Czechia
Petr Gibas, SMARTUP’s project leader, is an anthropologist and cultural geographer based at the Institute of Sociology, Czech Academy of Sciences. His scholarly interest covers issues of home and its relationship to housing, material culture studies of home, and phenomenological and landscape geography. In all these spheres, he pursues explorations into the intersection of policy and planning, experience and emotionality, and more-than-human entanglements.
He is a co-author of books in English – Non-humans in Social Science: Animals, Spaces, Things (2011), Non-humans in Social Sciences: Ontologies, Theories and Case Studies (2014), Nonhumans and after in social science (2016) –, and in Czech – Allotment Gardens: Shadow of the Past or a Glimpse of the Future? (2013), DIY: a fine mosaic of self-led making (2019), Bricolage: From “self-led manual projects” to DIY (2020) –, and numerous research and theoretical articles.
Nina Fárová holds an MA in Sociology and a Ph.D. in Anthropology from the University of West Bohemia in Pilsen. For her Ph.D. project, she had been conducting ethnographic research into the Czech educational system, focusing on the issue of men and masculinity in a feminised context. At present, she works as a postdoctoral researcher at the Centre for Gender and Science (Institute of Sociology, Czech Academy of Sciences), where she focuses on the topic of gender and technology. As a Fulbright grantee, she has done research on gender division on labour in smart homes in the US.
Currently she is a member of an international research project on smart homes SmartUp (EU CHANSE), within which she co-leads ethnographic research in three European countries. She is also an assistant professor at the University of Hradec Králové where she teaches gender theory, science and technology studies and qualitative methodology.
Blanka Nyklová holds a PhD in sociology from the Faculty of Social Sciences, Charles University (Prague). She has worked as a researcher at the Institute of Sociology CAS since 2014. Her research interests include the Czech feminist scene, gender studies in the Czech Republic – notably issues connected with gender-based violence (GBV), and the geopolitical dimension of knowledge production. She specialises in qualitative research and has collaborated on numerous research projects and inter-institutional research into the effects of covid-19 on intimate partner violence. She served as the vice-chairperson of the Gender Expert Chamber of the CR and is the president of the Centre for Study of Popular Culture.
Her latest publication details the role of ethics in research into Gender Based Domestic Violence: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10896-023-00589-5).
Contact: blanka.nyklova@soc.cas.cz
Finland
Nils Ehrenberg is a postdoctoral researcher at the Aalto University Department of Design. He defended his doctoral thesis ‘Panopticons of Convenience: The Internal Politics of the Smart Home’ in 2023 at Aalto University.
His research interests are connected to emerging technologies, digitalisation, and ethics. Prior his work at Aalto University he has worked at Madeira Interactive Technologies Institute and Malmö University, exploring smart environments and multimodal learning technologies.
Contact: nils.ehrenberg@aalto.fi
Antti Pirinen is senior university lecturer in spatial and service design at the Department of Architecture at Aalto University, Finland. His research focuses on human-centered, collaborative and conceptual design in housing, interior space and related services, and on the role of design in public governance. His doctoral thesis (2014) examined the dwelling as a systemic product from the perspectives of residents, the housing industry and design.
Recently, he has explored questions around collaborative housing and shared spaces.
Germany
Julia Gruhlich holds a PhD in sociology. She is senior researcher and project leader within the European research project „SMARTUP: Smart(ening up the modern) home – Redesigning power dynamics through domestic space digitalisation” at the Diversity Research Institute, University of Göttingen.
With a background in sociology, her research interests focus on gender, work and organisation, and she has researched the transnationalisation of multinational corporations, diversity management, women in leadership positions, career failure, downshifting and the transformation of masculinities at work. Her methodological interests include qualitative research, praxeology, feminist methodologies and transnational intersectionality in work and organisational studies. Her recent research projects explore the digital transformation of work and care in agriculture and in smart homes.
E-mail: Julia.gruhlich@uni-goettingen.de
Poland
Dorota Golańska holds degrees in Political Science, Literature, and Cultural Studies. She is Associate Professor at the University of Lodz (Poland). Her research interests include feminist posthumanist theory, critical studies of space, social and spatial justice.
In her work she focuses on new materialist approaches to processes of space production, articulation of politics of justice in art and activism, and engagements with creative feminist methodologies.
Contact: dorota.golanska@uni.lodz.pl
https://www.ikw.uni.lodz.pl
Sandra Frydrysiak, a PhD holder in cultural studies, a sociologist, and a gender studies expert, serves as an Assistant Professor at both SWPS University in Warsaw and the University of Lodz (Poland). She is actively engaged in the European Union's "Smart(ening up the modern) home: Redesigning power dynamics through domestic space digitalization (SMARTUP)" project, investigating the intersection of digitalization and domestic gender dynamics.
Her current research focuses on the gendered implications of smart home technologies. As a member of the EuroGender network within the European Institute for Gender Equality, she is dedicated to advancing gender equality. She is also the co-director of the VR experience 'Nightsss' that premiered at the Sundance Film Festival (2020).
Contact: sandra.frydrysiak@filologia.uni.lodz.pl
https://www.linkedin.com/in/sandra-frydrysiak-phd-6274815b/
Bartosz Hamarowski holds degrees in cultural studies, cognitive science, and data analysis. He is currently pursuing a Ph.D. in philosophy at Nicolaus Copernicus University, Toruń (Poland). His doctoral project centres on the systematization of cognitive approaches in contemporary humanities. His current research work blends traditional humanities methodologies with scientometric tools and qualitative/quantitative data analysis.
At present, he is a researcher in an international and interdisciplinary team SMARTUP (funded within the CHANSE scheme), which investigates the impact of digitalisation on domestic spaces.
United Kingdom
Prof. Clarice Bleil de Souza works at the Welsh School of architecture (Cardiff University UK) in the interdisciplinary area of decision-making in the built environment. She is an architect with and MSc in Civil Engineering, a PhD in environmental design and an international reputation as a leading authority in the interdisciplinary area of computerized evidence-based decision-making for the built environment. She explores interdisciplinary perspectives on decision-making using multi-domain digital models, simulations and workflows, machine learning and information management methods as well as decision-making methods in conventional design, people-centric design, sustainable design, regenerative design, regeneration, and recovery.
She has more than eighty peer reviewed publications (Scopus H-index 12, Google Scholar H-index 16, i10-index 20) and sits on several journal editorial boards, scientific conference committees and peer review boards. She is a board member of the International Association of Axiomatic Design (IAAD) and the International Building Performance Simulation Association (IBPSA), being made a fellow for her contributions in research and teaching on simulations in design. Her work is highly interdisciplinary, and she has been involved in many prestigious programmes in the EU and the International Energy Agency (IEA).
Anna Badyina is a human geographer with expertise in urban and housing studies. She is interested in the relationships between spatial practices, on the one hand, and social, economic and digital transitions, on the other. This research has focused on analysing topics such as smart homes, urban, housing and spatial planning policy, gentrification, post-industrial restructuring and community mobilisation practices. Anna’s expertise builds on combining perspectives and methods from different disciplines, including critical geography, urban sociology, engineering sciences, urban design, phenomenology and business management studies.
At Welsh School of Architecture, Cardiff University she works on an UE-funded project: “Smart(ening up the modern) home: Redesigning power dynamics through domestic space digitalization (SMARTUP)”. The research explores the socio-institutional, market and relational aspects of the smartening up of the home with particular attention given to design practices.
Oleg Golubchikov is Professor of Human Geography at the School of Geography and Planning, Cardiff University. He has over 20 years of experience researching urban and housing development and governance. His publications focus on the politico-economic factors governing urban transitions and spatial disparities, on green energy economy and low-carbon urbanism, as well as on digitalisation, smart cities, and smart energy systems.
He has a DPhil (PhD) from the University of Oxford and prior to joining Cardiff University held academic posts at UCL, University of Oxford and University of Birmingham. He has also held a number of visiting posts in universities across Europe. Apart from his academic research, he has undertaken a breadth of international policy and strategy assessment as a long-term consultant to the United Nations and as the lead author and a co-author of several UN publications on the topics concerning urban, housing and sustainability policies.
Personal webpage: https://profiles.cardiff.ac.uk/staff/golubchikovo