Xuelei Huang is Senior Lecturer in Chinese Studies at the University of Edinburgh, whose current research focuses on sensory history in modern China. Their recent book, Scents of China: A Modern History of Smell (Cambridge University Press, 2023), revisits modern Chinese history through the nose. They have have also recently co-edited a volume (with Shengqing Wu) entitled Sensing China: Modern Transformations of Sensory Culture (Routledge, 2022). This brings together twelve articles by internationally renowned scholars, this book explores the deeply rooted meanings that the senses have ingrained in culture and society of modern China.

Jas Brooks (they/them) is a Ph.D. student in Computer Science at the University of Chicago. Their doctoral research delves into the design of devices that chemically stimulate and manipulate human senses, such as smell and taste. Outside of their doctoral pursuits, they independently delve into media archaeology, with an emphasis on historical scent technologies and related media from the 20th century onwards. This work includes the conservation of 1960s cinematic scent technologies and their films (such as Smell-O-Vision! and AromaRama), collecting oral histories from dot-com era scent tech companies, and uncovering olfactory film exhibitions from as early as 1910.

Jessica Clark is an Associate Professor of History at Brock University. Jessica’s current project – ‘“Scents of Change: Experiencing Modernity in Britain, 1880-1930” mobilizes historical descriptions of smell to analyze circulating ideas about modern experience more generally, including the ways that certain groups—such as the urban poor and foreign nationals—were included and excluded from dominant narratives of national belonging. One result of the project is a forthcoming article on lavender in the Journal of British Studies.

Stephanie Weismann is a historian based at the University of Vienna, where they have worked on the smells of 1920s and 1930s Lublin. This has resulted in a number of articles exploring the city’s interwar smellscapes. They are currently running a Citizen Science project ‘Wein der Nase nach‘ recovering the stories, memories, and knowledge of Vienna’s smell history and heritage.