Nils Bubandt is professor of anthropology at Aarhus University and PI of Aesthetics of Extinction. Nils has 30 years of fieldwork experience in Indonesia and speaks Indonesian fluently. Most of his fieldwork has been in the eastern part of Indonesia, from where bird species for song competitions are now increasingly being sourced.  Since 2011, Nils has been doing fieldwork in Java, in particular in Yogyakarta, the key study site of “aesthetics of Extinction”. He has been doing inital fieldwork on songbird contests, giving him some insight into the context (political, cultural, aesthetic, mythological and ecological) of the Indonesian love of songbirds. Nils brings the necessary anthropological, linguistic, and area studies expertise for the “aesthetic-anthropological” study of songbird love and extinction. Nils is also a participant in the research project Java-Futurism: Chronotopes of Sonic Activism in Indonesia (https://javafuturism.blogg.lu.se), funded by the Swedish Research Council (2018-2025). Java-Futurism studies electronic music and the aesthetics of noise in Indonesia. 

Sanne Krogh Groth is associate professor in musicology at Lund University and co-PI of the project Aesthetics of Extinction. Sanne is an expert in electronic music and sound studies and has deep knowledge of aesthetic methods and soundscape theory. Sanne has excellent contact in aesthetics, media studies, and musicology at AU. Sanne is also PI of the research project Java-Futurism. As part of this project, Sanne and Nils co-developed the aesthetic-anthropological approach and method that they plan to extend to the multispecies and interdisciplinary study of bird aesthetics and extinction. 

In addition, Sanne and Nils will recruit three research assistants from Indonesian universities with expertise in anthropology, musicology, and biology respectively to develop the project and promote academic capacity-building in Indonesia across the human and natural sciences.