Esther Leslie is Professor of Political Aesthetics at Birkbeck, University of London. Her books include various studies of Walter Benjamin, Hollywood Flatlands: Animation, Critical Theory and the Avant Garde (2002); Synthetic Worlds: Nature, Art and the Chemical Industry (2005); Derelicts (2014), Liquid Crystals: The Science and Art of a Fluid Form (2016) and The Rise and Fall of Imperial Chemical Industries: Synthetics, Sensism and the Environment (2023). Work on the biopolitical economy of dairy, with Melanie Jackson, includes Deeper in the Pyramid (2018/2023). A study of anti-fascist radio pioneer Ernst Schoen (written with Sam Dolbear) appeared in 2023:  Dissonant Waves: Ernst Schoen and Experimental Sound in the Twentieth Century.