The Alchemy Lecture is a partnership between York University and Knopf Canada, organized by Canada Research Chair in Black Studies in the Humanities at York, CHRISTINA SHARPE. She is the author of In the Wake: On Blackness and Being; Monstrous Intimacies: Making Post-Slavery Subjects; and Ordinary Notes.

LALEH KHALILI is the Al Qasimi Professor of Gulf Studies at the University of Exeter in the United Kingdom. She has written or edited seven books, including Heroes and Martyrs of Palestine: The Politics of National Commemoration. V. MITCH MCEWEN leads Harlem-based Atelier Office and teaches on the faculty at Princeton University's School of Architecture. She is one of ten co-founders of the Black Reconstruction Collective, and her design work has been commissioned by MoMA and the Venice Architecture Biennale US Pavilion. GABRIELA LEANDRO PEREIRA is a professor at the Faculty of Architecture at the Federal University of Bahia. She is a member of the Lugar Comum Research Group and coordinator of the Corpo, Discurso e Território Study Group. LEANNE BETASAMOSAKE SIMPSON is a Michi Saagiig Nishnaabeg scholar, writer, and musician. She is the author of eight previous books, including her latest non-fiction project Theory of Water: Nishnaabeg Maps to the Times Ahead. Her last album, Theory of Ice, was shortlisted for a Polaris Prize.