Fujita is professor emeritus of Kyoto University and former professor at the Graduate School of Advanced Integrated Studies in Human Survivability and former chair of the Department of the History of Japanese Philosophy at Kyoto University. He received doctoral degrees from Bochum University and Kyoto University, and is author of Philosophie und Religion beim jungen Hegel; Gendai shisō toshite no Nishida Kitarō [Nishida Kitarō as a Modern Thinker]; Nishida Kitarō: Ikiru koto to tetsugaku [Nishida Kitarō: Being Alive and Philosophy]; Nishida Kitarō no shisaku sekai [Nishida Kitarō’s World of Thought]; and Tetsugaku no hinto [Hints of Philosophy]. Fujita edited Tanabe Hajime tetsugaku sen [Selected Works of Tanabe Hajime’s Philosophy] and, with Kosaka Kunitsugu, the new edition of Nishida Kitarō zenshū [Complete Works of Nishida Kitarō]. His other edited volumes include Nihon kindai shisō wo manabu hito no tame ni [For Students of Modern Japanese Thought]; Kyōto gakuha no tetsugaku [The Philosophy of the Kyoto School]; Higashiajia to tetsugaku [East Asia and Philosophy]; Shisō-kan no taiwa: Higashi ajia ni okeru tetsugaku no juyō to tenkai [Dialogue between Ways of Thinking: The Reception and Development of Philosophy in East Asia].
Carolyn Jacobs, MSW, PhD, is Dean Emerita and Elizabeth Marting Treuhaft Professor Emerita of the Smith College School for Social Work.
Dr. Jacobs was a member of the School’s faculty for 35 years, serving as the dean for 14 of those years. In 2001 she was elected to the National Academies of Practice as a distinguished social work practitioner. From June 2015 to November 2015 she served as Interim President of the Mind and Life Institute. She is currently on the board of Elms College ( 2020-).
Jacobs received her BA from Sacramento State University, her MSW from San Diego State University, her doctorate from the Heller School of Brandeis University, and her training as a spiritual director from the Shalem Institute for Spiritual Formation. She maintains a spiritual direction practice and is committed to creating spaces for health care providers to discover the rich resources of contemplative practices from many wisdom traditions in developing resilience for self and others.
Susan Bauer-Wu is the former president of the Mind & Life Institute. Throughout her career, she has held leadership, academic, and clinical positions in nonprofits, health care, and higher education, with a focus on mind-body science and promoting well-being through mindfulness and other contemplative approaches. Susan is the author of A Future We Can Love: How We Can Reverse the Climate Crisis through the Power of Our Hearts and Minds (2023), inspired by a Mind & Life Conversation between the Dalai Lama and Greta Thunberg, and Leaves Falling Gently: Living Fully with Serious & Life-Limiting Illness through Mindfulness, Compassion & Connectedness (2011).
Susan began her career as a registered nurse specializing in oncology and end-of-life care, and later received a PhD in psychoneuroimmunology. She has held faculty and leadership roles at the University of Virginia, Emory University, and Harvard Medical School/Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. In her free time, she is outdoors as much as possible, gardening and hiking the Blue Ridge mountains with her husband and their two dogs.
Roshi Joan Halifax, PhD is a Buddhist teacher; Founder and Head Teacher of Upaya Zen Center in Santa Fe, New Mexico; a social activist; author; and in her early years was an anthropologist at Columbia University (1964-68) and University of Miami School of Medicine (1970-72). She is a pioneer in the field of end-of-life care. She has lectured on the subject of death and dying at many academic institutions and medical centers around the world. She received a National Science Foundation Fellowship in Visual Anthropology, was an Honorary Research Fellow in Medical Ethnobotany at Harvard University, was a Distinguished Visiting Scholar at the Library of Congress, received the Pioneer Medal for Outstanding Leadership in Health Care by HealthCare Chaplaincy, the Sandy MacKinnon Award from Covenant Health in Canada, Pioneer Medal for Outstanding Leadership in Health Care, received an Honorary DSc from the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland. She has received many other awards and honors from institutions around the world for her work as a social and environmental activist and in the end-of-life care field.
From 1972-1975, she worked with psychiatrist Stanislav Grof at the Maryland Psychiatric Research Center with dying cancer patients. She has continued to work with dying people and their families, and to teach health care professionals and family caregivers the psycho-social, ethical, and spiritual aspects of care of the dying. She is Director of the Project on Being with Dying, and Founder of the Upaya Prison Project that develops programs on meditation for prisoners. She is also founder of the Nomads Clinic in Nepal.
Her books include: The Human Encounter with Death (with Stanislav Grof); The Fruitful Darkness, A Journey Through Buddhist Practice; Simplicity in the Complex: A Buddhist Life in America; Being with Dying: Cultivating Compassion and Wisdom in the Presence of Death; Standing at the Edge: Finding Freedom Where Fear and Courage Meet; Sophie Learns to Be Brave.
She has been involved with the Mind and Life Institute since its inception and is founder of the Varela International Symposium.
Roshi Joan Halifax is a Founding Steward of the Mind & Life Institute. She served on the Mind & Life Board of Directors from 2005 to 2017.
Jeremy Hunter, PhD, is the great-grandson of a sumo wrestler as well as Associate Professor of Practice at the Peter F. Drucker School of Management. Over a decade ago, he created and still teaches The Executive Mind, a series of challenging and transformative executive education courses dedicated to Drucker’s assertion that “You cannot manage other people unless you manage yourself first.” Hunter challenges leaders to transform themselves to more effectively face the demands of a complex and turbulent world. He has designed and led leadership development programs for a wide variety of organizations, including Fortune 200 aerospace, Fortune 50 banking and finance, accounting, the arts and civic non-profits. Program impacts have lead to both positive professional, personal and financial outcomes. He has been featured in The Wall Street Journal, The Economist, Financial Times, Los Angeles Times and National Public Radio’s Morning Edition. His work is informed by the experience of living day-to-day for 17 years with a potentially terminal illness, and when faced with the need for life-saving surgery, having more than a dozen former students come forward as organ donors. He received his PhD from University of Chicago, an MPP from the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, and a BA in East Asian Studies from Wittenberg University.
Femke E. Bakker, Ph.D. is an assistant professor in Political Science at the Institute of Political Science of Leiden University, where she teaches courses in political psychology and research methods. As a researcher, Femke is well known for thinking ‘out of the box’, which might be due to her creative background in the performing arts. After a career of almost two decades as a professional actor, Femke decided to study political science and received her Ph.D. in 2018. She won several awards for her master thesis, and her dissertation “Hawks and Doves. Democratic peace theory revisited” received the ECPR Jean Blondel PhD prize, the most prestigious PhD award within European political science. She published in several international peer reviewed journals, serves as book reviews editor of Acta Politica, and is associate member of the Laboratory for Comparative Social Research. Femke’s research focusses on the role individuals play within political processes. She studies elite decision making, political leadership, and political behavior. She uses the PEACE grant to conduct a pilot study about the impact of meditation on political tolerance. Femke also teaches meditation, and offers guided meditations and courses through the free international meditation platform Insight Timer.
I am a tenure track assistant professor and director of the Close Relationships and Health Lab at the University of Delaware. I received my PhD in social psychology from the University of California Santa Barbara and then completed my postdoctoral training at the Ohio State University. I utilize a social psychological approach to understand the effects of social disconnection on motivation, physiology, and health. My expertise lies at the interface between physiology and psychology with a specialization in psychoneuroimmunology and psychoneuroendocrinology. More recently, I became interested in interventions that could improve social connection between romantic partners. Because romantic relationship quality is so robustly linked to health outcomes, improving a person’s romantic relationship should thereby improve their health.
Evelyn Lutwama-Rukundo, PhD, is a Senior Lecturer at the School of Women and Gender Studies, Makerere University (Uganda). She attained her PhD at the School of English, University of Leeds, U.K., her M (phil) at the Centre of Women’s Research, University of Bergen, Norway, her MA in Communication for Development at the University of Malmo, Sweden and her Undergraduate degree in Arts at Makerere University, Uganda. Her research interest is gender in communication, identity formation and representation. Some of her publications include: “That’s my Space: Ageing, Gender and Survival in Ugandan Theatre”, “Skimpy Fashion and Sexuality in Sheebah Karungi’s Performances”, “Dancing to Change: Gender in the Popular Music of Kampala”, “Western Theatrical Performance in Africa and Gender Implications” and a book Communication for Development: Community Theatre and Women’s Rights in Buganda (Uganda). Besides her academic engagement, Lutwama-Rukundo is a screenwriter and director. Her forthcoming film is a documentary on the trajectory of gender studies in Ugandan universities entitled We’ve Got to Have It.
Sarah N. Ssali, PhD, is an Associate Professor and Dean, School of Gender Studies (Makerere University) where Gendered Identities, Masculinities and Men’s Studies are taught. She is also the Director, ARUA Centre of Excellence in Notions of Identity in Africa. She is a Social Scientist with a PhD in International Health Studies. She has vast research experience as Principal or co-Principal Investigator, using both qualitative and quantitative research methods and designs including surveys, stepped wedge designs, social networks analysis, ethnographic methods, life histories, narratives. She has researched and published in health systems, health financing, HIV and AIDS, post conflict settings, hidden behaviours, minorities, institutionalised identities, state policy and practice. She also trained in Stepping Stones. Gender and ethics underpin her work. She teaches Gender and the State, Research Methods, Fundamentals of Social Science and Health and Institutions and social transformation, including how certain behaviours and identities become normalized and dominant.
