Rae Johnson, PhD, RSMT, is a queer-identified scholar working at the intersection of somatic studies and social justice. Key themes in her work include the embodied experience of oppression, somatic approaches to research, and arts-based, cross-cultural somatic literacy. She has held academic positions in several graduate programs focused on somatics and is the author of numerous publications, including Knowing in Our Bones: Exploring the Embodied Knowledge of Somatic Educators and Embodied Social Justice. She is currently the chair of the Somatic Studies program at Pacifica Institute.
Polina Porras Sivolobova was born in Moscow, Russia, grew up in Juarez, Mexico, and has lived in New York City for the past fifteen years. Her body of work includes drawings, paintings, puppets, artist books, videos, and performances. She has been represented by El Museo del Barrio, Queens Council on the Arts, the Hemispheric Institute of Performance and Politics, and the Mexican Ministry of Foreign Affairs Department of Culture. She received a Master of Fine Arts and art and design education from Pratt Institute.
Lucia Bennett Leighton, MA, LPCC, R-DMT, has a master’s degree from Naropa University’s Somatic Counseling Psychology program. She has been writing and researching in the field of somatic psychology for several years and considers her exploration of oppression and embodiment the cornerstone of her career as a professional counselor; she thus plans to continue writing and researching on the topic for many years to come. Currently, she is a school-based therapist as well as an eating disorder therapist and uses a body-centered, social justice–based approach to counseling. Bennett Leighton’s research and writing has been published in JAMA Psychiatry, Journal of Behavior Therapy and Experimental Psychiatry, Journal of Multicultural Counseling and Development, and American Journal of Dance Therapy. She lives in Denver, Colorado, with her wife, Erin.
Christine Caldwell, PhD, BC-DMT, LPC, NCC, ACS, is the founder and professor emeritus of the Somatic Counseling Program at Naropa University, where she taught somatic counseling, clinical neuroscience, research, and diversity issues. Her work, called the Moving Cycle, spotlights natural play, early physical imprinting, fully sequenced movement processes, the opportunities in addiction, and a trust in the authoritative knowledge of the body. She has taught at the University of Maryland, George Washington University, Concordia University, Seoul Women’s University, Southwestern College, and Santa Barbara Graduate Institute, and trains, teaches, and lectures internationally. She has published more than thirty articles and chapters; her books include Getting Our Bodies Back, Getting In Touch, and Bodyfulness.
Victoria Henry is a queer poet/writer and high school English teacher living in New York City. She received her bachelor’s degree in English from Smith College in 2012, where she also completed the college’s poetry concentration program. She is the recipient of the 2012 Anne Bradstreet Prize for poetry from the Academy of American Poets, and her work has been published in various literary journals, including Enormous Rooms, Blood Lotus, and word for/word.
Jeanine M. Canty, PhD, is a professor and chair of the Environmental Studies Department at Naropa University. A lover of nature, justice, and contemplative practice, her teaching intersects issues of social and ecological justice connected to the process of worldview expansion and positive change. She has a doctorate in transformative learning and change from the California Institute for Integral Studies, master of arts in cultural ecopsychology from Prescott College, and bachelor of arts in international relations from Colgate University. Courses she has taught include Ecopsychology, Deep Ecology, Ecological Justice: Patterns of Oppression and Healing, Indigenous Environmental Issues, and an eight-day Wilderness Solo. She is both an editor and a contributor to the book Ecological and Social Healing: Multicultural Women’s Voices. Other selected works have been featured in The Wiley Handbook of Transpersonal Psychology, International Journal of Transpersonal Studies, Sustainability: The Journal of Record, Spirituality and Health Magazine, Langscape Magazine, World Futures: The Journal of New Paradigm Research, and Shadows & Light: Theory, Research, and Practice in Transpersonal Psychology.
Katie Manthey, PhD, is an assistant professor of English and director of the writing center at Salem College, a small women’s college in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. Her research and teaching are focused around professional writing, cultural rhetoric, dress studies, and civic engagement. She is a body-positive activist and moderates the website Dress Profesh, which highlights the ways that dress codes are, among other characteristics, racist, cissexist, ageist, and classist. Her work has appeared in Peitho: Journal of the Coalition of Feminist Scholars in the History of Rhetoric & Composition, Jezebel, and Journal of Global Literacies, Technologies, and Emerging Pedagogies.
Eli Clare, MFA, is a writer, speaker, activist, and teacher in Vermont who addresses disability, gender, race, class, and sexuality in his work. He has cerebral palsy and identifies as genderqueer and as a trans man. He has a bachelor of arts in women’s studies from Mills College and a master of fine arts from Goddard College. He is the author of Exile and Pride: Disability, Queerness, and Liberation and The Marrow’s Telling: Words in Motion, a collection of poetry. He also contributed to the 2003 anthology Queer Crips: Disabled Gay Men and Their Stories. Clare has received several awards for his work—such as the Creating Change Award, from the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, and LGBT Artist of the Year, from Michigan Pride—and frequently speaks at conferences and other events.
Lalo Piangco Rivera, MA, LPC, LAC, is a somatic psychotherapist who has worked in the social services field for more than twenty years as an educator, counselor, program manager, and supervisor in both school-based and agency settings. She has been strongly committed and dedicated to serving underrepresented and marginalized populations for the majority of her professional career, which has included work in anti-violence education, sexual health education in clinics and schools, a citywide support program for teen mothers, a job-readiness program for Chinese and Russian immigrants, and, most recently, the criminal justice system with clients struggling with addictions and other underlying mental health issues.
Carla Sherrell, EdD, is Core Assistant Professor in the Graduate School of Counseling and Psychology Somatic Counseling Department at Naropa University in Boulder, Colorado. The focus of her work is the integration of the theory and practice of counselor, social justice, and contemplative education in service to personal, interpersonal, community, and institutional transformation in the twenty-first century. As a private consultant, Dr. Sherrell supports educational institutions, other nonprofit organizations, and businesses in becoming vibrant, socially just communities. Her research interests include intercultural communication and sociocultural power, privilege, and marginalization in the somatic counseling/psychotherapeutic relationship.
Beit Gorski, MA, is a registered unlicensed somatic psychotherapist with more than a decade of experience working with those affected by intimate partner violence and systemic oppression. Xe has been working in trans and genderqueer communities for eight years, providing transition support and gender diversity training for educators and health professionals. In addition to teaching the Diversity Seminar at Naropa University, xe also works as an emergency psychiatric clinician in a community mental health clinic. Gorski navigates the professional/academic class having grown up in poverty and is a white, disabled, queer, trans, and nonbinary intersex person who practices nonmonogamy. In addition to xyr community education, guest lecturing, and consultation, xe volunteers as a counselor at a multigender emergency shelter for adults and children affected by domestic violence. Gorski is a proud alumnum of Red Rocks Community College, the University of Colorado at Boulder, and Naropa University.
Damien Davis is a Brooklyn-based artist. His practice explores historical representations of blackness by seeking to unpack the visual language of various cultures and question how these societies code/decode representations of race through design and digital modes of production. Solo presentations include White Room at METHOD Gallery in Seattle, Washington, and MoMA PopRally Presents Arty Gras at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Group exhibitions include Race and Revolution: Still Separate – Still Unequal at Smack Mellon in Brooklyn and The Magic Flute at 80WSE Gallery in New York City. Awards and residencies include the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council’s Workspace Program and the Rema Hort Mann Foundation’s Community Engagement Grant, New York, New York. Davis holds a bachelor of fine arts in studio art and a master of arts in visual arts administration from New York University.
Andria Morales is a visual artist and member of the internet-based duo Escobar-Morales. Her work explores identity through a variety of media and collaborative experiments. Her solo and two-person exhibitions and performances include Localidad Alterna with Frances Gallardo at MECA Art Fair, San Juan, Puerto Rico (2017); Something I Can Feel with Ala Muerte at VOLTA Art Fair, New York, New York (2016); Confirmations, Declarations, Doubts with Aaron McIntosh at Delaware Center for Contemporary Arts, Wilmington, Delaware (2016); and Public Play at Practice Gallery, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (2015). Her work is included in collections at the Whitney Museum of American Art, El Museo del Barrio, and Yale University Library. Morales’s awards include Lower Manhattan Cultural Council’s Workspace Residency (2013–14), New York University Steinhardt School Visiting Scholar (2013–14), and the Joan Mitchell Foundation MFA Grant (2008). Morales received a master of fine arts from Tyler School of Art, Temple University, and a bachelor of arts from the University of Pennsylvania.
Davis and Morales both participated as fellows at the Art & Law Program seminar-colloquium in spring 2016. Their collaborative performance Untitled (It’s Your World) was first performed at the one-night performance exhibition Home Perm 8 at Safe Gallery in Brooklyn, New York. Repeat performances have been curated into the exhibitions PULSE/TRIGGER at Sine Gallery, Newark, New Jersey, and Let Me Look at You at Arlington Arts Center, Arlington, Virginia.
Jen LaBarbera, MA, is a queer brown/mixed-race tomboy femme writer, archivist, and organizer. She is an ex-pat of the progressive political nonprofit world and brings an intersectional lens to her post-organizer career as a librarian and archivist for feminist and queer archives. LaBarbera has been involved in some kind of activism since the third grade and found her social justice home in the reproductive justice, queer, and anti-violence movements. She grew up in rural western New York, developed her skills as an organizer/rabble-rouser in the midwestern/mountain-west states of South Dakota, Missouri, Kansas, and Colorado, and has made homes for herself in the Rocky Mountains and Southern California.
Marcia Warren Edelman, MA, is a somatic counselor/body psychotherapist, facilitator, and educator who works with groups and individuals in the areas of multicultural identity, intercultural communication, and cultural competency. She earned her first graduate degree in international relations and, for almost fifteen years, worked in the fields of international educational exchange, international trade, and Native American policy and advocacy. Recently, she completed her second graduate degree in somatic counseling/body psychotherapy from Naropa University in Boulder, Colorado, bridging her experience with international and multicultural education and advocacy with psychotherapy and somatic counseling; in 2016, she was chosen to be a fellow at the 2016 Summer Institute for Intercultural Communication in Portland, Oregon. Her combination of experience has generated a unique perspective on the interpersonal and psychological influences of culture and identity, which Edelman brings to her work as a therapist in her private practice as well as to workshops she facilitates on cultural embodiment, social justice, and Embodied Code-Switching, a model she researched and developed that supports healthy integration of multicultural identities. She is passionate about providing opportunities in which people can explore the ways culture is embodied within them and through relationships, and how to move between cultural environments with somatic awareness and personal choice. Edelman identifies as a multicultural person of color who finds ongoing teachings—and constant movement—in the dance between the Brazilian-Italian and Santa Clara Pueblo identities within her.