Evke Rulffes studied cultural studies, art history and Dutch philology in Berlin and Amsterdam. She wrote her thesis on shop-window mannequins in the 1920s: „Die Schaufensterfigur. Herstellung, Inszenierung und Verlebendigungsstrategien in der 1920er Jahren“. Currently she is working on her dissertation about the position of women in ancient economics literature as well as the so-called „Hausväterliteratur“ around 1700.

Sabine Plöger studied journalism and communication sciences, art history and modern German literature at the Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster and at the Freie Universität Berlin. She wrote her master’s thesis on the subject “Problems in the presentation of Christian collections using the example of the Speyer cathedral treasury”. In 2005 she received her Magister artium. In 2006/2007 she worked as a research assistant for the Stiftung Saarländischer Kulturbesitz. There she played a major role in the organization of the exhibition “A holy place. Roman religion and shrines in the Saarland” at the Museum für Vor- und Frühgeschichte. Currently she is writing her doctoral thesis on current stagings of ancient spaces in museum contexts within the Topoi research group CSG-IV Museums (research area E).

Thomas Macho is professor of Cultural Theory and History at the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. He worked on the philosophy of music, on the metaphors of death and on issues in cultural history. Thomas Macho co-founded the Hermann von Helmholtz-Centre for Cultural Techniques at the Humboldt-Universität and was spokesperson of the DFG-Research Group »Bild – Schrift – Zahl«. Since 2009 he has been member of the scientific advisory board of the International Research Institute »Morphomata – Genese, Dynamik und Medialität kultureller Figurationen« at the University of Cologne. Within Topoi, Thomas Macho is involved in the Cross-Sectional Group II ‘Histories and Genealogies of Culture Theories.’

Hartmut Böhme is Professor for Cultural Theory and the History of Mentalities at the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. After his dissertation on Robert Musil in 1973, he worked as a professor for Modern German Literature at the Universität Hamburg from 1977 onwards. Between 1990 and 1992 he was a Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study in the Humanities Essen. In the years 1996, 1998 and 2008 he worked as visiting professor in the U.S. and Japan. His pioneering studies helped to position Cultural History and Theory within the “concert of disciplines”. From 2009 until 2010 Böhme was a Fellow at the International Research Institute for Cultural Technologies and Media Philosophy in Weimar, he was awarded the Hans-Kilian-Award in 2011. As a founder and coordinator of the Collaborative Research Centre 644: “Transformations of Antiquity” he has contributed significantly to all aspects of the afterlife of antiquity and the pivotal role these ideas played in the construction of the cultural canon. With Iris Därmann he has founded the CSG-II within TOPOI which could thus profit from his expertise in the history of cultural theory and the reception of antiquity.

His further research interests include: the theory of space, the history of knowledge, and the correlation between literature and visual art. Alongside his research on the cultural history of nature and the elements, the anthropology of the senses and emotions, Hartmut Böhme took an alternative stance on the history of Modernity in the form of a highly regarded study on the history and theory of fetishism.