platform for new types of experimentation and collaboration.

*waiting definitive confirmation