Nelly Ben hayoun- Stépanian

Nelly Ben Hayoun-Stépanian Ph.D is an award-winning Designer of Experiences and Director with over a decade of experience working to document and build platforms that support plurality, the creation of organised communities and impossible productions, public events, expeditions and projects with socio-political impacts.
Doppelgängers3 (SXSW world premiere 2024- VISION category) is Nelly’s fifth feature-length film. Prior to it, she directed, wrote and produced The International Space Orchestra, 2013; Disaster Playground, 2015; I am (not) a Monster, 2019; and Tour de Moon (2023) which have screened at film festivals such as CPH DOX, BFI London Film Festival, Rotterdam International Film Festival, Gothenburg Film Festival, and more.
She is the founder and director of the International Space Orchestra, the world’s first orchestra of NASA space scientists and astronauts; founder of the tuition-free university University of the Underground, which includes board members and activists like Prof. Noam Chomsky, Pussy Riot and Prof. Arjun Appadurai. This tuition-free educational and cultural program is supporting the plurality of thinking, free and transnational teaching and unconventional practices since 2017.
Nelly works across disciplines. She is a Designer of Experiences at the SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) Institute since 2013, a Senior Fellow of the Hannah Arendt Centre for Politics and Humanities since 2018, Vice-Chair of the International Astronautical Federation Technical Committee on the Cultural Utilization of Space, and a member of the International Academy of Astronautics Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence permanent committee since 2013, amongst others. She founded and runs the Space Culture and Decolonial Space session at the International Astronautical Congress. In 2022, Nelly became a Karman Fellow. In 2023, she was awarded 'The Hall of Fame' lifetime achievement award by Design Week.