Professor Ziva Ben-Porat (Berkeley PhD, 1973) is currently senior researcher at the Porter Institute for Poetics and Semiotics (TAU), which she directed between 1990-2006. Since 2000, the beginning of the EC IST Cultos project, she has been combining her professional training in poetics and comparative literature (emphasizing Intertextuality and Semiotic Theory of Realistic Representation) with research of Hypertext technology and the Internet. She is a member of the ICLA Committee on Literature in the Digital Age. In particular Ben-Porat worked on problems of cultural memory and the potential uses of hypertext technology for preserving, disseminating and activating the conventional European literary canon.

Raine Koskimaa (PhD) is a professor of digital culture at the University of Jyväskylä, Finland. He teaches and conducts research especially in the fields of digital textuality, programmable media, and game studies. He has published widely around the issues of digital culture, digital literature, hyper and cybertextuality, game studies, reader-response studies, media use, and narratology. He is the co-editor of the Cybertext Yearbook Series, and a member of the Literary Advisory Board for the Electronic Literature Organization and the Review Board for Gamestudies. Raine Koskimaa's coming to the conference is supported by Finnish Institute in Estonia