Contributing Authors

Sanjay Kabir Bavikatte, Ph.D., is the Executive Director of the Christensen Fund. He was the Co-Founder and Director of Natural Justice, an international organization of environmental lawyers defending the rights of indigenous peoples and local communities to their territories and cultures.

Rebecca Yvonne Bayeck is a doctoral student at Penn State in the dual-degree program of Learning Design and Technology and Comparative International Education. Rebecca's research interests include games (modern and indigenous), culture and technology, online and/or distance learning, and massive open online courses. Comments and/or questions may be addressed to ryb105@psu.edu.

Sarah Casson is a graduate student of the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies. She holds a Bachelor’s degree in Anthropology from Grinnell College. Both in and out of academia, Sarah is interested in the intersection of anthropology and environmental studies. At Yale, her Masters in Environmental Science focuses on climate change’s effects on monsoons and agricultural adaptation strategies.

Ann C. Clements, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor of Music Education at Penn State. She is an active researcher, musician, and pedagogue. Her primary research areas include music participation, game theory as applied to education, learning in blended, virtual and augmented realities, and ethnomusicology, of which she is a recognized scholar in Maori music of New Zealand. She has served in leadership and editorial roles in national and international music education and ethnomusicology organizations.

Mina Giris is an ethnomusicologist with a background in hospitality experience design; Mina explores new ways to cultivate environments conducive to learning, making, and experiencing music. He specializes in curating and producing innovative musical collaborations across diverse styles. Mina earned his bachelor’s degree in Hospitality Administration from the Florida State University and his masters in Ethnomusicology from the University of California Santa Barbara. Mina is a Synergos Pioneers of Egypt fellow, a Wired 2014 Innovation fellow, and a National Arts Strategies Creative Community fellow.

Lonnie Graham is an artist, photographer, and cultural activist whose work addresses the integral role of the artist in society and seeks to seeks to re-establish artists as creative problem solvers. Lonnie Graham is a Pew Fellow and Professor of Photography at the Pennsylvania State University. Professor Graham is the former Acting Associate Director of the Fabric Workshop and Museum in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Graham served as instructor of special programs at the Barnes Foundation. Graham also served as Director of Photography at Manchester Craftsmen’s Guild in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and developed innovative pilot projects cited by Hillary Clinton as a National Model for Arts Education.

Elisha Clark Halpin holds an MFA in Dance from The Ohio State University. She is a dance artist, somatics practitioner, filmmaker, and modern day pilgrim. Her current research centers around place, identity, the sacred, memory, consciousness, and trauma.

Kira Hydock holds a bachelor’s degree from the Pennsylvania State University. Her article "Traditional Methods of Rwandan Goat Production and Management" is an extension of her honors thesis, which began after her first trip to Rwanda in 2012. Since then, she has returned to the country two additional times to conduct research under the supervision of Dr. Clemente Abrokwaa in the African Studies Department at The Pennsylvania State University. Her honors thesis was submitted upon her graduation from the institution in 2015, and she is now currently attending veterinary school at The University of Pennsylvania School of Veterinary Medicine.

Svitlana Iarmolenko was born and raised in Ukraine. Svitlana came to the United States for graduate school, enrolling in East Carolina University's Master Program and continuing on to a Doctorate Degree at The Pennsylvania State University. Reflecting on personal migration experiences, Svitlana focused her research on the nexus of tourism and migration, engaging with theories of acculturation, transnationalism, as well as mobilities research.

Bruce D. Martin grew up among the Ojibwe (Anishinaabeg) people deep in the bush of the Northwest Angle, Lake of the Woods, Pine Creek, and Angle Inlet, Minnesota. Persistence eventually transported Bruce from the one room Angle Inlet School to the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire where he completed degrees in philosophy and psychology. He eventually completed a doctorate in theology and religion at the Princeton Theological Seminary. Only gradually did he come to understand the value of his first education and educators, the bush country of the Northwest Angle and the Ojibwe elders who lived there. For the past twenty five years, he has been committed to and involved in cultural education and the exploration of indigenous ways of knowing. For the past fifteen years, he has developed courses and field experiences which provide Penn State students with opportunities to learn with and from Ojibwe elders and educators in the Great Lakes region and in northern Minnesota.

María Julia Oliva has been the Senior Coordinator for Policy and Technical Support at the Union for Ethical BioTrade (UEBT) since 2009. In this capacity, she provides training, advice, and technical support for UEBT members and partners on issues such as equitable trade practices, access, and benefit sharing. Julia has held several positions in international organizations and published widely on the interface between sustainability, trade, and intellectual property. She is a member of the IUCN Commission on Environmental Law and the Board of Directors of IP-Watch, an independent reporting service on intellectual property issues. She has a law degree from the University of Mendoza and a Masters of Laws (LL.M) in environmental law, cum laude, from the Northwestern School of Law at Lewis and Clark College.

Kimberly Powell holds a Ph.D. in education from Stanford University. Her research focuses on artistic practice and performance as a means of engaging in social change; the body; and the senses as critical modes of mediation, communication, and production of human experience and knowledge; and the arts as forms of public pedagogy.

Vincent Ricciardi is a PhD student at the University of British Columbia’s (UBC) Resource Management and Environmental Studies (RMES) program. His research focuses on the intersection of climate smart agriculture, poverty alleviation, and land use change. Currently, I am investigating how farm size affects sustainability and if small farms are more resilient to climate variability than large farms in India.
Before attending UBC, I received my MSc degree in geography from Penn State and worked as a research consultant throughout Southeast Asia and in Ghana. I have conducted agrobiodiversity surveys, brought GIS into program assessments, mapped agricultural land use change, conducted crop value chain assessments, and helped NGOs, local governments, and social enterprises test innovative ideas and appropriate technologies and distribute them to smallholder farmers.

Daniel F. Robinson, Ph.D., has worked for several years on environmental and social justice concerns relating to biodiversity, indigenous knowledge, and intellectual property, particularly in Thailand, the Pacific, and Australia. He is a Senior Lecturer at the University of New South Wales (UNSW) in Australia, a research fellow with the International Centre for Trade and Sustainable Development (ICTSD), and a research associate with the NGO Natural Justice. He has provided research towards projects for a number of organizations including ICTSD-UNCTAD, the Pacific Islands Forum Secretariat, UNDP-GEF, Union for Ethical BioTrade (UEBT), AusAID, and GIZ. He also recently published the books Biodiversity, Access and Benefit-Sharing: Global Case Studies (2015, Routledge: Oxon), and Confronting Biopiracy: Challenges, Cases and International Debates (2010, Earthscan, London).

Nonny Schlotzhauer is the Acting Head of the Social Sciences and Donald W. Hamer Maps Libraries at the Pennsylvania State University. He has a bachelor’s degree in anthropology from Temple University and a Master of Library Science from the University of Pittsburgh. He has held prior positions at Juniata College, Miami University (Ohio), and the University of Denver. He currently serves as Book Review Editor for IK: Other Ways of Knowing.

Helen Sheehy is a Social Sciences Librarian at the Pennsylvania State University Libraries, with subject specialties in politics, law, government, and international relations.  She has a B.S. from Framingham State University (Massachusetts) and am Masters of Library Science from Clarion University (Pennsylvania).  Prior to becoming a librarian she worked with CARE Honduras, in community development and relief work.

Amy Dupain Vashaw serves as Audience and Program Development Director for Penn State’s Center for the Performing Arts, a position she has held since 2001. Initially hired as Education Director in 1997, her primary responsibility is to create collaborative opportunities that link the Center’s artists to the community, including Penn State University students, students in grades K-12, senior members of the community, and the community-at-large. Her primary goal is to create a mutually enriching experience for both artists and their audiences by providing the knowledge and tools necessary to fully engage in the artist’s work. Additionally, she works closely with the Center’s director in programming the season, with her special area of focus being dance and family and children’s programming. Recently, she has been appointed chair of the Penn State Commission on LGBT Equity. Amy has spent her career in the arts, with previous positions that have included associate director of development for Second Stage, an off-Broadway theatre, and assistant to the director of the Pittsburgh Dance Council, a contemporary dance presenter. She is a graduate of Penn State University with a degree in cinema studies.

Sarah H. Watts, Ph.D., is an Assistant Professor of Music Education at the Pennsylvania State University School of Music. Her teaching and research interests include early childhood and elementary music education, music pedagogy, personal experience story in music, and musics of the Pacific.

Lan Xue is one of the recipients of the 2014 M.G. Whiting student IK research award. Lan Xue earned her Ph.D. in Recreation, Park, and Tourism Management at the Pennsylvania State University. Her research mainly focuses on socioeconomic aspects of tourism development and how the local culture of a tourism destination shapes, and is shaped by, tourism development. She has conducted a great deal of research in suburban and rural areas of China, focusing on the resettlement and identity changes of local residents as a result of tourism development.