Luis Manuel Garcia-Mispireta is a Lecturer in Ethnomusicology and Popular Music Studies at the University of Birmingham, with previous appointments at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development (Berlin) and the University of Groningen (NL). His research focuses on urban electronic dance music scenes, with a particular focus on affect, intimacy, stranger-sociability, embodiment, sexuality, creative industries and musical migration. He has written about “techno tourism” and other forms of musical mobility in Berlin, and he is a member of Berlin’s queer intersectional rave collective, Room4Resistance. His forthcoming book, entitled Together Somehow: Music, Affect, and Intimacy on the Dancefloor (Duke UP), draws upon earlier ethnographic research in Paris, Berlin, and Chicago.

Renaz Ebrahimi is a music journalist and social justice educator specialized in popular music, equality and cross media. She also works as a social activist, expert and as a speaker for MySpeaker and SpeakersForum among other companies. Ebrahimi deals in her work with the societal dimensions of music, such as racism and sexism in the Finnish music industries and music culture. She appears frequently in the media and for example the Finnish Broadcasting Company (Yle) as an expert on issues of equality and she has initiated several significant conversations on the topic in the media. As a journalist and presenter Ebrahimi has worked at YleX, Yle Kioski and at Radio Helsinki and she also runs her own Random Life media platform. Ebrahimi has collaborated with several researchers, artists, NGOs and other societal actors.

Lena Midtveit is Managing Director for Sony Music Norway AS. She has worked in the music industry in Norway since 1993. First at BMG Norway AS where she covered areas from finance, over to promo and then marketing. She became GM for BMG Norway in 2000 and later Managing Director. In the merger between BMG and Sony Music in 2005 she was asked to take the role as Managing Director and has been holding that role ever since. Sony Music Norway is one of the leading majors in Norway and co-own labels/managements like Nora Collective AS, Petroleum Records and Popular Demand.

Anthony Kwame Harrison is the Edward S. Diggs Professor in Humanities at Virginia Tech (USA). He is author of two books—Hip Hop Underground (Temple University Press, 2009) and Ethnography (Oxford University Press, 2018)—and co-edited Race in the Marketplace: Crossing Critical Boundaries (Palgrave Macmillan, 2019). Kwame’s work appears widely in many popular music studies journals and edited volumes. He is on the editorial board of the Journal of Popular Music Studies and the advisory board of the Race in the Marketplace (RIM) research network.