John Edwards is Psychology Professor and Associate Dean at Oregon State University. He is co-founder and Director of Oregon State University’s Contemplative Studies Initiative, which has been in existence since 2008. In this role, he has organized and led many meditation-related events. His training is in Social/Personality psychology, with research interests in the broad areas of social cognition and attribution. His broad interests are in the ways in which personality and motivation impact social information processing with a particular focus on effects of uncertainty and control motivation on human functioning. He has done a great deal of work on causal uncertainty, which are feelings of uncertainty that one understands the causes of events. He has been increasingly focused on intersections between Buddhist philosophy and scientific theories of social cognition, and on the mechanisms by which different meditation types affect people. He has had funding from the National Science Foundation and the Defense Threat Reduction Agency, among other sources. He is a Fellow of the Society for Experimental Social Psychology.
I am an inclusive education and developmental psychology practitioner and currently engaged as a Project Manager with Ummeed Child Development Center, Mumbai, India. My work involves end-to-end project management and delivery, training, research, Monitoring & Evaluation, communications and advocacy towards establishing inclusive education systems within Indian schools. My work lies at the intersection of education, socio-emotional learning and mental health.
I hold a PhD in Education from the University of Cambridge, UK and my research critically examined systems and pedagogies in mainstream schools in India that ‘include all learners’ and consequently laid out a roadmap for implementing inclusive education in the Indian policy context. I have a MPhil in Social and Developmental Psychology (2012) from the Centre for Family Research, University of Cambridge where my research focussed on autism and memory. Earlier I was working with the Centre for Sustainable Development, Earth Institute, Columbia University on scaling up educational innovations in primary schools in India across three districts.
I am both a research scholar and a social changemaker. I am particularly interested in educational philosophy, classroom pedagogy, and teacher professional development. My current work focuses on alternative purposes of education like learning to live together, education for social emotional learning, education of the heart and education of the spirit. I am particularly interested in classroom and school wide practices, systems and ethos, interventions and policies in the global south that bring about learning to live together. My previous work focused on cognitive development in children, while I still remain interested in exploring the links between social emotional learning and cognitive development.
I am also involved in grassroots level change in India and work on improving access to quality education (as the cofounder of two charities: Independent Thought & Social Action and Together In Development & Education Foundation) and for social emotional learning (as a consultant for multiple organizations). As the president of TIDE Foundation, I oversee several programs including direct education provision, teacher education and empowerment, school improvement, and development of self-directed learning materials. Furthermore, I have also served as an education and international development consultant supporting various Indian and global educational organizations.
I am a Professor in the Department of Psychology and the Interdisciplinary Program in Neuroscience at Georgetown University. I received my Ph.D. from Harvard University and conducted my post-doctoral research at the National Institute of Mental Health. I am the Past-President of the Social and Affective Neuroscience Society. My research is aimed at answering the questions: How do we understand what others think and feel? What drives us to help other people? What prevents us from harming them? My research on these topics uses functional and structural brain imaging, as well as behavioral, cognitive, genetic, and pharmacological techniques and comprises over 90 publications in journals that include Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Nature Human Behavior, American Journal of Psychiatry, and JAMA Psychiatry. I have written an award-winning trade book about my research called THE FEAR FACTOR (2017, Hachette). My research has received awards that include the Cozzarelli Prize for scientific excellence and originality from the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, The S&R Kuno Award for Applied Science for the Social Good, and the Richard J. Wyatt Fellowship award for translational research from the NIMH.
Sharon Lambert is a professor in the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences at George Washington University. She completed her doctoral training in Clinical/Community psychology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, with specializations in developmental psychology and quantitative methods. Dr. Lambert’s research focuses on how youth and families experience and manage racial discrimination and community violence exposure to inform the design and implementation of culturally and contextually relevant school and community-based preventive interventions. She also studies individual, interpersonal, and contextual factors that promote health and wellbeing, and protection in the face of adversity.
Dr. Carrie James is a Principal Investigator at Project Zero at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. A sociologist by training for over a decade, she has led research and educational initiatives focused on young people’s experiences in digital life, with particular attention to ethical dilemmas, civic participation, and strategies to support well-being. With Emily Weinstein, Carrie is co-author of the book, Behind Their Screens: What Teens are Facing (and Adults are Missing) (forthcoming, MIT Press). She has an M.A. and a Ph.D. in Sociology from NYU and is a parent to two technology-loving children, ages 12 and 16.
Stephanie Dorais is a counselor educator, researcher, and licensed counselor. With a background in data analytics and trauma counseling, she currently serves in the counselor education programs as an assistant professor at Kean University and adjunct assistant professor at NYU Steinhardt. Her research focuses on how contemplative practices lead people to experience hope, compassion, transcendence, and other areas related to human thriving. She applies the intersection of contemplative science with intensive longitudinal methodology to examine outcomes related to counseling and thriving. She serves on multiple editorial boards of counseling journals and as a consultant at the Thrive Research and Intervention Center at the College of William & Mary. She lives and practices in the New York metropolitan area.
Daniel Gutierrez is an Associate Professor in the Counseling program at the College of William & Mary, the Co-Director of the THRIVE Research and Intervention Center, a Licensed Professional Counselor, and a Certified Substance Abuse Counselor. He holds a Ph.D. and master’s degree in Counselor Education and mental health counseling from the University of Central Florida. His current research focuses on the process of thriving. This emerged from his previous work which examined culturally-responsive evidence-based practices in mental health counseling (i.e., what works best for whom and in what setting), mental health disparities, and the integration of spirituality into mental health counseling. These areas of inquiry converged on the theme of contemplation and he has since been interested in the role of contemplative practices in mental health. His research has found that the awareness and way of being developed in living a more contemplative life are paramount to thriving and whole-hearted living. Daniel also serves as the current president of the Association for Spiritual, Ethical, and Religious Values in Counseling and the Associate Editor for Quantitative Research for the Journal of Counseling & Development, and the Associate Editor for Theory for the Journal Counseling and Values.
Angela P. Harris is professor emerita at UC Davis School of Law and co-editor-in-chief of the Journal of Law and Political Economy. An award-winning law teacher, she pioneered courses on critical race theory; mindfulness and the law; environmental justice; and markets, class, and culture. The organizations she has helped found include the Thelton E. Henderson Center for Social Justice at Berkeley Law and the Aoki Center for Critical Race and Nation Studies at Davis. She is the author of many articles on critical legal theory and has co-authored textbooks on criminal law; gender and law; race and American law; and economic justice. She seeks to bring compassion to the work of political, economic, and social transformation.
sujatha baliga’s work is characterized by an equal dedication to people who’ve experienced and caused harm and violence. A former victim advocate and public defender, sujatha is a frequent guest lecturer at universities and conferences about her decades of restorative justice work. She also speaks publicly and inside prisons about her own experiences as a survivor of child sexual abuse and her path to forgiveness. Her personal and research interests include the forgiveness of seemingly unforgivable acts, survivor-led movements, restorative justice’s potential impact on racial disparities in our legal systems, and Buddhist approaches to conflict transformation. She’s a member of the Gyuto Foundation in Richmond, CA, where she leads meditation on Monday nights. She was named a 2019 MacArthur Fellow.
