Amy Bartlett is a legal professional, curiosity enthusiast, and Ph.D. research (ABD) at the University of Ottawa, Canada. Her academic work explores the role that psychedelic integration and spirituality plays in individual and communal healing, and her passions include community building, diversity and inclusion, and building pathways for safe, accessible and well-supported experiences with psychedelic substances and non-ordinary states of consciousness. She has a Bachelor of Arts (B.A.), law degree (JD/ LL.B.) as well as a Masters of Law (LL.M.), and before returning to school to start her PhD in 2020, Amy worked for over fifteen years in human rights and social justice organizations in Canada and around the world. You can find out more about her academic pursuits and publications at www.psychedelication.com or via email at a.c.bartlett@gmail.com
Dr. Paola Cavaliere is Associate Professor of Japanese Studies at Osaka University, Graduate School of Human Sciences, and the Director of the Human Sciences International Undergraduate Programme. Her research interests are in the interdisciplinary area of gender, religion and disaster studies in Japan, focusing on women’s faith-based institutional and grassroots social innovations. Among her publications are the monograph Promising Practices: Women Volunteers in Contemporary Japanese Religious Civil Society (Brill, 2015) and the forthcoming Handbook of Disaster Studies in Japan (AUP, January 2023). She can be reached at cavaliere.paola.hus@osaka-u.ac.jp.
Dr. Jos Chathukulam is the Director, Centre for Rural Management (CRM), Kerala, India and former Professor of Sri. Ramakrishna Hegde Chair, Institute for Social and Economic Change (ISEC), Bengaluru. He has wide fieldwork experience including the Nuba Mountains in South Kordofan. His publications have appeared in many peer -reviewed journals. He is an expert of the Devolution Index which is used to compare the rate of decentralization across the states. Recently, he has co-edited one book, Deepening Democracy: Comparative Perspectives on Decentralisation: Co-operativism and Self-Managed Development (Routledge India, 2023). Email: joschathukulam@gmail.com
Dr. Carol J. Dempsey, OP, is Professor of Theology (Biblical Studies) at the University of Portland in Portland, Oregon, USA. She is the current Vice President of the Catholic Biblical Association of America (CBA) and her areas of interest and research include the intersection of biblical studies with contemporary world issues. The author and editor of twenty books, her latest essays include: “Does (and Should) Hosea Matter Still,” in Oxford University Handbook on Hosea (ed. Brad Kelle; Oxford University Press, 2023); “Exposing Roman Catholic Hegemonic Masculinity: A Feminist Analysis of Select Commentaries on Isaiah,” in Doing Biblical Masculinity Studies as Feminist Biblical Studies? Critical Interrogation (ed. Susanne Scholz; Sheffield Academic, 2023); “‘The Scholz Effect’ on the Dempseys: Explorations on Writing Commentaries on the Book of Isaiah,” in Watering the Garden (ed. Andrei Orlov; Gorgias Press, 2022); “The Bible and Justice,” in The New Jerome Biblical Commentary for the Twenty-First Century (eds. J. J. Collins, G. Hens-Piazza, B. Reid, OP, and D Senior, CP; Bloomsbury, 2022). Her email address is dempsey@up.edu.
Laulie Eckeberger is completing her PhD. in Systematic Theology at the University of Wales Trinity St. David in Britain. Her research focuses on the intersection of queer liberation theology and systemic change in church and society. Her work has been published in Feminist Theology (2022) and she presents frequently at the American Academy of Religion (AAR) where she also serves on the steering committee for the Lesbian Feminisms unit. She can be reached at ldeckeberger@gmail.com.
Dr. Serge Frolov is Professor of Religious Studies and the Nate and Ann Levine Endowed Chair in Jewish Studies at Dedman College of Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas, USA. He teaches a wide range of courses including “Introduction to the Hebrew Bible,” “The History of Judaism,” “Religion and the Holocaust,” “The Feminine Divine,” and “Love and Death in Ancient Mythology.” He is the author of The Turn Of The Cycle: 1 Samuel 1-8 In Synchronic And Diachronic Perspectives (Walter de Gruyter, 2004), Judges (Eerdmans, 2013), and about 250 articles in English and Russian. His areas of research are biblical hermeneutics and theology, history and religions of the ancient Near East, and Jewish history and thought. Before joining SMU in 2002, Dr. Frolov worked for the National Library of Russia and the Shorter Jewish Encyclopedia in Russian, and he also taught at the Open University of Israel. He is the winner of the Society of Biblical Literature Regional Scholar Award, the Junior Scholar Award from the Southwest Commission on Religious Studies and the Golden Mustang Outstanding Faculty Award. Contact Information: sfrolov@smu.edu.
Dr. Ahmed Salisu Garba teaches law at Bauchi State University, Gadau, Nigeria for the past twelve years. He received his Ph.D. in law and religion in the 2020 from the Faculty of Law, Bayero University Kano, Nigeria. He has researched the regulation of religious preaching in northern Nigeria with a focus on Islamic Preaching Board Laws. He was a Visiting Scholar at the University of Iowa College of Law in the United States from August 2013 to December 2013. A former Dean of Law at the Faculty of Law at Bauchi State University, he currently serves as the Deputy Vice Chancellor Academic there. His research examines freedom of religion and belief in Nigeria, Africa, and globally. He is the Vice President of the African Consortium for Law and Religion Studies (ACLARS). His research area includes law and religion, law and public policy, Sharia Law and public policy, and artificial intelligence.
Megan Hollinger is a doctoral candidate in religious studies at the University of Ottawa in Canada. Megan examines social and community-based strategies and programs for combating antisemitism in Canada. She teaches a course on “The Holocaust: Historical and Religious Dimensions” at Carleton University and is the Treasurer and Membership Chair for the Association for Canadian Jewish Studies.
Dr. Bhakti Mamtora is Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Arizona. Her current book project employs archival, textual, and ethnographic methods to examine the genesis and reception of the Swamini Vato in the Swaminarayan Sampraday during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. More broadly, her research interests include community formation, digital religion, and migration. She has published journal articles in Fieldwork in Religion and Postscripts: The Journal of Sacred Texts, Cultural Histories Contemporary Contexts, and entries in Hinduism in Five Minutes and Brill’s Encyclopedia of Hinduism. She can be reached at mamtora@arizona.edu.
Dr. Qudsia Mirza is Senior Lecturer in Law at the University of East London and Co-Director of the Centre for Justice, Law and Society. She qualified as a solicitor with Eversheds before entering academic life. Qudsia has extensive teaching and research experience both in the UK and in the USA, having held positions at Birkbeck, University of London, and at Albany Law School, New York, where she was the Kate Stoneman Professor of Law and Democracy. She was also Visiting Professor of Law at the University of Cincinnati. Qudsia has been appointed to executive and advisory positions for various organizations, ranging from the Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants in the UK to the Contemporary Arab and Muslim Cultural Studies Institute, University of North Texas. She has been a member of the governance committee of the international Law and Society Association and held editorial board positions at Social and Legal Studies and the Muslim World Journal of Human Rights. She sits on the Executive Committee and the Policy Council of Liberty. Her research focuses on two main areas: feminist/reformist perspectives of Islamic Law and the development of Islamic legal cultures by diasporic Muslim communities and their relationship with official legal systems. She is currently editing a collection of essays Islam, Feminism and Legal Cultures. Her email contact is Q.Mirza@uel.ac.uk.
Dr. Susanne Scholz is Professor of Old Testament at SMU Perkins School of Theology in Dallas, Texas. Already for her doctoral research, she studied nineteenth-century forensic medical textbook’s discourse on sexual violence (see her Rape Plots: A Feminist Cultural Study of Genesis 34). Since then, she investigated biblical rape texts in their interpretation history—past and present (see her Sacred Witness: Rape in the Hebrew Bible), as well as biblical texts about reproductive justice and heteronormativity as part of social-medical assumptions about biblical meanings. Her essay on the contested Sotah passage in Numbers 5:11-31, entitled “Dismantling the Phallic Economy with a Hermeneutics of Reproductive Justice,” appeared in Journal of Religious Ethics in 2021, engaged the contemporary debate on the Bible and abortion rhetoric. In Spring 2022, she also taught a course on “Healing, Medicine, and the Bible” that examined the role of biblical studies in discourses of healing and medicine. Among her recent publications are The Oxford Handbook on Feminist Approaches to the Hebrew Bible (editor; Oxford University Press, 2021); The Bible as Political Artifact: On the Feminist Study of the Hebrew Bible (Fortress Press, 2017). She is the editor of the book series Feminist Studies and Sacred Texts, published by Lexington Books. Her email is sscholz@smu.edu.
Dr. Matthew Wilson is Kairo Endowed Director of the Center for Faith and Learning and Associate Professor of political science at Southern Methodist University. His research and teaching focus on public opinion, elections, representation, and the role of race and religion in politics, both in the United States and abroad. He is the author, co-author, or editor of three books, including Understanding American Politics and Politics and Religion in the United States, and dozens of articles and essays. He is currently at work on projects considering the role of citizen knowledge in shaping political accountability, and the effects of religion on American attitudes toward Israel. He routinely serves as a commentator on political affairs for local, national, and international media outlets. His email address is jmwilson@mail.smu.edu.
Dr. Nia Parson is an Associate Professor in the Department of Anthropology of Dedman College at SMU. As a medical and cultural anthropologist, Dr. Parson’s leads her Resilience Lab at SMU where she and her team examine human resilience, coping, and agency in the midst of various forms of traumatic experience and health challenges. Her current research examines non-biomedical approaches to chronic pain, mind/body healing, and integrative medicine, in the U.S. Southwest, particularly among Latinx/Hispanic families, in the post-Covid era. Recently, she has researched various aspects of how people coped with the isolation of the lockdown period of the pandemic. Dr. Parson’s publications include an award-winning book based on her research on intimate partner violence, trauma, and recovery in Santiago, Chile, Traumatic States: Gender, Violence, and Care in Chile (2013, Vanderbilt University Press). Her work has received generous support from the Fulbright Commission, Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research, Hogg Foundation for Mental Health, NIMH, Sam Taylor Foundation; and the SMU University Research Council, DCII, and Hamilton Scholars Program. She also has a robust body of published articles in a variety of peer-reviewed journals including: Culture, Medicine & Psychiatry; Social Science and Medicine-Mental Health; Medical Anthropology Quarterly; Human Organization; and Violence Against Women: International and Interdisciplinary Journal; and chapters in edited book volumes, including: Handbook of Culture and Migration, Comparative Perspectives on Domestic Violence, Disasters Without Borders, and Gender in Cross-Cultural Perspective. She has served as Advisor for a number PhD graduates who are flourishing as anthropological scholars, as well as mentoring undergraduates in her Resilience Lab at SMU. She can be reached at nparson@mail.smu.edu.
Rev. Dr. Jeanne Stevenson-Moessner is Professor of Pastoral Care and Pastoral Theology at Perkins School of Theology, Southern Methodist University. Jeanne is an ordained Presbyterian minister (PCUSA), a Psychotherapist in ACPE, a member of the International Academy of Practical Theology, a Henry Luce III Fellow, and a former Chair of the Society for Pastoral Theology. She was a Resident Member at the Center of Theological Inquiry in Princeton (2012), President of the SMU Faculty Senate (2016-2017) and a member of the SMU Board of Trustees (2016-2017). She is currently a member of the Pastoral Care Advisory Boards at Parkland Hospital, Dallas, Texas, and on the Advisory Board at the Methodist Hospitals, Dallas, TX. Jeanne trains her students at Perkins in rape crisis centers, domestic violence programs, shelters, and a community mental health clinic. She is the coordinator of the popular concentration in pastoral care and the recipient in 2021 of a Wabash Grant in Innovations in Chaplaincy. Her recent grant from ATS/Luce Foundation was used to create a conference on “Healing with Dignity: Native American Pastoral Care.” She co-edited a volume which transformed the field of pastoral theology – Women in Travail and Transition: A New Pastoral Care (Fortress Press, 1991). Jeanne is the editor of three additional pioneering volumes in pastoral care of women along with six additional books, the two most recent of which are Portable Roots: Transplanting the Bicultural Child (2014) and Overture to Practical Theology: The Music of Religious Inquiry (2016). Her book The Spirit of Adoption: At Home in God’s Family (2003) received an award from the Academy of Parish Clergy, and she was honored in 2010 with The American Association of Pastoral Counselor’s Distinguished Achievement in Research and Writing Award. She is the editor of Women with 2020 Vision: American Theologians on the Vote, Voice, and Vision of Women (2020). Her email address is jmoessne@mail.smu.edu.
Dr. Ben Voth is professor of rhetoric and director of debate and speech at SMU. He is specialist on questions of genocide, political debate, humor and politics, and general public controversies. He researches and teaches with a goal of equipping individuals to have a voice in the world. He has published four books on how individual communication abilities can positively change the world: James Farmer Jr.: The Great Debater (Lexington Books, 2017); Social Fragmentation and the Decline of American Democracy: The End of the Social Contract (Springer, 2017, with Robert E. Denton Jr.); and The Rhetoric of Genocide: Death as a Text (Lexington Books, 2014 and 2016). The Rhetoric of Genocide won the American Forensic Association’s 2015 top national book award, the Daniel Rohrer Memorial Outstanding Research Award, for research in the field of speech and debate. His most current book Debate as Global Pedagogy: Rwanda Rising (Lexington Books, 2020) details a variety of efforts globally to combat genocide with debate instruction while focusing on the unique events of the 1994 Rwandan genocide and a 25-year anniversary debate institute he helped lead for 400 high school students and more than 50 high school teachers in Rwanda in 2019. Voth’s writing has been featured in The Dallas Morning News, Fortune magazine, American Thinker and discussed on various NPR affiliates including KERA Dallas. His expertise is cited in national publications such as The Washington Post and U.S. News and World Report, and he has been discussed on The Rush Limbaugh Show. His communication collaborations with national and international institutions include: The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C., the George W. Bush Presidential Center, the Calvin Coolidge Presidential Foundation, the U.S. State Department and the government of Rwanda. His students often work to overcome human rights problems in a variety of international settings including Burma, North Korea, Rwanda, India and Europe. He can be reached at Voth, Ben bvoth@mail.smu.edu.