Vinzenz Hediger is professor of Cinema Studies at Goethe University Frankfurt where he directs the Graduate Research Training Program “Configurations of Film.” He is a principal investigator at the Forschungszentrum Normative Orders and co-director of the research project “ConTrust – Conflict and Trust in Political Life.” His research interests include marginal film forms, utility films, and the film trailer format.

Guilherme Machado holds a doctorate in Cinema Studies and is currently a lecturer at the University of Poitiers. He is a former member of the Graduate Research Training Program “Configurations of Film” at Goethe University Frankfurt (2019–21). His research deals with the visual culture of labor and the epistemological implications of image dispositifs designed to control the circulation of labor-related knowledge.

Rebecca Boguska is a visiting researcher at the Department of Modern Culture and Media at Brown University and a recipient of the Postdoc Mobility fellowship from the Swiss National Science Foundation. Her postdoctoral research project, “Watery Assemblages,” focuses on contemporary coastal research centers and research practices related to the scientific investigation of water movements.

Sophia Gräfe is a Media and Cultural Studies scholar. Her long-standing interest is the history of useful film in the German-speaking area. This includes science film, with a particular focus on the history of behavioral biology, but also the surveillance films of the Stasi, the former East German secret service. Gräfe currently works at the Cluster of Excellence »Matters of Activity«, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. She has been a guest researcher at the Museum für Naturkunde Berlin since March 2018.