Nancy Couling is an architect and urban researcher, currently Associate Professor at Bergen School of Architecture, after holding a Marie Curie Marie Post-doc Fellowship at the TU Delft, Chair of History of Architecture and Urban Planning 2017-19, and defending her doctoral thesis at the EPFL, Switzerland in 2015. Her research focus has been the urbanisation of the sea. This topic is linked to urgent questions which Nancy has also approached through teaching and as an experienced architectural and urban design practitioner; linking design practice through all scales, analysing complex contexts and designing with strategies of time. Her interdisciplinary and intercultural skills have been gained through direct experience in diverse cultural contexts since departing her native New Zealand.

Carola Hein is professor and Head, Chair History of Architecture and Urban Planning at TU Delft. She trained in Hamburg (Diplom‑Ingenieurin) and Brussels (Architecte) and earned her doctorate at the Hochschule für bildende Künste Hamburg in 1995. She has published and lectured widely on topics in contemporary and historical architectural and urban planning—notably in Europe and Japan—and has authored several articles and books on capital city issues in Brussels, Strasbourg, Luxembourg, Berlin, and Tokyo. Her current interest is the study of international networks and the transmission of architectural and urban ideas along these networks, focusing specifically on port cities and the global architecture of oil.