Bobbi Patterson’s scholarship focuses on lived religion and place, human and earth ecosystems, and pedagogy, particularly those involving community-based partnerships. Her scholarly training and teaching engages Christian and Buddhist contemplative traditions and practices, American Religious cultures, feminist and womanist approaches to women’s spiritual practices, and methodologies and methods. She presents and leads workshops on effective teaching and learning at the undergraduate and graduate levels as well as contemplative teaching and learning strategies including ethical decision-making. Her recent pedagogical publications describes pertinent assessment strategies. Bobbi authored the book Building Resilience Through Contemplative Practice: A Field Manual for Helping Professionals and Volunteers. 

Bobbi’s B.A. is from Smith College with a major in Religion. Her Masters of Divinity degree is from Harvard Divinity School, and her Ph.D. is from the Institute of Liberal Arts, an Interdisciplinary Studies Ph.D. from Emory University.

Bobbi served as the co-chair of the 2020 and 2021 Summer Research Institutes.

Lisa Feldman Barrett, PhD, is a University Distinguished Professor of Psychology at Northeastern University, with appointments at Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital. In addition to the book How Emotions are Made: The Secret Life of the Brain, Dr. Barrett has published over 200 peer-reviewed, scientific papers appearing in Science, Nature Neuroscience, and other top journals in psychology and cognitive neuroscience, as well as six academic volumes published by Guilford Press. She has also given a popular TED talk.

Dr. Barrett received a National Institutes of Health Director’s Pioneer Award for her revolutionary research on emotion in the brain. These highly competitive, multimillion dollar awards are given to scientists of exceptional creativity who are expected to transform biomedical and behavioral research. She also received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2019.

Among her many accomplishments, Dr. Barrett has testified before Congress, presented her research to the FBI, consulted to the National Cancer Institute, appeared on Through The Wormhole with Morgan Freeman and The Today Show with Maria Shriver, and been a featured guest on public television and worldwide radio programs. She is also an elected fellow of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences and the Royal Society of Canada.

Dr. Barrett was featured on the Mind & Life podcast episode Your Emotions Aren’t What You Think.

Sheila Kinkade is a writer and Advancement Strategist with the Mind & Life Institute. A communications professional and filmmaker, she has 25 years of experience helping nonprofit, corporate, and public sector clients tell the human story driving their social change work. Sheila co-produced Cafeteria Man, a documentary about school food reform, and co-authored Our Time is Now: Young People Changing the World. She received an MS from Columbia University’s School of Journalism and BA in English/Political Science from Duke University. Sheila loves a good story, walks in nature, and learning from other cultures.

Dr. Ed Taylor is vice provost and dean of Undergraduate Academic Affairs at the University of Washington where he oversees educational opportunities that advance and deepen the undergraduate academic experience. A professor in the College of Education, his research interests include the moral dimensions of education, leadership in education and social justice. His Ph.D. is from the UW.

Neil Dalal is Associate Professor of South Asian Philosophy and Religious Thought at the University of Alberta, where he teaches in both the Philosophy Department and the Religious Studies Program. His research explores philosophy of mind, contemplative psychologies, and meditation practices found in classical South Asian Yoga systems. He grounds this research in classical Sanskrit texts and commentaries as well as their living traditions.

Dr. Dalal’s current research focuses on the intersections of contemplative practices, textual study, and embodiment in Advaita Vedānta. He is the co-director of Gurukulam(The Orchard/Sony Pictures), a sensory-ethnographic study of a contemporary Advaita Vedānta community, co-editor of Asian Perspectives on Animal Ethics(Routledge Press), and has published articles in venues such as the Journal of the American Academy of Religion, Journal of Indian Philosophy, and Journal of Hindu Studies. Dr. Dalal received his PhD in Asian Cultures and Languages from the University of Texas at Austin where he specialized in Sanskrit and Indian philosophy, and an MA in East-West Psychology from the California Institute of Integral Studies.

Dr. Dalal is also a teacher within the traditional lineage of Śaṅkarācārya’s Advaita Vedānta. He spent several years living a monastic lifestyle in India while studying under the direct guidance of the renowned Advaita Vedāntin, Swami Dayananda Saraswati, who gave him permission to teach in 2002.  

Dr. Linda Carlson holds the Enbridge Research Chair in Psychosocial Oncology, is Full Professor in Psychosocial Oncology in the Department of Oncology, Cumming School of Medicine at the University of Calgary, and Adjunct Professor in the Department of Psychology. She is the Director of Research and works as a Clinical Psychologist at the Department of Psychosocial Resources at the Tom Baker Cancer Centre (TBCC), where she has worked since 1997. She is also Director of the CIHR SPOR-funded TRACTION program: Training in Research And Clinical Trials in Integrative Oncology, which supports a multidisciplinary group of University of Calgary fellows studying Integrative Oncology.

Dr. Cheryl Giscombe is the Melissa and Harry LeVine Family Distinguished Term Professor in the School of Nursing. She is a social and health psychologist, psychiatric nurse practitioner, certified holistic health coach, and Fellow of the Academy of Behavioral Medicine Research and the American Academy of Nursing. Dr. Giscombe is also the President of the International Society of Psychiatric-Mental Health Nurses, and she is a summer faculty member for the Harvard School of Public Health’s Health and Happiness Center, in collaboration with the University College in London. Dr. Giscombe’s research focuses on biopsychosocial factors that influence health and health disparities through psychological stress and coping pathways. Dr. Giscombe is an Inaugural Fellow/Design Partner for the Harvard Macy Institute’s Art Museum-Based Health Professions Education Fellowship. . Dr. Giscombe’s research has been consistently funded since 2004 by the American Psychological Association, NIH, SAMHSA, HRSA, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and the Josiah Macy Jr. Foundation. Most recently, Dr. Giscombe was awarded an R01 grant funded by the National Institute of Minority Health and Health Disparities to examine a culturally relevant self-care intervention to reduce cardiometabolic risk in African American women. Dr. Giscombe is passionate about mentoring the next generation of research scholars and healthcare leaders. As a Josiah Macy Faculty Scholar, Dr. Giscombe developed the Interprofessional Leadership Institute for Behavioral Health Equity. In addition, Dr. Giscombe is a founding member, Executive Committee Member, and Director for Clinical Sciences for the International Society of Contemplative Research. She is director of the Giscombe Health, Equity, and Arts Lab, and her research, practice, and teaching activities integrate mindfulness practices in clinical, community, and educational settings to promote optimal health, wellbeing, and equity for all.

Learn more about her work here

Margaret Cullen is a licensed psychotherapist and was one of the first ten people to become a Certified Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) teacher. For over 25 years, she has pioneered secular contemplative programs for a wide variety of populations including physicians, nurses, HIV positive men, cancer patients, overweight women, military spouses college students, clinicians and educators.

She has developed and taught contemplative interventions for research studies at Stanford, UCSF, Portland State, Penn State, University of Michigan, and University of Miami. In 2013, she developed a mindfulness and compassion program (MBAT – Spouse) for military spouses that she piloted at Ft. Drum, Maxwell Air Force Base, and Joint Operations Special Command. In 2015, she co-authored a book on Mindfulness-Based Emotional Balance (MBEB), an evidence-based program that she piloted across the US and Canada. She has also designed and co-delivered teacher trainings for both MBAT-Spouse and MBEB.

As a clinician, Margaret has been a facilitator of support groups for cancer patients and their loved ones for 30 years. In 2010, she was invited by Thupten Jinpa to contribute to the development of the Compassion Cultivation Training, first through the Center for Compassion, Altruism, Research and Education at the Stanford School of Medicine and currently as Founding Faculty for the Compassion Institute. Margaret is also the founder of Compassion Corps, a program offering grants to support compassion teachers to offer free programs to under-resourced communities and a Founding Board Member of the Compassion Education Alliance.

Chakravarthi Ram-Prasad is a Fellow of the British Academy and Distinguished Professor of Comparative Religion and Philosophy at Lancaster University. He is the author of seven books and some fifty papers on a wide variety of topics, from epistemology and metaphysics to comparative theology, Indian politics, and comparative political theory. His latest book is Human Being, Bodily Being: Phenomenology from Classical India, OUP.  Chakravarthi is also a Mind & Life Fellow.