Organizers

Robert Markum is a PhD candidate at the University of Michigan School of Information. His work centers on the intersection of interactive technology and R/S practices, both in terms of the impact of interactive technologies on R/S practices (and vice-versa) and on the design of interactive technologies that support R/S purposes.

Franzisca Maas is a PhD candidate at the University of Würzburg, Germany. As part of the SPIRITED collective, she participated in previous workshops and co-authored the first zine. Her work is primarily concerned with non-R/S topics revolving around participatory design and technology for local citizen participation.

Sara Wolf is a PhD candidate at the University of Würzburg, Germany. Drawing upon participatory, design-oriented, qualitative methods, her current work explores religious and non-religious rituals with interactive technologies with a particular focus on how interactive technologies can be designed for rituals intentionally.

Caroline Claisse is a Lecturer in Interaction Design at Open Lab, Newcastle University, UK. She is a designer by background inspired by Feminist, Social Justice, and More-than-Human perspectives. In her R/S research, she explores the design of interactive and tangible technologies to support community practice and how spirituality may shape new ways of designing with care.

Brett A. Halperin researches HCI and design integrated with cinema and media studies. He investigates computational media and film production, primarily in labor and grassroots contexts. In the realm of R/S, he developed "soulful speculation" as a method for embracing the soul as a design resource to rework the normative mind-body binary.

Elizabeth Buie is a UX consultant and independent researcher who helps create technology to meet user needs. She studies HCI work on techno-spirituality and researches design to foster transcendent user experience (TUX). To support designing for TUX, she developed a design game and three new forms of design fiction.