is Senior Lecturer in Geography at the Open University. Before joining The Open University as Lecturer in Geography in 2013, he directed an international and interdisciplinary masters programme at the School of Geography and the Environment, University of Oxford, UK (2009-2013). He has also held post-doctoral research appointments at the University of Oxford (2006-2009) and at the Natural History Museum, London, UK (2003-2006) after gaining a DPhil (PhD) from the University of Oxford in 2002. His current research centres on the linkages between environment and development. It addresses these linkages through the conceptualisation of social-environmental systems. His research addresses the resilience of these systems within the context of growing discussion on the Anthropocene, the age of humans.

is Professor of Learning Technology and Communication in the Institute of Educational Technology at The Open University and Past-President of the International Association for Mobile Learning. She has served in various management and leadership roles including as Associate Director (Learning and Teaching), Co-Head of the Technology Enhanced Learning Group and Programme Lead for the 'Next Generation Distance Learning' and 'Innovating Pedagogy' Research and Innovation programmes. Her original discipline background is in linguistics and language learning. For the past 20 years Prof Kukulska-Hulme has been researching online and mobile learning from the perspective of learner agency and emergent informal learning practices. Her recent projects have been with migrants, exploring personalised, self-directed and social language learning supported by technology. She has undertaken commissioned work for UNESCO, The British Council, The International Research Foundation for English Language Education and Cambridge University Press.

is a Lecturer in Design at the Open University. He is a member of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA), a Chair of the Construction Subcommittee of the Space Architecture Technical Committee (SATC) in AIAA, and a UK node member of the Solar System Exploration Research Virtual Institute (SSERVI) at NASA AMES. Dr Lim's research experiences are principally multidisciplinary researches in the Engineering Design and Built Environment fields. Prior to his current Open University lectureship, he undertook five post-doctoral research projects between 2008 and 2012, including his most recent research project '3D Concrete Printing (3DCP)' at Loughborough University, which demonstrated the potential of 3D Printing technology for use in a construction process. He is currently developing an extra-terrestrial construction process using 3D Printing techniques in order to support a long-term space exploration and permanent settlement on other planetary bodies.

is an educational technologist who worked for the Open University for eighteen years as a Lecturer, specialising in STEM subjects. She has extensive experience of interdisciplinary work both in teaching and research. She has led the production and presentation of distance-learning courses, including the development of skills-based assessment to work across seven subject areas, with a multidisciplinary team. Currently an independent consultant, she researches the use of digital technologies for learning, particularly mobile devices. For a recent DFID funded project at the OU, she designed an online diary study to investigate the information-finding strategies of policymakers in the Global South. For the SALSA project (Sensors and Apps for Learning in Smart Areas), she used a participatory design approach to inform the development of an app to improve the English of migrants in the context of everyday activities.

is Senior Lecturer in Computing at the Open University. He has participated in research projects in a range of domains from transport to social media and assistive technologies. He conducts theoretical, empirical and applied research into how people process information and how algorithms can convert information from one modality to another (e.g., take text and turn it into a dialogue, or take data/concepts and turn them into text with images), in order to help people understand and engage with the information. He has led several projects at the Open University, with funding from the UK Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC), the National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts (NESTA), and the eSTEeM initiative.

is a philosopher who has worked for the Open University as a Lecturer and Associate Lecturer. His published work has addressed the relationship between deconstruction and analytic philosophy, philosophical naturalism, the metaphysics of sound and posthumanism. His book Posthuman Life: Philosophy at the Edge of the Human (Routledge 2014) considers the implications of the existence of posthumans: powerful nonhuman agents produced by human-instigated technological processes.

is a lecturer in Earth Science. She obtained a PhD from Johannes Gutenberg University of Mainz (Germany) working at Max-Planck Institute for Chemistry for her research. She held postdoctoral research associate and fellowship positions at Max Planck Institute for Chemistry before moving to the Lunar and Planetary institute in Houston for two years. She came to the OU in 2009 as post doctoral researcher, received an Open University Research Investment Fellowship in 2013 and became a lecturer in 2015. Her research and teaching centres around Mars and water-rock interaction on Mars and Earth. As Earth Scientist, she is interested in the interaction between natural events and civilization, and from her space science expertise, she is interested in measuring critical data in real time in the challenging environments of the field sites.

has worked in the fields of International Development and International Relations for over 20 years. Her research focuses on how political institutions and processes involve and affect people in the Global South. She examines development-focused transnational networks of NGOs, social movements and civil society involved in: the intersection between technology, civil society and political action; global justice networks; and, transnational governance. She has published broadly and in 2007 she co-edited a special issue titled 'Governing technology for development' for the journal Science and Public Policy. She ran the MSc in Development Management and wrote the course 'Conflict and Development', which focuses on conflicts and complex humanitarian emergencies. She also wrote the course 'Crisis Prevention and Recovery' for the United Nations Development Program and taught the course to senior UN staff between 2003-2005 through the UN Bureau for Crisis Prevention and Recovery (BCPR).