FACULTY
Barbara Smuts, PhD.
Smuts received a Bachelors Degree in Anthropology from Harvard University and a Ph.D in neurological and biological behavioral science from Stanford Medical School and has studied baboons, dolphins, and chimpanzees. Read more.
Ann Southcombe Ann Southcombe is an Animal Relation Specialist and licensed wildlife rehabilitator who, for over 35 years, has dedicated her life to the care of gorillas, squirrels, lynx, bears, and many other species in captivity. Read more.
Ed Tick, PhD Edward Tick, Ph.D. is a holistic psychotherapist and transformational healer. He is a writer, educator, journey guide, activist and veterans’ advocate. He specializes in using psycho-spiritual, cross-cultural, nature-based and international reconciliation practices to bring healing to veterans, survivors, communities and nations recovering from the traumas of war and violence. Read more.
Thidi Tshiguvho, PhD Thidi Tshiguvho’s main research focus is on human-environment relationships, particularly the relationships between indigenous communities and wildlife. With a Ph.D. in Geography from Clark University and a background in conservation biology (M.Sc), Thidi’s work explores indigenous peoples’ perception of nature. Read more.
I. P. (Paddy) Burges Watson, MD, OAM Paddy Burges Watson qualified in Medicine at Trinity College Dublin in 1959. He trained in psychiatry in the Royal Navy and emigrated to Australia in 1969. Read more.
Kathy White Kathy White produced, wrote and directed the popular PBS series the Dinosaurs. She produced The KGB, the Computer and Me, about computer espionage, which aired on the PBS series NOVA. Read more.
Cristina Zenato Cristina is a professional diver who has spent the past 15 years exploring and studying sharks around the world. Over thousands of hours, she has observed various shark species including Tiger, Great White, Lemon, and Bull sharks, but considers her greatest experience the Caribbean Reef shark. Read more.
Y. Gavriel Ansara, MSc
Y. Gavriel Ansara has an MSc with Distinction in Social Psychology from the University of Surrey, UK, where he receives a departmental bursary for his PhD research in psychology and serves as an Academic Tutor. His research examines cisgenderism, the ideology that people with self-designated genders (i.e., genders that differ from those people are externally assigned in social, medical and/or legal contexts) are pathological, invalid, effects to be explained or can be unproblematically classified as a distinct class of person. This research shares many conceptual links with trans-species psychology, including the belief that biological and cultural diversity should be embraced and protected; a critical view of essentialist taxonomies that valuate sentient beings based on their conformity to social norms; and an awareness of the harmful consequences of treating sentient beings as distinct classes of life. He recently served on the international policy team, Professionals Concerned with Gender Diagnoses in the DSM, as a co-author of alternative recommendations to those proposed by the DSM-5 Task Force. During a sojourn in the US, his pioneering work as founder and coordinator of the Tiferet Outreach Project earned him the Keshet 2002 Leadership of the Year Award. From 2006-2008, he founded and directed Lifelines Rhode Island/Cuerdas de Salvamento, a state-wide advocacy, education, and support organization serving individuals of trans, non-binary gender, and intersex experience, and was subsequently awarded the 2008 Lifelines Pillar of the Community Award by board members and volunteers. He has diverse clinical training and as served on numerous boards and task forces related to social justice, public health policy, and civil rights for marginalised populations. Some of his past positions include youth counsellor, multilingual psychiatric rehabilitation caseworker, and editorial staff at Developmental Psychology, a peer-reviewed journal of the American Psychological Association.
Gavi has designed educational curricula and conducted professional training on numerous topics for psychologists, law enforcement, clergy, social workers, youth educators, and physicians, including a Grand Round at Rhode Island Hospital's Hasbro Developmental-Behavioural Paediatrics Division with internationally recognised paediatric transgender medical expert Dr Norm Spack and HIV expert Dr. Jody Rich. Gavi is the author of "Beyond Cisgenderism: Counselling People with Affirmed Gender Identities" in Ed. Lyndsey Moon's Counselling Ideologies: Queer Challenges to Heteronormativity (Ashgate, 2010). He is UK Speaker on Multicultural Issues for Organisation Intersex Internationale and was the first elected Trans Representative Officer of Surrey's LGBT Society in 2008. As a polycultural, traditionally observant Empath and Healer with ties to multiple continents, he is committed to Tikkun Olam (repairing the world and establishing sanctity within it), moving toward full dietary and lifestyle veganism and challenging human supremacist assumptions. His many trans-species friendships have taught him to appreciate the range of emotional, intellectual, cultural, and spiritual capacities possessed by our fellow beings.
Steven Best, PhD
Steve Best is an award-winning writer, noted speaker, public intellectual, and seasoned activist for 30 years in diverse movements. He is Associate Professor of Humanities and Philosophy at the University of Texas, El Paso. Best has published 13 books and over 150 articles, many of which have been translated into a dozen languages.
He is co-author (with UCLA Professor Douglass Kellner) of an award-winning trilogy of postmodern studies (Postmodern Theory: Critical Interrogation; The Postmodern Turn: Paradigms Shifts in Art, Theory, and Science; and The Postmodern Adventure: Science, Technology, and Cultural Studies at the Third Millennium (Guilford Press, 1991, 1997, 2001). More recently, he introduced and co-edited four groundbreaking and bridge-building anthologies: Terrorists or Freedom Fighters? Reflections on the Liberation of Animals (Lantern Books, 2004); Igniting a Revolution: Voices in Defense of the Earth (AK Press, 2006); Academic Repression: Reflections on the Academic-Industrial Complex (AK Press, 2010); and The Global Industrial Complex: Systems of Domination (Rowman & Littlefield 2011). He is currently completing an ambitious book, entitled: Animal Liberation and Moral Progress: The Struggle for Human Evolution (Rowman & Littlefield, 2012).
Steve's incisive research and teachings on the crucial topics of the day, along with his controversial positions and high-profile activism has earned him multiple awards, including selection by VegNews Magazine as one of the nations "25 Most Fascinating Vegetarians." But his passionate advocacy of "total liberation" (integrating struggles to emancipate humans, animals, and the earth into a comprehensive movement for systemic change) has put him under heavy fire as well. In 2005, for instance, he was pressured (and refused) to testify before the US Senate Committee Hearings on "Ecoterrorism"; he was forced out of his department Chair position; and the British Home Office banned him for life from the entire UK on the grounds that his writing and activism constitutes "a threat to the public order."
A rare example of an engaged academic and public intellectual, Best has lectured throughout the world, interviewed with global media, and appeared or was featured in numerous documentaries. "In a world of environmental ruination, species extinction, and predatory global capitalism," Steve says, "academics should not have the luxury to pursue abstract issues unrelated to the urgent need for systemic change at all levels; they ought, rather, to abandon petty ego obsessions and career narcissism, in order to help clarify and change the causes of social and ecological breakdown, which demands a break from the ten thousand year reign of dominator cultures." From Romania to Russia, Poland to Paris, and Slovenia to South Africa, Best inspires and agitates at a global level and shows what philosophy means in a world in crisis.
Robin Bjork, PhD
Científica Principal
Programa de Ciencias para la Conservación, SalvaNATURA
Colonia Flor Blanca, 33 Ave. Sur # 640
San Salvador, El Salvador
Robin Bjork is a Senior Scientist for SalvaNATURA, a non-profit non-governmental environmental organization in El Salvador. She holds a doctorate in wildlife science and a master’s degree in coastal ecology. Her past research has focused on documenting spatial patterns of regional migrant tropical birds with a goal of providing guidance to regional conservation planning. Robin began working with wild psittacines in 1994 when she directed development of the first radio tracking device to withstand the force of macaw bills and used the device to track the movements of Great Green Macaws in Costa Rica. Her dissertation research identified the migration of Mealy Parrots across Guatemalan lowlands, the first detailed documentation of such a pattern in psittacines. She continues conservation research with wild parrots and macaws and is currently directing a program to reintroduce Scarlet Macaws to El Salvador and protect endangered Yellow-naped Parrots.
Jeff Borchers, MS, PhD, LPC
Jeff is a licensed professional counselor with a background in research, teaching, training, policy analysis, and organizational development. Over the past 25 years, he has worked in academia, government, and the private sector on issues of social, ecological, and psychological significance. His interests include the use of ecotherapy to improve psychological well being and to foster a mindfulness approach to caring for animals and the land.
As an employee assistance professional, Jeff provides consultations, group trainings, and coaching, and is certified in mediation and conflict management. In all his work, Jeff draws from his background in research, teaching, training, policy analysis, and organizational development to facilitate lasting change.
Jeff’s education includes a PhD in ecology from Oregon State University, a master’s degree in counseling from Capella University, and a master’s degree from Yale University. He also has taught traditional martial arts for over 30 years, holding the rank of nidan in Shotokan karate-dō. Jeff has a private practice, Commensa Counseling for Wellness, where he works with individuals, couples, families, and groups, and provides training and interventions for organizations.
Martin Brüne, Dr. med.
Martin Brüne graduated
in Medicine from Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster,
Germany, in 1988. He received specialist training in neurology, psychiatry,
and psychotherapy. Since 1998 he has worked as Consultant Psychiatrist
in the Department of Psychiatry, University of Bochum, Germany. In
2001 he completed his habilitation thesis and was promoted to Professor
of Psychiatry in 2007. His main research interests are social cognition
in psychiatric disorders, and psychopathology in evolutionary perspective
including cross-species comparison. He has conducted research into
the theory of mind and nonverbal behaviour in various psychopathological
conditions. He co-edited a book, The
Social Brain -Evolution and Pathology,
with Hedda Ribbert and Wulf Schiefenhövel (Wiley, 2003). Most
recently, he published a book entitled Textbook
of Evolutionary Psychiatry-The Origins of Psychopathology (Oxford University Press, 2008).
Carol Buckley
Carol Buckley is an international leader in trauma recovery of Asian and Africa elephants. She has over thirty years experience with elephants in captivity and is co-founder of the first natural-habitat refuge for sick, old and needy endangered elephants, the Elephant Sanctuary in Tennessee. Previously, she operated her own elephant management company, Tarra Productions, named after two-year old female elephants, Tarra, who inspired Carol to create the Sanctuary where Tarra now lives. Carol coordinated the rescue of the first elephant ever confiscated by the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) and was responsible for bringing 24 elephants to sanctuary. She attended the Exotic Animal Training and Management Program at Moorpark College in California. Through her intimate experience and knowledge of elephant values, physiology, and culture, Carol developed the philosophy and method of passive control as part of a non-dominating, holistic healthcare program for elephants in recovery. In an unprecedented event, Carol coordinated and designed treatment for a group of eight female elephants who had lived nearly four decades as circus elephants and were released to sanctuary after being confiscated from the Hawthorn Corporation by the USDA. This seminal work that articulates the interface between individual and cultural recovery constitutes a vital contribution bridging elephant welfare and conservation. In addition to her clinical work with individual elephants, Carol is an active spokesperson, expert witness, and educator for elephant care and protection, nationally and internationally. She works with governmental agencies and private organizations to strengthen regulations pertaining to the welfare of elephants in captivity. Featured on diverse television, books, films documentaries, and news media, Carol has also received the Genesis Award in 2001 and was awarded TIME Magazine’s prestigious Hero for the Planet Award in recognition for her innovative work.
Ginger Casto
Ten years ago, after a challenging two
years as a Peace Corps Volunteer in the South Pacific, Ginger and
her husband discovered llamas as they were transitioning from the
culture shock of returning to the U.S.A. Since then, Ginger has been
active in llama rescue activities and education for llama care. She
has lived in the Rogue Valley, Oregon, for over 20 years in the social
service and non-profit consulting profession where she was the Director
of Residential Services for The Youthworks, Inc. (now Community Works),
in Medford, Oregon, and supervised staff, foster parents and volunteers
to provide non-traditional residential services in foster home settings
for runaway and homeless youth as well as criminal offender youth.
In the mid 1980’s Ginger left direct services to become the
Executive Director of the Pacific Non Profit Network, a Foundation
Center Grantsmanship Library and in 1996 became an organizational
development consultant working with non-profit organizations in all
aspects of non-profit work.
Karen Davis, PhD
Karen Davis, PhD is the founder and president of United Poultry Concerns, a nonprofit organization dedicated to the compassionate and respectful treatment of domestic fowl. Founded in 1990, United Poultry Concerns addresses the treatment of domestic fowl in food production, science, education, entertainment, and human companionship situations. Karen has a PhD in English from the University of Maryland-College Park where she taught for twelve years in the English Department. She has been featured internationally in diverse journals. films, and television in recognition of her ground breaking work, including an in-depth profile in the Washington Post. Karen is also the author of numerous artilces and books including Prisoned Chickens, Poisoned Eggs: An Inside Look at the Modern Poultry Industry; More Than a Meal: The Turkey in History, Myth, Ritual, and Reality; and The Holocaust and the Henmaid’s Tale: A Case for Comparing Atrocities.
Margo DeMello, PhD
Margo DeMello is President and Executive Director of House Rabbit Society, an international rabbit rescue and education organization. She holds a Ph.D. in cultural anthropology and currently lectures at Central New Mexico Community College, teaching sociology, cultural studies, and anthropology. She is one of the foremost experts on rabbit social behavior and lives with a group of 50 domestic rabbits at her home. Her books include Bodies of Inscription: A Cultural History of the Modern Tattoo Community (2000), Stories Rabbits Tell: A Natural and Cultural History of a Misunderstood Creature (2003), Low-Carb Vegetarian (2004), Why Animals Matter: The Case for Animal Protection (2007), and The Encyclopedia of Body Adornment (2007). The Encyclopedia of Body Adornment was included in the 2008 list of Outstanding Reference Sources for small and medium-sized libraries by the Reference and User Services Association (RUSA), a division of the American Library Association.
She has recently had articles published in the Encyclopedia of Human-Animal Relationships (Marc Bekoff, ed.), Encyclopedia of Animal Rights (Marc Bekoff, ed.), and A Cultural History of Animals: The Modern Age (Randy Malamud, ed.). Her newest books, to be released in 2009 and 2010, will be A Cultural Encyclopedia of Feet and Footwear and the edited collection, Teaching the Animal: Human Animal Studies Across the Disciplines, and she is under contract to write Animals and Society, a textbook for Brill.
Suparna Baksi-Ganguly, MS
Suparna Baksi-Ganguly is the Founder Trustee and Honorary President Compassion Unlimited Plus Action (CUPA), non-governmental animal welfare organisation located in Bangalore, India and Founder Trustee and Board member of Wildlife Rescue & Rehabilitation Centre (WRRC). In recognition of her long-standing experience in advocacy, research, and legal initiatives to protect and improve conditions for elephants in captivity, Suparna was appointed to the new Task Force on Elephants that was organized to provide recommendations to the Government of India to address the crisis affecting free-ranging and captive elephants. She is also involved in numerous other animal welfare issues including as a managing committee member of the pioneering organization, Friends of Dogs Society, Calcutta, dedicated to humane Animal Birth Control of stray dogs, member of the committee constituted by the Central Zoo Authority of India, Ministry of Environment and Forests, India zoo elephant inspection, member of the State Wildlife Board of Karnataka, India. On several occasions, Suparna has testified for multiple successful cases (including an unprecedented case where a temple elephants was permanently confiscated from his owners and brought to sanctuary) in the High Court of Karnataka for rescue of captive elephants and protective confiscation of animals scheduled under India's Wildlife Protection Act. Recipient of numerous national and international awards, Suparna is also actively involved in the rescue and rehabilitation of diverse wildlife including monitor lizards, peacock, elephants, deer, raptors, and small urban wildlife. She holds a B.A. in English literature from Miranda House, New Delhi, and M.A. in Comparative Literature from Jadavpur University, Calcutta.
John P. Gluck, PhD
John P. Gluck is currently Emeritus Professor of Psychology at the University of New Mexico and Affiliate Faculty of the Kennedy Institute of Ethics, Georgetown University. Trained at the University of Wisconsin, Madison as a laboratory primatologist and clinical psychologist, he worked for many years with animal models of abnormal development with a particular interest in the effects of early experience on learning.
As time proceeded, and thanks to public, professional, and personal input, he became more and more aware of the extraordinary welfare costs that were extracted from the animals in order to conduct this work. This recognition motivated a serious change in direction which began with a Fellowship at the Kennedy Institute of Ethics and the National Institutes of Health NIH where he studied general bioethics, research ethics, and the moral standing of animals.
Since that time his work has been solely devoted to research ethics. In that capacity he has been the Director of Research Ethics Service Project in the Office of Research at the University of New Mexico (UNM), Co-Director of the UNM Health Science Center Ethics Institute, and Senior Research Fellow at the Kennedy Institute of Ethics. He has taught courses in animal ethics to undergraduates, graduate students, as well as medical and nursing students. His most recent book, authored with Tom Beauchamp, Barbara Orlans, Rebecca Dresser, and David Morton is The Human Use of Animals: Case Studies in Ethical Choice, published by Oxford University Press in 2008. He is currently working on a book about his ethical transformation tentatively titled Released: The Rediscovery of Ambivalence in the Use of Animals in Research.
Maike Heidemeyer, BSc
Maike Heidemeyer was born and raised in Germany. After her experience as a volunteer working with sea turtles on the Pacific coast of Costa Rica, she changed her plans from art study in London to a life dedicated to the wildlife of Costa Rica. She holds a bachelor's degree in biological sciences with emphasis in ecology and sustainable development from the Universidad Latina, Costa Rica. she is currently completing an MSc in biology with emphasis in genetics and molecular biology at Universidad de Costa Rica. She is specializing in Green sea turtle (Chelonia mydas) genetics and population studies of the Cocos Island foraging black turtle population.
Maike is an associate investigator with PRETOMA (Programa Restauración de Tortugas Marinas) in Costa Rica, working in the Sea Turtle Restoration and Monitoring Project. She is also active in other conservation related topics including shark finning, Hawksbill Sea Turtle jewelry decommissions, gold mining and live wildlife decommission and reintroduction.
Maike is a professional translator in German, English, and Spanish. Having lived with parakeets, cockatiels and parrots for her entire life, she is now in the process of achieving her dream of establishing a sanctuary and trauma recovery center for rescued parrots. She started this project with the adoption of two Amazons, Lorenzo and Plumito, who were illegally stolen as chicks from their families in the wild. After enduring this trauma and abuse in captivity, the two are now living as a happy couple.
pattrice jones
pattrice jones is the
author of Aftershock:
Confronting Trauma in a Violent World, a Guide for Activists and Their
Allies and
the cofounder of the Eastern Shore Sanctuary and Education Center.
She received her graduate training in clinical psychology at the University
of Michigan, having previously completed the Clinical Concentration
program jointly administered by Towson University and the Sheppard
and Enoch Pratt Hospital in Baltimore. She has facilitated support
groups for survivors of childhood sexual abuse, growth groups for
at-risk youth, and workshops for stressed social change activists,
including animal advocates. At the Eastern Shore Sanctuary, she developed
a method of rehabilitation for roosters traumatized by cockfighting
and has closely observed the process by which chickens who have not
been traumatized by captivity or genetic manipulation readily "re-wild"
themselves. Her theoretical work focuses on the role of trauma in
the origins and maintenance of the race-sex-species nexus of oppression
and in the escalating water and climate emergencies.
Richard Katz
Richard has been an executive producer, writer and senior editor for countless network and PBS programs. His commercial television credits include Zora Neal Huston (ABC/Disney), Hurricane Ike: The Hidden Victims (NBC), and A Band With No Instruments (NBC).
Richard's PBS credits include Peter Paul & Mary and Out of Work, both of which received national Emmys. Additional PBS credits include the documentary series Earthkeeping and The Aids Quarterly. Currently, Katz’s work is regularly seen on the NBC Nightly News.
Janet Kaylo, MA, CMA, SrDMP, RSMT
Janet holds an MA (with Distinction) in Jungian and Post Jungian Studies from the University of Essex, Centre for Psychoanalytic Studies, UK. She is a Movement Analyst, Registered Dance/Movement Psychotherapist, and a Registered Somatic Movement Therapist. She is Founder/Director of Laban/Bartenieff and Somatic Studies International, which presents professional certification in Movement Analysis and Bodymind Practice™.
Janet danced professionally in New York City, and co-founded as Dance Editor InStep with the Performing Arts of New York, a 32-page monthly dance-based tabloid. She founded her own Repertory Dance Theatre Company, presenting original works with nationally-recognized choreographers, musicians and visual artists. Janet trained in Movement Analysis at the Laban/Bartenieff Institute of Movement Studies, NY, and worked as core faculty on Certificate Programs in Movement Analysis at the University of Maryland, College Park, and at the University of Quebec at Montreal before becoming full time faculty at the Laban Centre, City University, UK. She collaboratively designed the MA in Dance/Movement Psychotherapy at Goldsmiths University of London, spearheading the programme as the first Course leader. She spent a decade training dancers and dance movement therapists in Movement Analysis and somatic approaches to technique, improvisation and clinical work in the UK; has presented workshops and short trainings throughout Europe – and in India, where she co-designed a dance therapy model for NGO workers, emphasizing somatic elements of attunement and nonverbal communication in therapeutic work.
Janet is currently training in Equine Hanna Somatics®, based on a neuro-muscular, therapeutic modality that enhances a horse's (and other animals') somatic agency through voluntary re-patterning movement work. Her publications include "The Phenomenological Body and Analytical Psychology"; "Movement Observation and Phenomenology"; "Imagination and the Mundus Imaginalis"; and "Anima and Animus Embodied – Jungian gender and Laban Movement Analysis."
Ruth Klaus, CACC.jpg)
Ruth is a professional companion animal consultant and caregiver. She endeavors to provide education and bring awareness to significant issues surrounding companion animal guardianship. She alerts people to concerns such as contaminated food recalls, temperature and confinement issues, and those of disaster and relocation planning.
Ruth offers support to those experiencing grief for and loss of a companion animal and other species. She is contributing to the culmination of a professional training manual for use in the facilitation of support groups. An upcoming project is to help in the creation of material directing people in establishing legal measures for care of their companion animal in the event of their death or incapacitation.
Her explanation of why she does animal care giving is: "I love and value animals. I have a deep commitment to their welfare. They make me laugh and bring me joy. It's that simple."
Assimina Kouloukouri, DEA, DESS
Assimina Kouloukouri is the founder and director of Psychanimal (Psychologists and Other Scientists for Animal Protection). Psychanimal is a non-profit founded in 2010 in Greece to promote animal protection and responsible guardianship, and to encourage active participation by psychologists, teachers, and scientists in these issues. It has also created a team of volunteer lawyers, Animalaw Lawyers for Animal Protection, to help inform people about animal abuse and to pass legislation that promotes greater animal protection.
Assimina is also the founder and director of the Thessaloniki Cat Group and Athens Cat Group, non-profits whose aim is to spread love and the right behavior towards stray or owned cats through education, strict adoption procedures and cat guardian education. Their work includes education on cat spay and neutering, animal welfare issues, and handicapped animals adoption. Assimina has a broad experience in scientific psychoanalytical and psychiatric research and development research tools, organizing and guiding workshops, staff-training, and other activities conducted during her practice in France. Assimina’s current work and writing focus on human and animal abuse (with specific emphasis on the prevention of the animal and human maltreatment and animal hoarding), vegan lifestyles, psychosomatic medicine, technical psychotherapeutic problems and scientific research methodology in humanistic studies.
Assimina received her Diplôme d'Etudes Approfondie (DEA) in psychotherapy and psychoanalysis from Denis Diderot University, Paris VII, France and her maîtrise DESS (Diplôme d'Etudes Superieures Spécialisée in clinical psychology and psychopathology from University of Paul Valery, MTP III, France). Her doctoral work focused on the relation between the psychic stress and psychosomatic diseases (eczema-psoriasis) and the impact of art therapy and ergo therapy on schizophrenic patients. She is a member of the Northern Greek Psychoanalytic Society.
Karen Diane Knowles, MA
Karen has been a professional sign language interpreter at University of California, Berkeley for over twenty years, where she interprets and transliterates for undergraduate, graduate students, and faculty in diverse departments, and for the campus community. She is also a faculty member in John F. Kennedy University's ecotherapy program where she designed and teaches a course on human-nonhuman relations. Her post-graduate work included training in the emerging field of trans-species psychology and emphasized nonhuman consciousness and interspecies relations.
Currently, Karen's focus is re-orienting anthropocentric approaches to nature such as ecotherapy to trans-species perspectives and ethics. Recent articles include "Tuning In to Terra through Our Animal Kin" in Rebearths: Conversations with a World Ensouled (2010), and "Flesh, Fruits, and Vegetables" in Ecotherapy News (Fall 2011). As a rescue volunteer, Karen has worked with marine mammals, farmed animals, cats, and extensively for house rabbit rescue and advocacy. Her life's goal is to inspire compassionate curiosity and respectful regard for our animal kin.
Rae Ann Kumelos, PhD
A lifelong love of animals and a Greek/Scotch-Irish heritage led Rae Ann to a destiny studying and writing about animals in mythology. She holds a Ph.D. and M.A. in Mythological Studies from Pacifica Graduate Institute, a Masters in Literature from New Mexico Highlands University, and a degree in Marketing from Arizona State University. She teaches in the Humanities at the graduate and undergraduate levels.
Rae Ann's Voice of the Animal radio show is broadcast nationwide on XM Satellite Radio and the Animal Radio Network. She created the radio show to engage, entertain, and educate listeners about the physical, emotional, and spiritual connection between people and animals as expressed through myth, literature, popular culture, personal observation, and science.
Her book, Feathered Grace: Animals in Myth, Literature, and Life, was published in July of 2009, and her articles on the human/animal relationship have appeared in a variety of publications, including Best Friends Magazine, Spring Journal, The Albuquerque Journal, and Animal Wellness. Rae Ann's lecture series, Animal Advice: Are You Listening? will be featured at the Jung Society in San Diego in February of 2012.
In 2004, Rae Ann founded Penelope's Bow, a non-profit educational organization dedicated to elevating the connection between humans and animals as expressed through the literary arts. The organization creates radio scriptwriting contests and animal advocacy educational curriculum for culturally diverse student populations.
Randy Malamud, PhD
Randy Malamud is Professor of English at Georgia State University in Atlanta. He received his Ph.D. from Columbia University in 1989, and specializes in modern literature, ecocriticism, and anthrozoology. Many of his books and articles deal with how people think about other animals, and what happens to those animals when they become implicated in human culture. He is the author of Reading Zoos: Representations of Animals and Captivity (NYU Press, 1998) and Poetic Animals and Animal Souls (Palgrave Macmillan, 2003), and the editor of A Cultural History of Animals in the Modern Age (Berg, 2007). He writes frequently for the Chronicle of Higher Education. He is a Fellow of the Oxford Centre for Animal Ethics, and an international associate of the New Zealand Centre for Human-Animal Studies. He is also a patron of the Captive Animals' Protection Society in England.
Calvin Luther Martin, PhD
Calvin Luther Martin, PhD (Univ. of Calif., Santa Barbara) is retired as Associate Professor of History from Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ. Martin never rose above the rank of associate professor because, shortly after getting tenure, he refused to attend another department meeting, since he discerned that department meetings cause early dementia. He considered the trade-off worth it.
At Rutgers he taught the largest class at the university. He's the author of Keepers of the Game (California), In the Spirit of the Earth (Johns Hopkins), The Way of the Human Being (Yale), The Great Forgetting (K-Selected), and editor of The American Indian and the Problem of History (Oxford).
He has been a Guggenheim Fellow and Senior National Endowment for the Humanities Fellow. He has won the American Historical Association's coveted Beveridge award for the "best book of the year in American history" (Keepers of the Game), and won the Anne Izard Storyteller's Choice Award (Way of the Human Being). He lives on the northern boundary of the Adirondack Park (New York State), with a featherweight cedarstrip canoe, a paddle, and a wife named after a boat—and still refuses to attend meetings.
Eileen McCarthy
Eileen McCarthy is founder, president, and CEO of the Midwest Avian Adoption and Rescue Services (MAARS), a unique organization located in St. Paul, MN that has provided sanctuary, advocacy and rehabilitation for wild birds living in captivity since 1999. Ms. McCarthy is also co-founder of the Avian Welfare Coalition (AWC), and served as President of The Association of Sanctuaries, an animal sanctuary accrediting organization, from 2004 through 2008. She conducts local and national presentations regarding the welfare and protection issues inherent in the keeping of wild birds in captivity, and has worked to promote animal protection legislation and regulation at the state and federal levels. She consults with and assists law enforcement, regulatory and animal control agencies, animal protection and advocacy organizations, and legislators regarding the welfare of avian species in captivity. Ms McCarthy also leads workshops, research, and courses, and is actively involved in ongoing local, national and international avian advocacy and protection projects and initiatives campaigns.
More recently, the therapeutic environment and treatment program utilized by MAARS for the many birds in their care suffering from capture or captivity-related trauma has led to a partnership with The Kerulos Center and the development of the Avian Care and Recovery Center (ACRC). The foundation of ACRC is to create a model for scientific, animal directed trans-species psychology and psychiatry. The ACRC focuses on the treatment of common conditions including post-traumatic stress disorder, attachment disorders, affect dysregulation, obsessive-compulsive disorders, and other psychological and psychiatric conditions. Such condtions, and effective treatment interventions, are well-documented in the literature and research involving both human and non-human behavior, psychology, psychiatry and neurology. The mission, accomplishments and residents of ACRC will be the strongest evidence available in advocating for the protection and legal rights of non-human animals.
Joseph Daniel Mitchell, MS
Joseph is a fullblood citizen of the Creek Nation and a member of the Muskogee Indian Community. For the past 26 years, he has worked in environmental sciences and conservation on tribal and federal lands with the tribes, the USDA Forest Service, Washington, DC, and Bureau of Indian Affairs. He was Senior Executive Fellow at the John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, and has worked with more than 200 tribes across the nation. Joe consults with tribal governments and communities on Indian law and treaties and advocacy for tribes to exercise treaty rights on federal lands, and implement traditional practices. He has also been involved in the evolution of several of the 26 tribal colleges throughout the country and has assisted many with establishing traditional ecological knowledge programs.
Michael Mountain
Michael is the co-founder and President of Zoe, which is building a global community of people who care about the animals, nature and the environment.
Until 2008, Michael was also President (and one of the founders) of Best Friends Animal Society, which runs the largest animal sanctuary in the U.S. for companion and domestic animals.
Michael adds that he’s delighted to be part of the Kerulos faculty: “Speaking as an Oxford dropout from the 1960s, I’d say that the Kerulos Institute is providing the kind of education that all universities should be offering!” As part of Kerulos, Michael is especially concerned with helping people understand that almost all the ills of the world today stem from our sense of disconnection from the natural world – and therefore from our own nature. “The Earth is our home,” he says, “and the other animals are our family and our neighbors. We’re destroying our home and killing our neighbors. No good can come of this. It’s time to build a whole new relationship to our fellow animals. And Kerulos will be laying the foundations and providing much of the key groundwork for this.”
Vera Muller-Paisner, LCSW
Vera is a psychoanalyst with a master’s degree in social work who has spent the last two decades years studying the chronicity and transmission of trauma. She also received a degree in Organizational Consultation and works with organizations to understand their defenses against anxiety and regression. She served as a research consultant for the International Study Group for Trauma at Yale University, and in 1996 received an appointment in the Department of Psychiatry, Yale University School of Medicine. Vera has conducted extensive research and clinical experience working with Holocaust survivors and is the author of Broken Chain: Catholics Uncover the Holocaust's Hidden Legacy and Discover Their Jewish Roots. Much of her clinical work focuses on helping those who suffer from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). One of the tools that she has found to be effective in managing memories of trauma is a protocol called Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR). She has adapted the protocol to Bilateral Equine Tapping (BET) for use with horses who display traumatic memory. Riding is a partnership, and trauma can be transmitted between partners.
Fabio Napolitano, PhD
Fabio Napolitano received a PhD in Animal Science and is associate professor at the University of Basilicata, Italy. His research is focused mainly on the study of farm animal behaviour and welfare, and consumer perception of animal welfare issues. Since 2002 he has taught "Ethology and Welfare of Farm Animals." He served as Italian expert at the COST (European Cooperation in the field of Scientific and Technical Research) action 846, Measuring and monitoring farm animal welfare and was nominated member of the scientific committee of external reviewers within the area of “Animal Health and Welfare” by the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA).
Laurel Neme, PhD
Laurel Neme is an international consultant specializing in wildlife policy and management. She holds a PhD in international and public affairs from Princeton University and a Master's Degree in Public Policy from the University of Michigan. She has worked in over a dozen African countries and for a wide range of organizations, including the US Agency for International Development, the World Bank, and non-governmental organizations such as the Nature Conservancy and Wildlife Conservation Society. Laurel is also author of Animal Investigators: How the World's First Wildlife Forensics Lab is Solving Crimes and Saving Endangered Species (Scribner, 2009) with a foreword by Richard Leakey.
She hosts the weekly radio show, The WildLife, on WOMM-LP in Burlington, Vermont featuring interviews with scientists and other wildlife investigators. Laural has appeared on ABC News Nightline, NPR's Science Friday, C-SPAN, among others, and presented to professional groups, including Interpol's Wildlife Crime Working Group and the Society of Wildlife Forensic Scientists, the American Museum of Natural History in New York, St. Louis Zoo and the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, DC. She is a fellow at the University of Vermont's Institute for Environmental Diplomacy and Security and on the international advisory boards of Wildlife Alliance and Wildlife Friendly Enterprise Network.
Bruce Nock, PhD
Bruce is a tenured neurobiologist at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, Missouri with faculty appointments in the departments of psychiatry and anatomy and neurobiology. He has been a laboratory scientist since 1973 and has published nearly 70 scientific papers on subjects ranging from the physiology and consequences of stress to learning theory to molecular drug design.
More importantly, Bruce has a natural affinity for animals. Learning about their behavior and physiology has been a lifelong labor of love. He received a Master of Science degree in psychobiology from Bucknell University and a Ph.D. from the world renowned Institute of Animal Behavior, Rutgers University. Bruce is the author of the acclaimed book Ten Golden Rules of Horse Training: Universal Laws for all Levels and Riding Styles, the newly released book Ride For Tomorrow: Dressage Today, and The Biology of Natural Horsemanship, a series of articles about stress—its nature, the damage it can do to a horse and how to minimize it.
Bruce is the founder of Liberated Horsemanship , a group of selected experts dedicated to helping people and horses worldwide by providing multidisciplinary, science-based information about the care and use of horses. The mission of Liberated Horsemanship is to help horse owners and equine professionals maximize the health and welfare of horses without sacrificing the fun and enjoyment of horse guardianship and use. To date, people from 15 countries and 45 US states have attended Liberated Horsemanship clinics and events in Warrenton, Missouri.
Susie O'Keeffe, MS
Susie received her Master's
with distinction from Oxford University in England. Her research explored
the human / wolf relationship, with an emphasis on how wolves can
guide us toward sustainable agricultural systems. For the past twenty
years she has also worked with a variety of environmental and local
agriculture organizations in the United States and Europe. Currently
she is developing an education project entitled, The Art of Reciprocity.
This effort explores the sensuous exchange, or "natural return" that
people experience with nature, and other species, when their capacities
for creative perception, (i.e. intuition, dreams, imagination, symbolic
and metaphorical perception and emotion), are joined with a commitment
to consciousness, and a practice of contemplation. Her work explores
how these forms of perception and understanding help humans cultivate
reciprocal relationships with the natural world and other animals,
and the ways in which these exchanges bring forth an inspiration to
coexist with all life. Susie is especially intrigued by the unique
role that artistic and creative expression play in helping people
deepen and relay this inspiration, and the insights it imparts. She
is currently writing about her recent trip to Alaska where she explored
the roles that integrating creative perception, consciousness and
contemplation play in deepening our ability to coexist with brown
bears, wolves, and the complex communities of other self-willed animals,
elements and landscapes, of the Katmai region.
The educational element of Susie's work includes an undergraduate course that examines contemporary and historic case studies of naturalists who have used creative perception, and prolonged contemplation, as forms of inquiry and understanding. Traditional conservation approaches are compared and contrasted with emerging ideas about our capacity for mutual exchanges with other beings, and the emerging understanding of animal cultures, intelligence and emotion. Students are introduced to the idea of creative perception, moral consciousness and forms of contemplative practice as valid tools of inquiry. They explore role that these practices and ways of understanding play in addressing our ongoing destruction of life and landscape. Students express what they have discovered, felt, dreamed and imagined through art forms of their choice.
lauren Ornelas
lauren Ornelas has worked for over two decades on issues of human and animal social justice. Currently, she is director of The Food Empowerment Project. Over the years, she has worked in many roles including as National Coordinator for Defense for Animals and as the head of Viva! USA, a national nonprofit vegan advocacy organization. Her work focuses on the relationships between food, labor and immigration issues, animal and human social justice, and the environment. Ornelas knew that being more responsible about what we eat was key to fighting injustice, and her idea for the Food Empowerment Project was born. She continues to be active in diverse campaigns to raise awareness of trans-species wellbeing and rights.
Dave Perry, PhD
Dave is a Professor (emeritus) in the Department of Forest Ecosystems and Society at Oregon State University, and lead author of the acclaimed textbook, Forest Ecosystems. He is a member of the National Commission on the Science of Sustainable Forestry, and on the Board of Directors of two nonprofits, the National Center for Conservation Science and Policy, and Na Huapala ‘O Hawai’i, which is dedicated to restoration and perpetuation of traditional Hawaiian values.
Dave’s research interests have focused on various aspects of ecosystem function, including especially how cooperation among species contributes to ecosystem health. He has taught ecology, silviculture, ecosystem management, and currently an online course in the ecology of sustainable resource management. He has conducted short courses on ecosystem management in Canada, Chile, and Brazil.
Nina Pierpont, MD, PhD
Nina Pierpont, MD, PhD, is a physician in New York State, specializing in behavioral medicine (children and adults). She attended Yale as a National Merit Scholar, graduating with honors. She holds her PhD in Population Biology/Ecology from Princeton, and MD from The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. Residency was at the Children's National Medical Center (Washington, DC) and the Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center (Dartmouth School of Medicine). She's a board certified pediatrician licensed in the State of NY and Fellow of the American Academy of Pediatrics.
Nina lived in the (Peruvian) Amazon jungle in a tent for two years studying bird behavior—the subject of her doctoral thesis. She then shifted into medicine, in order to give her science a human face. She has practiced medicine, briefly, on the Navajo reservation, and was a pediatrician at a native-run hospital on the Alaska tundra for two years (second year, as chief)—living with Yup'ik Eskimos. For three years, she was the pediatrician to the Mohawk Nation on the St. Regis reserve, NYS. She is the author of a handful of scientific articles, and best known as the name behind Wind Turbine Syndrome. Her book, "Wind Turbine Syndrome: A Report on a Natural Experiment" (K-Selected 2009), has sold thousands of copies, globally, has been translated into half a dozen languages, and continues to infuriate the global wind energy industry. Nina lives on the northern boundary of the Adirondack Park with a featherweight cedarstrip canoe, a paddle, and a husband absurdly named after a couple of Reformation figures—and plays Chopin Nocturnes on a Schimmel grand.
Annie Potts, PhD
Annie Potts is the Co-Director of the New Zealand Centre for Human-Animal Studies, which is based in the School of Humanities at the University of Canterbury, Christchurch, Aotearoa New Zealand. She has a PhD in Critical Psychology and a more recent background in Gender Studies and Cultural Studies. She is the author of The Science/Fiction of Sex: Feminist Deconstruction and the Vocabularies of Heterosex (published in Routledge’s Women & Psychology Series, 2002) and co-editor of Sex and the Body (Dunmore Press, 2004). Her latest book, Chicken, is an illustrated natural and cultural history of Gallus domesticus (Reaktion, 2011), and she is also the co-author (with Philip Armstrong and Deidre Brown) of Kararehe: Animals in New Zealand Art, Literature and Everyday Life (Auckland University Press, 2011). Annie is also working on projects related to the link between social violence and animal abuse; the sexual exploitation of nonhuman animals in science and psychological research; and the changing representations of nonhuman animals in 120 years of cinema. She currently teaches courses on the depiction of ‘animality’ and human-animal relations in mythology, folklore, film, graphic novels, and new media. Annie lives in a multispecies household in the port town of Lyttelton, and has a passion for re-homing unwanted and abused chickens. She also writes a regular column on art and animal advocacy for the Australian magazine Vegan Voice.
Jill Robinson
Born in the UK, Jill Robinson arrived in Hong Kong in 1985 and spent the next 12 years working as a consultant for the International Fund for Animal Welfare ( IFAW). Repeatedly faced with scenes of widespread animal cruelty, Jill decided to introduce the concept of “animal welfare through people welfare” and founded “Dr. Dog” in Hong Kong in 1991 – the first animal-therapy programme of its kind in Asia. Today, over 350 dogs and their dedicated volunteers make regular visits to hospitals, disabled centres, schools and elderly homes in 10 cities across Asia, spreading warmth and love to people in need, while promoting companion animals as our friends and helpers.
In 1993, a chance visit to a bear farm in southern China changed Jill's life. Exposing the plight of endangered Asiatic black bears (also known as moon bears) cruelly farmed and milked for their bile, and learning how easily herbs and synthetics could replace bear bile, Jill embarked on a journey to end the practice of bear farming once and for all. In 1998, she founded Animals Asia. Less than two years later, Animals Asia signed a breakthrough agreement with the Chinese authorities to rescue 500 farmed bears and work towards promoting herbal alternatives to bile and the elimination of bear farming. Today, the Moon Bear Rescue has seen the rescue of 276 bears in China and the opening of a new rescue centre for 200 farmed bears in Vietnam. Jill is a former member of the Hong Kong Government’s Animal Welfare Advisory Group and Honorary Adviser to the Ocean Park Conservation Foundation, Hong Kong. Among diverse accolades, Jill has been awarded an MBE by Queen Elizabeth in recognition of her services to animal welfare in Asia, presented with the USA Genesis, the Marchig Animal Welfare Award, was appointed World Animal Day Ambassador for Asia, and is a frequent guest on international television and documentaries.
Elke Riesterer, CMT
Elke is a Certified Massage Therapist and registered Jin Shin Do Practitioner with the broad experience of having worked with people and animals for over 25 years. She has been volunteering in the capacity of an all species Body Therapist at the Oakland Zoo since 1997 and uses a combination of body-centered therapies including her most favored modality, the Tellington Touch (TTouch™). The focus of her work centers in general around the complex well being issues of Elephants worldwide. Besides her work with Elephants at the zoo, Elke also tends to animals such as the giant Aldabra Tortoises, Monitor Lizards, Snakes and Giraffes. She has lectured extensively and has brought her work to the Elephant and Rhino Orphanage in Nairobi, Kenya, and toThailand and India at many locales. In addition to many exotic species, Elke works with Horses, Dogs and other home animals. Her upcoming book describes her love and healing journey with Elephants in different countries. Numerous articles have featured her mission.
Christina Risley-Curtiss, PhD
Christina is Associate Professor of Social Work at Arizona State University with more than 20 years experience in both public health and child welfare. Her primary areas of research are in the other animal-human bond and child welfare. Her social work elective course—Other Animal-Human Connections—won the HSUS 2004 Society and Animals New Course Award. She is past chair of The Arizona Humane LINK, a coalition of animal welfare and human service agencies and is a member of the National Humane Link Coalition.
Christina has received grants from the Kenneth A. Scott Charitable Trust, a KeyBank Trust and the Animal Welfare Trust to develop an assessment and intervention program for children and youth who have abused animals. She is a Fellow at the Oxford Centre on Animal Ethics, is on the human-animal studies committee of Animals and Society Institute (ASI) and a fellow for the University of Denver School Of Social Work Institute on Human-Animal Interactions. She has presented at Oxford on the role of other animals in child welfare, at the American Humane Association Annual Conference on other animals and communities of color, at the Social Work Spirituality Conference on spirituality and other animals; at the first Veterinary Social Work Summit held in Knoxville, TN; and in Canada on assessment and treatment of animal abuse. She does hands-on rescue work including having volunteered to help animals during the Katrina rescue and she was a founding member of a TNR feral cat program at ASU. She currently lives in a trans-species cultural home with a number of cats and chickens, a dog and horse.
Charlie Russell
Charlie Russell is the
founding director of the Pacific Rim Grizzly Bear Co-Existence Study.
Renowned worldwide for his ground-breaking work with grizzly bears
in Canada and Russia, Charlie has spent the better part of 48 years
closely observing the nature of these animals in their natural habitat
— more time than anyone else in direct, peaceful relationship
with wild grizzly bears. A former rancher and guide, Charlie is also
an author, photographer, and self-taught pilot.
Charlie's visionary and courageous work has overthrown countless widely held convictions concerning the nature of grizzly bears. He is the only person to ever successfully demonstrate that, when treated as intelligent beings, worthy and deserving of respect, grizzly bears will co-exist peacefully with humans.
His experience includes an 18 year exploration of how grizzlies used and shared his ranch situated on the boundary of Waterton / Glacier International Park near the border between Alberta and Montana. During this time he developed systems that allowed his cattle and the bears to co-exist. In 1992-93, Charlie lived on Princess Royal Island to create a film about the Spirit Bear with award winning wildlife filmmakers Jeff and Sue Turner. His first book, Sprit Bear—Encounters with the White Bear of the Western Rainforest, chronicles the two years spent living with and filming these little understood animals.
From 1996 to 2006 Charlie explored how human fear, anger and aggression have shaped the human-bear conflict. Determined to examine whether or not trust, kindness, openness and respect could transform our relationships with grizzlies, Charlie lived at the heart of a very dense population of bears in Kamchatka, Russia. In this rugged and remote area, he pioneered raising ten orphaned cubs rescued from a Russian zoo. To gain maximum understanding about bears that do not fear humans, Charlie and his project partner, Maureen Enns, established deep and lasting bonds with the cubs, as well as several of the wild bears in the region. Wild and free after six years, the cubs grew into peaceful, trustworthy adult bears. They demonstrated no signs of violence or aggression toward humans.
Charlie's latest best selling book, Grizzly Heart – Living Without Fear Among the Brown Bears Of Kamchatka, chronicling this extraordinary story and visionary work, is published in five languages. He also co-authored with Maureen Enns a companion photo album, Grizzly Seasons – Life with the Brown Bears of Kamchatka. Several films have brought this remarkable story to the world, including the 1997 documentary for PBS Nature: Walking with Giants: The Grizzlies of Siberia. In 2005 the BBC film Bear Man of Kamchatka was made. Jeff and Sue Turner created a 90 minute theatre production entitled The Edge of Eden from which much of the footage for the BBC film was taken. To date this moving film has won 12 awards in both European and North American film festivals.
At 67, Charlie is working to bring co-existence home through the Pacific Rim Grizzly Bear Co-Existence Study. When he is not out sharing his experience and knowledge with audiences throughout the World, he is enjoying his granddaughter and his other great passion – flying the airplane he built himself.
Ray Ryan
Most of my life has been spent with other species. But it was in 1976 when I began to work with non-native wildlife. I worked at PAWS sanctuary, founded by Pat Derby, where there were Chinese Leopards, wolves, Grizzly bears, a black bear, a very large tiger, and one beautiful Asian elephant. I had no fear, just a lot of respect and compassion. There is an exhilarating feeling about being with the animals, but also sadness knowing how all of those beautiful animals had suffered in captivity.
In 1981, I went San Diego State to get a degree in Psychology. There, I worked in the psychology department caring for two Barbaray apes. The male, Mac, was almost three feet tall when he stood up. After years of being caged up, he was a little crazy—always grabbing at his head and biting his arm. The female, Sarah, was smaller and only wanted to be groomed and was the sweetest thing around. I was able to take care of them for about two-and-a-half years, and did my best to change their living conditions. Their outside play was in a chain link enclosure, which was in clear view of all of the students as they left campus to go to the parking lots. Eventually we constructed dark framed screens around the enclosure so that thay could see the students as they walked past as some sort of diversion. The saddest day was when Sarah passed away. The autposy indicated that she had died from years of neglect, where food was used as a motivator to work, and not as a life source. She evently just passed away after living off her fat reserves between the muscle layers. That really brought to light the plight of research animals, especially primates and apes and the slow pain and death that some, if not most go through.
After graduating, I went to work with African elephants at the San Diego Wild Animal Park, an affiliate of the Zoo. It was a huge learning experience, but not always positive. I had never been around so much tension and anger in people—all of which was taken out on the animals. Everybody in the elephant department beat the elephants. I found out quickly that in order to keep my job, I would have to do the same. It's hard to describe the power you have, when you are able and told to hit and punish an animal when she is on chains and can't get away. It's a sick and cruel way of working with and around any animal. Starving animals to get them to respond is horrible enough, but to brutally beat them to get a quicker response is beyond cruelty. At the time I was there, 99% of the keepers were male: the elephants were a matriarchal culture being beaten by an aggressive group of men—and if you look at circuses today, it's still the same. But I learned that the elephants were kind and if you just let them do thing on their own, they would do what needed to be done. It became so much more peaceful. However, no matter how close I felt to the elephants, and the bonds that we shared, I just could not work there any longer, particularly after several violent incidents had occurred. Leaving the elephant brought deep sadness. Working with the eles was by far the most intense and spiritual experience I could have ever asked for. Now, I hope to return that gift to them.
Allen M. Schoen, DVM, MS, PhD (hon.)
Dr. Schoen received
his DVM from Cornell University, College of Veterinary Medicine,
in 1978. He also holds a Master's Degree in neurophysiology and
behavior from the University of Illinois. Dr. Schoen received an
honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters from Becker College in 1998
for his contributions to Veterinary Medicine. He established the Department of Acupuncture, the first
in the world outside of China, at the Animal Medical Center in New
York City in 1982
Dr. Schoen has held faculty positions at Colorado State University College of Veterinary Medicine and Tufts University College of Veterinary Medicine in addition to being a faculty member of the Chi Institute for Traditional Chinese Medicine. He is certified in both veterinary acupuncture (1982) and veterinary chiropractic (1990). He is a former President of the International Veterinary Acupuncture Society (IVAS).
Dr. Schoen is a pioneer who has dedicated his professional career to the advancement of complementary and alternative veterinary medicine. He is the founder and director of the Center for Integrative Animal Health, a division of Global Communications for Conservation, Inc. (GCC). He is the co-editor of Complementary and Alternative Veterinary Medicine, Principles and Practice, and the editor of both Veterinary Acupuncture: Ancient Art to Modern Medicine and Problems in Veterinary Medicine: Veterinary Acupuncture. Dr. Schoen is the author of Kindred Spirits, How the Remarkable Relationship between Humans and Animals Can Transform our Lives (Broadway, Random House, 2001) and author of Love, Miracles & Animal Healing (Simon & Schuster, 1995). He has published numerous research articles on complementary and alternative veterinary medicine (CAVM). He has lectured on CAVM throughout the world including Europe, Scandinavia, Australia, New Zealand, South America, Africa, the U.S. and Canada.His research grants include one from the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation for developing CAVM curriculums for veterinary schools, and one from the Gauntlett Foundation for developing new approaches to chronic disease. He has received research grants through GCC, Inc., from the Janet Stone-Jones Foundation, and from the McIntosh Foundation. Dr. Schoen is a charter fellow of the American College of Acupuncture, an organization of physicians dedicated to scientific acupuncture. Dr. Schoen was appointed to the American Veterinary Medical Association's (AVMA) six member committee on alternative and complementary veterinary medicine for whom he developed approved guidelines for CAVM in 1996. He has been on numerous editorial boards of journals and advisory committees of various veterinary nutritional companies. He authored a column with Time-Warner's Pathfinder web site titled The Healing Arts. He was a consultant for a new Public Broadcasting System television series on health care as well as having his own radio show.
In addition, Dr. Schoen maintains a referral practice in large and small animal integrative veterinary medicine. Through this practice he has developed new approaches to such degenerative conditions as cancer, arthritis, liver disease and others. Dr. Schoen continues to create innovative natural nontoxic approaches to animal health, environmental health and human health care and integrate them into a new interdisciplinary program with a commitment to compassionate care for all beings.
Ken Shapiro, PhD
Kenneth Shapiro is executive director of the Animals and Society Institute (ASI) and co-founder and editor of the journals Society and Animals, Journal of Human-Animal Studies, and Journal of Applied Animal Welfare Science. He is also editor of Human-Animal Studies (HAS) Book Series. ASI is a a think tank on animal issues, current major programs are in Human-Animal Studies and the Cycle of Violence. Ken earned his BA from Harvard University and his PhD in clinical psychology from Duke University. He is the author of three books, including Animal Models of Human Psychology: Critique of Science, Ethics and Policy. Ken is also one of the developers of AniCare and AniCare Child, the only psychological treatment models for animal abusers, and trains therapists throughout the country on the use of these models. Currently, Ken and ASI are expanding their scope to include the criminal justice system with the specific intent of making animal abuse a more serious offense.
Dr. Dame Daphne Marjorie Sheldrick, DBE, MBS
Daphne
Sheldrick’s involvement with wildlife has spanned a lifetime.
Born in Kenya on the 4th June 1934, she grew up amongst animals, both
wild and domestic. She was educated at Nakuru Primary School and the
Kenya High School where she matriculated in 1950 with Honours and
the possibility of a bursary for University Entrance in the Cambridge
School Leaving Certificate, achieving the position of 8th in the Colony.
Instead Daphne opted for marriage.
Living as she did within a National Park, she had the opportunity to observe and study most species at both the field level and in a captive situation. Rearing their orphaned young has brought to her a unique and unparalleled understanding of the "inside story" of wild creatures. - knowledge of their minds and emotions, the role of instinct where it impacts on behaviour, the importance of scent and chemistry in their daily lives, telepathic capabilities, individuality, vocalizations, and the ability to interpret the subtleties of a complex body language.
For over 25 years, from 1955 until 1976, Daphne Sheldrick lived and worked alongside her late husband, David, the famous founder Warden of Kenya's giant Tsavo National Park. During that time she raised and rehabilitated back into the wild community orphans of misfortune from many different wild species, including Elephants aged two and upwards; Black Rhinos, Buffaloes, Zebra, Eland, Kudu, Impala, Duikers, Reedbuck, Dikdiks, Warthogs and many smaller animals such as civets, mongooses and birds. She is a recognized International authority on the rearing of wild creatures and is the first person to have perfected the milk formula and necessary husbandry for both infant milk dependent Elephants and Rhinos. The key to her success has been her life-long experience of wild creatures, an in-depth knowledge of animal psychology, the behavioral characteristics of the different species, and, of course, that most essential component, a sincere and deep empathy. For her work in this field Daphne Sheldrick was decorated by the Queen in 1989 with an M.B.E., elevated to U.N.E.P.’s elite Global 500 Roll of Honour in 1992, among the first 500 people worldwide to have been accorded this particular honour, and awarded an Honorary Doctorate in Veterinary Medicine and Surgery by Glasgow University in June 2000.
In December 2001 her work was honoured by the Kenya Government through a prestigious decoration - a Moran of the Burning Spear (M.B.S.), and in 2002 by the B.B.C. when she received their Lifetime Achievement Award. In the November 2005 issue of the Smithsonian Magazine Daphne Sheldrick was named as one of 35 people worldwide who have made a difference in terms of animal husbandry and wildlife conservation. In the 2006 New Year’s Honours List, Queen Elizabeth II appointed Dr. Daphne Sheldrick to Dame Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire, the first Knighthood to be awarded in Kenya since the country received Independence in 1963.
Barbara Smuts, PhD
Smuts received a Bachelors Degree in Anthropology from Harvard University and a Ph.D in neurological and biological behavioral science from Stanford Medical School and has studied baboons, dolphins, and chimpanzees. In the 1970s she began research with Jane Goodall on chimpanzees in Gombe National Park. She uses perspectives derived from evolutionary theory, studies of complex systems, and developmental research to examine the dynamics and functions of long-term social relationships. Her work focuses on social behavior in primates, wolves, and domestic dogs in the areas of play, social reciprocity, cooperation, greetings, conflict resolution, emotions, and mood. Questions that inspire her wok include: How do other animals develop trusting relationships in the absence of spoken language? What do animals understand about the beliefs and intentions of their social partners? And how can understanding of nonhuman social relationships help us to better understand human behavior?
Ann Southcombe
Ann Southcombe is an Animal Relation Specialist and licensed wildlife rehabilitator who, for over 35 years, has dedicated her life to the care of gorillas, squirrels, lynx, bears, and many other species in captivity. It has been her goal to learn and perfect how to facilitate their process of “meaning making” as they renew their lives after trauma and hardship. Ann has learned there is a delicate balance in being with them as a human yet relating on their terms. Ann is the author of several books and conducts wortkshops and lectures throughout North America including series called “Kinship With Animals” that shares her experiences with diverse species to raise public awareness concerning the deep emotional feelings and intellectual capabilities of other animals on the planet. Ann brings profound knowledge of animal experiences and values to intergate into human science and culture. Ann has no formal academic degree: her teachers have been the animal individuals who she has cared for. She therefore exemplifies the new kinds of learning and knowledge that can teach other humans and include other animals' participation in knowledge-making.
Ed Tick, PhD
Edward Tick, Ph.D. is
a holistic psychotherapist and transformational healer. He is a writer,
educator, journey guide, activist and veterans’ advocate. He
specializes in using psycho-spiritual, cross-cultural, nature-based
and international reconciliation practices to bring healing to veterans,
survivors, communities and nations recovering from the traumas of
war and violence.
Ed is Co-founder, Director and Senior Clinician of Soldier’s Heart: Veterans’ Safe Return Initiatives. He has been a psychotherapist for 35 years, specializing in working with veterans and others suffering with Post-traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) since the late 1970s. He has served as distinguished visiting faculty at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, West Point, Ft. Hood, and numerous universities, colleges and cultural centers around the world. He is internationally recognized as an expert on veterans, PTSD, and the psychology of military-related issues.
Ed leads semi-annual international educational, healing and reconciliation journeys to Greece and Viet Nam. He has published four books: Sacred Mountain, Encounters with the Vietnam Beast (1989), The Practice of Dream Healing (Quest, 2001), The Golden Tortoise: Viet Nam Journeys (Red Hen, 2005), and the award-winning War and the Soul (Quest, 2005), credited with transforming the trauma field to include spiritual and cultural dimensions of wounding and healing. His work has been translated and published in Greece, Japan, Viet Nam and Bulgaria. He is also a poet and author of over 100 articles in psychology, holistic health, mythology and spirituality, literature, philosophy, culture and travel.
Spirituality, soul, the Earth, and their well-being are at the center of all Ed’s work.
Thidi Tshiguvho, PhD
Thidi Tshiguvho’s
main research focus is on human-environment relationships, particularly
the relationships between indigenous communities and wildlife. With
a Ph.D. in Geography from Clark University and a background in conservation
biology (M.Sc), Thidi’s work explores indigenous peoples’
perception of nature, how that shapes their interaction with plants
and animals, and the biological conservation outcomes of these relationships.
Her research in South Africa, her country of origin, explored how
traditional beliefs about plants and animals species, which were based
on traditional people’s knowledge of the behavior, morphology,
and physiology of these plants and animals, determined how they treated
these species and why they incorporated them into the local culture
and the sacred forests conservation system.
Thidi’s work highlighted how snakes were believed able to communicate with humans about the biological and social condition of sacred forests they inhabit. Her research also compares the basis for (1) respectful vs. abusive treatment of plants and animals within indigenous and western societies, and (2) “othering” other beings in general. Thidi’s recent interest is on the behavioral similarities between humans and other species, particularly in terms of how they respond to environmental stress.
For the past 10 years, Thidi has taught ecology, conservation biology, geography, and other environmental science courses at several universities in South Africa and the USA. She is currently at Clark University, the Department of International Development, Community and Environment, working on Aids 2031 and other projects. Previously, she was part of National Science Foundation task force to establish a Long-term Ecological Research site in South Africa.
I. P. (Paddy) Burges Watson, MD, OAM
Paddy Burges Watson qualified in Medicine at Trinity College Dublin in 1959. He trained in psychiatry in the Royal Navy and emigrated to Australia in 1969. He is a member of the Australian and New Zealand and the British Colleges of Psychiatry. He has had an ongoing interest in the concept of a therapeutic community and since 1980 has had a special clinical and research interest in posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). He has written a number of papers on the pathophysiology and general health consequences of PTSD in Vietnam Veterans and PTSD in peace time disasters and World War II servicemen.
Paddy obtained a Doctorate in Medicine from Trinity College Dublin in 1990 and is a past President of the Australasian Society for Traumatic Stress Studies. In 2006, he was awarded a Medal of the Order of Australia (OAM) for services to psychiatry and war veterans. He is now retired, but remains an honorary Fellow of the University of Tasmania and currently is researching the evolutionary background of PTSD.
Kathy White
Kathy White produced, wrote and directed the popular PBS series the Dinosaurs. She produced The KGB, the Computer and Me, about computer espionage, which aired on the PBS series NOVA. For the NOVA Death of a Star about astrophysics, White received the Red Ribbon from the American Film Festival. She was scriptwriter for First Light: The Search for the Edge of the Universe, which garnered awards from the National Science Foundation and the Sloan Foundation. White designed and directed the dramatic re-enactments for Ulysses S. Grant, a three-hour film for the American Experience history series on PBS. In addition, she was writer, producer and director for New Shepherds of the Farm, the story of bold animal experts who are working to improve the lot of factory-farmed animals.
Cristina Zenato
Cristina is a professional diver who has spent the past 15 years exploring and studying sharks around the world. Over thousands of hours, she has observed various shark species including Tiger, Great White, Lemon, and Bull sharks, but considers her greatest experience the Caribbean Reef shark. She has completed more than 15,000 dives,including 2000 shark feeding dives, 600 cave dives, and 400 mixed-gas dives.
An avid diver since childhood, Cristina is renowned for her gift of developing positive, intimate relationships with sharks and the ability to apply touch techniques that relax sharks so that she may remove painful hooks from their mouths. This psycho-physiological state (referred to as tonic immobility) is not generated in defense, but indicates the sharks' profound trust and sense of safety around this marine trans-species ambassador. Cristina's work has put a personal face on sharks and brings a profound unique understanding of these species.
Cristina's experiences, observations, feeding, and other interactions with sharks have played a key role in discrediting myths that have vilified and justified the mass killing of sharks. Fluent in five languages,Cristina is actively sought after to participate in documentaries and diverse venues that support shark conservation including: BBC Nature, Discovery Channel, National Geographic, Ushuaia Nature, ABC, Diver Magazine, Skin Diver, Sport Diver, and Protect the Sharks Foundation. Cristina is a qualified NSS-CDS Full Cave Instructor, TDI Cavern and Cave Instructor, TDI Advanced Nitrox, Decompression Procedures and Extended Range Instructor, TDI Advanced Wreck Instructor, PADI Master Scuba Diver Trainer, NAUI Open Water, Scuba Instructor, and SSI Rescue Instructor.
Cristina summarizes her attitude toward her work this way: "I dive for a living, and after all these years I still live for diving."
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Y. Gavriel Ansara, MSc Y. Gavriel Ansara has an MSc with Distinction in Social Psychology from the University of Surrey, UK, where he receives a departmental bursary for his PhD research in psychology and serves as an Academic Tutor. Read
more.
Suparna Baksi-Ganguly, MA Suparna Baksi-Ganguly is the Founder Trustee and Honorary President Compassion Unlimited Plus Action (CUPA), non-governmental animal welfare organisation located in Bangalore, India and Founder Trustee and Board member of Wildlife Rescue & Rehabilitation Centre (WRRC). Read
more.
Steven Best, PhD Steve Best is an award-winning writer, noted public speaker, controversial public intellectual, and seasoned activist involved in diverse causes and movements for over three decades Read more.
Robin
Bjork, PhD Robin Bjork
is a Senior Scientist for SalvaNATURA, a non-profit non-governmental
environmental organization in El Salvador. She holds a doctorate
in wildlife science and a master’s degree in coastal ecology. Read
more.
Jeff Borchers, MS, PhD, LPC Jeff Borchers is a licensed professional counselor with a background in research, teaching, training, policy analysis, and organizational development. Read more.
Martin
Brüne, Dr. med Martin Brüne
graduated in Medicine from Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität
Münster, Germany, in 1988. He received specialist training
in neurology, psychiatry, and psychotherapy. Read
more.
Carol Buckley Carol Buckley is an international leader in trauma recovery of Asian and Africa elephants. She has over thirty years experience with elephants in captivity and is co-founder of the first natural-habitat refuge for sick, old and needy endangered elephants, the Elephant Sanctuary in Tennessee. Read more.
Ginger
Casto Ginger has been active
in llama rescue activities and education for llama care. She has
lived in the Rogue Valley, Oregon, for over 20 years in the social
service and non-profit consulting profession.Read more.
Karen Davis, PhD Karen Davis, PhD is the founder and president of United Poultry Concerns, a nonprofit organization dedicated to the compassionate and respectful treatment of domestic fowl. Read more.
Margo
DeMello, PhD Margo DeMello
is President and Executive Director of House Rabbit Society, an
international rabbit rescue and education organization. She holds
a Ph.D. in cultural anthropology and currently lectures at Central
New Mexico Community College, teaching sociology, cultural studies,
and anthropology. Read
more.
John P. Gluck, PhD John P. Gluck is currently Emeritus Professor of Psychology at the University of New Mexico and Affiliate Faculty of the Kennedy Institute of Ethics, Georgetown University. Read more.
Maike Heidemeyer, BSc Maike Heidemeyer, BSc
was born and raised in Germany. After her experience as a volunteer working with sea turtles on the Pacific side of Costa Rica, she changed her plans from art study in London to a life dedicated to the wildlife of Costa Rica. Read
more.
pattrice
jones pattrice jones
is the author of Aftershock:
Confronting Trauma in a Violent World, a Guide for Activists and
Their Allies and the cofounder of the Eastern Shore Sanctuary and Education Center.
She received her graduate training in clinical psychology at the
University of Michigan. Read
more.
Richard Katz Richard Katz has been an executive producer, writer and senior editor for countless network and PBS programs. Read more.
Janet Kaylo, MA, CMA, SrDMP, RSMT Janet holds an MA (with Distinction) in Jungian and Post Jungian Studies from the University of Essex, Centre for Psychoanalytic Studies, UK. She is a Movement Analyst, Registered Movement Psychotherapist, and a Registered Somatic Movement Therapist. Read
more.
Ruth Klaus, CACC Ruth is a professional companion animal consultant and caregiver. She endeavors to provide education and bring awareness to significant issues surrounding companion animal guardianship. She alerts people to concerns such as contaminated food recalls, temperature and confinement issues, and those of disaster and relocation planning. Read
more.
Karen Diane Knowles, MA Karen has been a professional sign language interpreter at University of California, Berkeley for over twenty years, where she interprets and transliterates for undergraduate, graduate students, and faculty in diverse departments, and for the campus community. Read more.
Assimina Kouloukouri, DEA, DESS Assimina Kouloukouri is the founder and director of Psychanimal (Psychologists and Other Scientists for Animal Protection). Psychanimal is a non-profit founded in 2010 in Greece to promote animal protection and responsible guardianship, and to encourage active participation by psychologists, teachers, and scientists in these issues. Read more.
Rae Ann Kumelos, PhD A lifelong love of animals and a Greek/Scotch-Irish heritage led Rae Ann to a destiny studying and writing about animals in mythology. She holds a Ph.D. and M.A. in Mythological Studies from Pacifica Graduate Institute, a Masters in Literature from New Mexico Highlands University, and a degree in Marketing from Arizona State University. Read more.
Randy Malamud, PhD Randy Malamud is Professor of English at Georgia State University in Atlanta. He received his Ph.D. from Columbia University in 1989, and specializes in modern literature, ecocriticism, and anthrozoology. Read more.
Calvin Luther Martin, PhD Calvin is retired as Associate Professor of History from Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ. He never rose above the rank of associate professor because, shortly after getting tenure, he refused to attend another department meeting, since he discerned that department meetings cause early dementia. Read more.
Eileen McCarthy Eileen McCarthy is Founder, President & CEO of the Midwest Avian Adoption and Rescue Services (MAARS), a unique organization located in St. Paul, MN that has provided sanctuary, advocacy and rehabilitation for wild birds living in captivity since 1999. Read
more.
Joseph
Daniel Mitchell, MS Joseph is a
fullblood citizen of the Creek Nation and a member of the Muskogee
Indian Community. For the past 26 years, he has worked in environmental
sciences and conservation on tribal and federal lands. Read more.
Michael Mountain Michael is the co-founder and President of Zoe, which is building a global community of people who care about the animals, nature and the environment. Read more.
Vera
Muller-Paisner, LCSW Vera is a psychoanalyst and daughter of Holocaust survivors. She has spent the last dozen years studying the chronicity and transmission of trauma. Read more.
Fabio Napolitano, PhD Fabio Napolitano received a PhD in Animal Science and is associate professor at the University of Basilicata, Italy. His research is focused mainly on the study of farm animal behaviour and welfare, and consumer perception of animal welfare issues. Read more.
Laurel Neme, PhD Laurel Neme is an international consultant specializing in wildlife policy and management. She holds a PhD in international and public affairs from Princeton University and a Master's Degree in Public Policy from the University of Michigan. Read more.
Bruce Nock, PhD Bruce is a tenured neurobiologist at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, Missouri with faculty appointments in the departments of psychiatry and anatomy and neurobiology. Read more.
Susie
O'Keeffe, MS Susie received
her Master's with distinction from Oxford University in England.
Her research explored the human / wolf relationship, with an emphasis
on how wolves can guide us toward sustainable agricultural systems.
For the past twenty years she has also worked with a variety of
environmental and local agriculture organizations in the United
States and Europe. Read more.
lauren Ornelas lauren Ornelas has worked for over two decades on issues of human and animal social justice. Currently, she is director of The Food Empowerment Project. Read
more.
Dave
Perry, PhD Dave is a Professor
(emeritus) in the Department of Forest Ecosystems and Society at
Oregon State University, and lead author of the acclaimed textbook, Forest Ecosystems. Read
more.
Nina Pierpont, MD, PhD Nina is a physician in New York State, specializing in behavioral medicine (children and adults). She attended Yale as a National Merit Scholar, graduating with honors. She holds her PhD in Population Biology/Ecology from Princeton, and MD from The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. Read more.
Annie Potts, PhD Annie Potts is the Co-Director of the New Zealand Centre for Human-Animal Studies, which is based in the School of Humanities at the University of Canterbury, Christchurch, Aotearoa New Zealand. Read more.
Elke
Riesterer, CMT Elke is a Certified
Massage Therapist and registered Jin Shin Do Practitioner with the
broad experience of having worked with people and animals for over
25 years. Read
more.
Christina Risley-Curtiss, PhD Christina is Associate Professor of Social Work at Arizona State University with more than 20 years experience in both public health and child welfare. Read more.
Jill Robinson Born in the UK, Jill Robinson arrived in Hong Kong in 1985 and spent the next 12 years working in Asia as a consultant for the International Fund for Animal Welfare. Read more.
Charlie
Russell Charlie Russell
is the founding director of the Pacific Rim Grizzly Bear Co-Existence
Study. Renowned worldwide for his ground-breaking work with grizzly
bears in Canada and Russia, Charlie has spent the better part of
48 years closely observing the nature of these animals in their
natural habitat. Read
more.
Ray Ryan Most of my life has been spent with other species. But it was in 1976, when I began to work with non-native wildlife. I worked at PAWS sanctuary, founded by Pat Derby, where there were Chinese Leopards, wolves, Grizzly bears, a black bear, a very large tiger, and one beautiful Asian elephant. Read more.
Allen
M. Schoen, DVM, MS, PhD (hon.) Dr. Schoen
received his DVM from Cornell University, College of Veterinary
Medicine, in 1978. He also holds a Master's Degree in neurophysiology
and behavior from the University of Illinois. Dr. Schoen is a pioneer
who has dedicated his professional career to the advancement of
complementary and alternative veterinary medicine. Read
more.
Ken Shapiro, PhD Kenneth Shapiro is executive director of the Animals and Society Institute (ASI) and co-founder and editor of the journals Society and Animals, Journal of Human-Animal Studies, and Journal of Applied Animal Welfare Science. Read more.
Barbara Smuts, PhD.
Smuts received a Bachelors Degree in Anthropology from Harvard University and a Ph.D in neurological and biological behavioral science from Stanford Medical School and has studied baboons, dolphins, and chimpanzees. Read more.
Ann Southcombe Ann Southcombe is an Animal Relation Specialist and licensed wildlife rehabilitator who, for over 35 years, has dedicated her life to the care of gorillas, squirrels, lynx, bears, and many other species in captivity. Read more.
Ed Tick, PhD Edward Tick, Ph.D. is a holistic psychotherapist and transformational healer. He is a writer, educator, journey guide, activist and veterans’ advocate. He specializes in using psycho-spiritual, cross-cultural, nature-based and international reconciliation practices to bring healing to veterans, survivors, communities and nations recovering from the traumas of war and violence. Read more.
Thidi Tshiguvho, PhD Thidi Tshiguvho’s main research focus is on human-environment relationships, particularly the relationships between indigenous communities and wildlife. With a Ph.D. in Geography from Clark University and a background in conservation biology (M.Sc), Thidi’s work explores indigenous peoples’ perception of nature. Read more.
I. P. (Paddy) Burges Watson, MD, OAM Paddy Burges Watson qualified in Medicine at Trinity College Dublin in 1959. He trained in psychiatry in the Royal Navy and emigrated to Australia in 1969. Read more.
Kathy White Kathy White produced, wrote and directed the popular PBS series the Dinosaurs. She produced The KGB, the Computer and Me, about computer espionage, which aired on the PBS series NOVA. Read more.
Cristina Zenato Cristina is a professional diver who has spent the past 15 years exploring and studying sharks around the world. Over thousands of hours, she has observed various shark species including Tiger, Great White, Lemon, and Bull sharks, but considers her greatest experience the Caribbean Reef shark. Read more.
Y. Gavriel Ansara, MSc
Gavi has designed educational curricula and conducted professional training on numerous topics for psychologists, law enforcement, clergy, social workers, youth educators, and physicians, including a Grand Round at Rhode Island Hospital's Hasbro Developmental-Behavioural Paediatrics Division with internationally recognised paediatric transgender medical expert Dr Norm Spack and HIV expert Dr. Jody Rich. Gavi is the author of "Beyond Cisgenderism: Counselling People with Affirmed Gender Identities" in Ed. Lyndsey Moon's Counselling Ideologies: Queer Challenges to Heteronormativity (Ashgate, 2010). He is UK Speaker on Multicultural Issues for Organisation Intersex Internationale and was the first elected Trans Representative Officer of Surrey's LGBT Society in 2008. As a polycultural, traditionally observant Empath and Healer with ties to multiple continents, he is committed to Tikkun Olam (repairing the world and establishing sanctity within it), moving toward full dietary and lifestyle veganism and challenging human supremacist assumptions. His many trans-species friendships have taught him to appreciate the range of emotional, intellectual, cultural, and spiritual capacities possessed by our fellow beings.
Steven Best, PhD
He is co-author (with UCLA Professor Douglass Kellner) of an award-winning trilogy of postmodern studies (Postmodern Theory: Critical Interrogation; The Postmodern Turn: Paradigms Shifts in Art, Theory, and Science; and The Postmodern Adventure: Science, Technology, and Cultural Studies at the Third Millennium (Guilford Press, 1991, 1997, 2001). More recently, he introduced and co-edited four groundbreaking and bridge-building anthologies: Terrorists or Freedom Fighters? Reflections on the Liberation of Animals (Lantern Books, 2004); Igniting a Revolution: Voices in Defense of the Earth (AK Press, 2006); Academic Repression: Reflections on the Academic-Industrial Complex (AK Press, 2010); and The Global Industrial Complex: Systems of Domination (Rowman & Littlefield 2011). He is currently completing an ambitious book, entitled: Animal Liberation and Moral Progress: The Struggle for Human Evolution (Rowman & Littlefield, 2012).
Steve's incisive research and teachings on the crucial topics of the day, along with his controversial positions and high-profile activism has earned him multiple awards, including selection by VegNews Magazine as one of the nations "25 Most Fascinating Vegetarians." But his passionate advocacy of "total liberation" (integrating struggles to emancipate humans, animals, and the earth into a comprehensive movement for systemic change) has put him under heavy fire as well. In 2005, for instance, he was pressured (and refused) to testify before the US Senate Committee Hearings on "Ecoterrorism"; he was forced out of his department Chair position; and the British Home Office banned him for life from the entire UK on the grounds that his writing and activism constitutes "a threat to the public order."
A rare example of an engaged academic and public intellectual, Best has lectured throughout the world, interviewed with global media, and appeared or was featured in numerous documentaries. "In a world of environmental ruination, species extinction, and predatory global capitalism," Steve says, "academics should not have the luxury to pursue abstract issues unrelated to the urgent need for systemic change at all levels; they ought, rather, to abandon petty ego obsessions and career narcissism, in order to help clarify and change the causes of social and ecological breakdown, which demands a break from the ten thousand year reign of dominator cultures." From Romania to Russia, Poland to Paris, and Slovenia to South Africa, Best inspires and agitates at a global level and shows what philosophy means in a world in crisis.
Robin Bjork, PhD
Programa de Ciencias para la Conservación, SalvaNATURA
Colonia Flor Blanca, 33 Ave. Sur # 640
San Salvador, El Salvador
Robin Bjork is a Senior Scientist for SalvaNATURA, a non-profit non-governmental environmental organization in El Salvador. She holds a doctorate in wildlife science and a master’s degree in coastal ecology. Her past research has focused on documenting spatial patterns of regional migrant tropical birds with a goal of providing guidance to regional conservation planning. Robin began working with wild psittacines in 1994 when she directed development of the first radio tracking device to withstand the force of macaw bills and used the device to track the movements of Great Green Macaws in Costa Rica. Her dissertation research identified the migration of Mealy Parrots across Guatemalan lowlands, the first detailed documentation of such a pattern in psittacines. She continues conservation research with wild parrots and macaws and is currently directing a program to reintroduce Scarlet Macaws to El Salvador and protect endangered Yellow-naped Parrots.
Jeff Borchers, MS, PhD, LPC
Jeff is a licensed professional counselor with a background in research, teaching, training, policy analysis, and organizational development. Over the past 25 years, he has worked in academia, government, and the private sector on issues of social, ecological, and psychological significance. His interests include the use of ecotherapy to improve psychological well being and to foster a mindfulness approach to caring for animals and the land.
As an employee assistance professional, Jeff provides consultations, group trainings, and coaching, and is certified in mediation and conflict management. In all his work, Jeff draws from his background in research, teaching, training, policy analysis, and organizational development to facilitate lasting change.
Jeff’s education includes a PhD in ecology from Oregon State University, a master’s degree in counseling from Capella University, and a master’s degree from Yale University. He also has taught traditional martial arts for over 30 years, holding the rank of nidan in Shotokan karate-dō. Jeff has a private practice, Commensa Counseling for Wellness, where he works with individuals, couples, families, and groups, and provides training and interventions for organizations.
Martin Brüne, Dr. med.
Carol Buckley
Ginger Casto
Karen Davis, PhD
Karen Davis, PhD is the founder and president of United Poultry Concerns, a nonprofit organization dedicated to the compassionate and respectful treatment of domestic fowl. Founded in 1990, United Poultry Concerns addresses the treatment of domestic fowl in food production, science, education, entertainment, and human companionship situations. Karen has a PhD in English from the University of Maryland-College Park where she taught for twelve years in the English Department. She has been featured internationally in diverse journals. films, and television in recognition of her ground breaking work, including an in-depth profile in the Washington Post. Karen is also the author of numerous artilces and books including Prisoned Chickens, Poisoned Eggs: An Inside Look at the Modern Poultry Industry; More Than a Meal: The Turkey in History, Myth, Ritual, and Reality; and The Holocaust and the Henmaid’s Tale: A Case for Comparing Atrocities.
Margo DeMello, PhD
Margo DeMello is President and Executive Director of House Rabbit Society, an international rabbit rescue and education organization. She holds a Ph.D. in cultural anthropology and currently lectures at Central New Mexico Community College, teaching sociology, cultural studies, and anthropology. She is one of the foremost experts on rabbit social behavior and lives with a group of 50 domestic rabbits at her home. Her books include Bodies of Inscription: A Cultural History of the Modern Tattoo Community (2000), Stories Rabbits Tell: A Natural and Cultural History of a Misunderstood Creature (2003), Low-Carb Vegetarian (2004), Why Animals Matter: The Case for Animal Protection (2007), and The Encyclopedia of Body Adornment (2007). The Encyclopedia of Body Adornment was included in the 2008 list of Outstanding Reference Sources for small and medium-sized libraries by the Reference and User Services Association (RUSA), a division of the American Library Association.
She has recently had articles published in the Encyclopedia of Human-Animal Relationships (Marc Bekoff, ed.), Encyclopedia of Animal Rights (Marc Bekoff, ed.), and A Cultural History of Animals: The Modern Age (Randy Malamud, ed.). Her newest books, to be released in 2009 and 2010, will be A Cultural Encyclopedia of Feet and Footwear and the edited collection, Teaching the Animal: Human Animal Studies Across the Disciplines, and she is under contract to write Animals and Society, a textbook for Brill.
Suparna Baksi-Ganguly, MS
John P. Gluck, PhD
As time proceeded, and thanks to public, professional, and personal input, he became more and more aware of the extraordinary welfare costs that were extracted from the animals in order to conduct this work. This recognition motivated a serious change in direction which began with a Fellowship at the Kennedy Institute of Ethics and the National Institutes of Health NIH where he studied general bioethics, research ethics, and the moral standing of animals.
Since that time his work has been solely devoted to research ethics. In that capacity he has been the Director of Research Ethics Service Project in the Office of Research at the University of New Mexico (UNM), Co-Director of the UNM Health Science Center Ethics Institute, and Senior Research Fellow at the Kennedy Institute of Ethics. He has taught courses in animal ethics to undergraduates, graduate students, as well as medical and nursing students. His most recent book, authored with Tom Beauchamp, Barbara Orlans, Rebecca Dresser, and David Morton is The Human Use of Animals: Case Studies in Ethical Choice, published by Oxford University Press in 2008. He is currently working on a book about his ethical transformation tentatively titled Released: The Rediscovery of Ambivalence in the Use of Animals in Research.
Maike Heidemeyer, BSc
Maike is an associate investigator with PRETOMA (Programa Restauración de Tortugas Marinas) in Costa Rica, working in the Sea Turtle Restoration and Monitoring Project. She is also active in other conservation related topics including shark finning, Hawksbill Sea Turtle jewelry decommissions, gold mining and live wildlife decommission and reintroduction.
Maike is a professional translator in German, English, and Spanish. Having lived with parakeets, cockatiels and parrots for her entire life, she is now in the process of achieving her dream of establishing a sanctuary and trauma recovery center for rescued parrots. She started this project with the adoption of two Amazons, Lorenzo and Plumito, who were illegally stolen as chicks from their families in the wild. After enduring this trauma and abuse in captivity, the two are now living as a happy couple.
pattrice jones
Richard Katz
Richard has been an executive producer, writer and senior editor for countless network and PBS programs. His commercial television credits include Zora Neal Huston (ABC/Disney), Hurricane Ike: The Hidden Victims (NBC), and A Band With No Instruments (NBC).
Richard's PBS credits include Peter Paul & Mary and Out of Work, both of which received national Emmys. Additional PBS credits include the documentary series Earthkeeping and The Aids Quarterly. Currently, Katz’s work is regularly seen on the NBC Nightly News.
Janet Kaylo, MA, CMA, SrDMP, RSMT
Janet holds an MA (with Distinction) in Jungian and Post Jungian Studies from the University of Essex, Centre for Psychoanalytic Studies, UK. She is a Movement Analyst, Registered Dance/Movement Psychotherapist, and a Registered Somatic Movement Therapist. She is Founder/Director of Laban/Bartenieff and Somatic Studies International, which presents professional certification in Movement Analysis and Bodymind Practice™.
Janet danced professionally in New York City, and co-founded as Dance Editor InStep with the Performing Arts of New York, a 32-page monthly dance-based tabloid. She founded her own Repertory Dance Theatre Company, presenting original works with nationally-recognized choreographers, musicians and visual artists. Janet trained in Movement Analysis at the Laban/Bartenieff Institute of Movement Studies, NY, and worked as core faculty on Certificate Programs in Movement Analysis at the University of Maryland, College Park, and at the University of Quebec at Montreal before becoming full time faculty at the Laban Centre, City University, UK. She collaboratively designed the MA in Dance/Movement Psychotherapy at Goldsmiths University of London, spearheading the programme as the first Course leader. She spent a decade training dancers and dance movement therapists in Movement Analysis and somatic approaches to technique, improvisation and clinical work in the UK; has presented workshops and short trainings throughout Europe – and in India, where she co-designed a dance therapy model for NGO workers, emphasizing somatic elements of attunement and nonverbal communication in therapeutic work.
Janet is currently training in Equine Hanna Somatics®, based on a neuro-muscular, therapeutic modality that enhances a horse's (and other animals') somatic agency through voluntary re-patterning movement work. Her publications include "The Phenomenological Body and Analytical Psychology"; "Movement Observation and Phenomenology"; "Imagination and the Mundus Imaginalis"; and "Anima and Animus Embodied – Jungian gender and Laban Movement Analysis."
Ruth Klaus, CACC
Ruth is a professional companion animal consultant and caregiver. She endeavors to provide education and bring awareness to significant issues surrounding companion animal guardianship. She alerts people to concerns such as contaminated food recalls, temperature and confinement issues, and those of disaster and relocation planning.
Ruth offers support to those experiencing grief for and loss of a companion animal and other species. She is contributing to the culmination of a professional training manual for use in the facilitation of support groups. An upcoming project is to help in the creation of material directing people in establishing legal measures for care of their companion animal in the event of their death or incapacitation.
Her explanation of why she does animal care giving is: "I love and value animals. I have a deep commitment to their welfare. They make me laugh and bring me joy. It's that simple."
Assimina Kouloukouri, DEA, DESS
Assimina Kouloukouri is the founder and director of Psychanimal (Psychologists and Other Scientists for Animal Protection). Psychanimal is a non-profit founded in 2010 in Greece to promote animal protection and responsible guardianship, and to encourage active participation by psychologists, teachers, and scientists in these issues. It has also created a team of volunteer lawyers, Animalaw Lawyers for Animal Protection, to help inform people about animal abuse and to pass legislation that promotes greater animal protection.
Assimina is also the founder and director of the Thessaloniki Cat Group and Athens Cat Group, non-profits whose aim is to spread love and the right behavior towards stray or owned cats through education, strict adoption procedures and cat guardian education. Their work includes education on cat spay and neutering, animal welfare issues, and handicapped animals adoption. Assimina has a broad experience in scientific psychoanalytical and psychiatric research and development research tools, organizing and guiding workshops, staff-training, and other activities conducted during her practice in France. Assimina’s current work and writing focus on human and animal abuse (with specific emphasis on the prevention of the animal and human maltreatment and animal hoarding), vegan lifestyles, psychosomatic medicine, technical psychotherapeutic problems and scientific research methodology in humanistic studies.
Assimina received her Diplôme d'Etudes Approfondie (DEA) in psychotherapy and psychoanalysis from Denis Diderot University, Paris VII, France and her maîtrise DESS (Diplôme d'Etudes Superieures Spécialisée in clinical psychology and psychopathology from University of Paul Valery, MTP III, France). Her doctoral work focused on the relation between the psychic stress and psychosomatic diseases (eczema-psoriasis) and the impact of art therapy and ergo therapy on schizophrenic patients. She is a member of the Northern Greek Psychoanalytic Society.
Karen Diane Knowles, MA
Karen has been a professional sign language interpreter at University of California, Berkeley for over twenty years, where she interprets and transliterates for undergraduate, graduate students, and faculty in diverse departments, and for the campus community. She is also a faculty member in John F. Kennedy University's ecotherapy program where she designed and teaches a course on human-nonhuman relations. Her post-graduate work included training in the emerging field of trans-species psychology and emphasized nonhuman consciousness and interspecies relations.
Currently, Karen's focus is re-orienting anthropocentric approaches to nature such as ecotherapy to trans-species perspectives and ethics. Recent articles include "Tuning In to Terra through Our Animal Kin" in Rebearths: Conversations with a World Ensouled (2010), and "Flesh, Fruits, and Vegetables" in Ecotherapy News (Fall 2011). As a rescue volunteer, Karen has worked with marine mammals, farmed animals, cats, and extensively for house rabbit rescue and advocacy. Her life's goal is to inspire compassionate curiosity and respectful regard for our animal kin.
Rae Ann Kumelos, PhD
A lifelong love of animals and a Greek/Scotch-Irish heritage led Rae Ann to a destiny studying and writing about animals in mythology. She holds a Ph.D. and M.A. in Mythological Studies from Pacifica Graduate Institute, a Masters in Literature from New Mexico Highlands University, and a degree in Marketing from Arizona State University. She teaches in the Humanities at the graduate and undergraduate levels.
Rae Ann's Voice of the Animal radio show is broadcast nationwide on XM Satellite Radio and the Animal Radio Network. She created the radio show to engage, entertain, and educate listeners about the physical, emotional, and spiritual connection between people and animals as expressed through myth, literature, popular culture, personal observation, and science.
Her book, Feathered Grace: Animals in Myth, Literature, and Life, was published in July of 2009, and her articles on the human/animal relationship have appeared in a variety of publications, including Best Friends Magazine, Spring Journal, The Albuquerque Journal, and Animal Wellness. Rae Ann's lecture series, Animal Advice: Are You Listening? will be featured at the Jung Society in San Diego in February of 2012.
In 2004, Rae Ann founded Penelope's Bow, a non-profit educational organization dedicated to elevating the connection between humans and animals as expressed through the literary arts. The organization creates radio scriptwriting contests and animal advocacy educational curriculum for culturally diverse student populations.
Randy Malamud, PhD
Randy Malamud is Professor of English at Georgia State University in Atlanta. He received his Ph.D. from Columbia University in 1989, and specializes in modern literature, ecocriticism, and anthrozoology. Many of his books and articles deal with how people think about other animals, and what happens to those animals when they become implicated in human culture. He is the author of Reading Zoos: Representations of Animals and Captivity (NYU Press, 1998) and Poetic Animals and Animal Souls (Palgrave Macmillan, 2003), and the editor of A Cultural History of Animals in the Modern Age (Berg, 2007). He writes frequently for the Chronicle of Higher Education. He is a Fellow of the Oxford Centre for Animal Ethics, and an international associate of the New Zealand Centre for Human-Animal Studies. He is also a patron of the Captive Animals' Protection Society in England.
Calvin Luther Martin, PhD
Calvin Luther Martin, PhD (Univ. of Calif., Santa Barbara) is retired as Associate Professor of History from Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ. Martin never rose above the rank of associate professor because, shortly after getting tenure, he refused to attend another department meeting, since he discerned that department meetings cause early dementia. He considered the trade-off worth it.
At Rutgers he taught the largest class at the university. He's the author of Keepers of the Game (California), In the Spirit of the Earth (Johns Hopkins), The Way of the Human Being (Yale), The Great Forgetting (K-Selected), and editor of The American Indian and the Problem of History (Oxford).
He has been a Guggenheim Fellow and Senior National Endowment for the Humanities Fellow. He has won the American Historical Association's coveted Beveridge award for the "best book of the year in American history" (Keepers of the Game), and won the Anne Izard Storyteller's Choice Award (Way of the Human Being). He lives on the northern boundary of the Adirondack Park (New York State), with a featherweight cedarstrip canoe, a paddle, and a wife named after a boat—and still refuses to attend meetings.
Eileen McCarthy
More recently, the therapeutic environment and treatment program utilized by MAARS for the many birds in their care suffering from capture or captivity-related trauma has led to a partnership with The Kerulos Center and the development of the Avian Care and Recovery Center (ACRC). The foundation of ACRC is to create a model for scientific, animal directed trans-species psychology and psychiatry. The ACRC focuses on the treatment of common conditions including post-traumatic stress disorder, attachment disorders, affect dysregulation, obsessive-compulsive disorders, and other psychological and psychiatric conditions. Such condtions, and effective treatment interventions, are well-documented in the literature and research involving both human and non-human behavior, psychology, psychiatry and neurology. The mission, accomplishments and residents of ACRC will be the strongest evidence available in advocating for the protection and legal rights of non-human animals.
Joseph Daniel Mitchell, MS
Joseph is a fullblood citizen of the Creek Nation and a member of the Muskogee Indian Community. For the past 26 years, he has worked in environmental sciences and conservation on tribal and federal lands with the tribes, the USDA Forest Service, Washington, DC, and Bureau of Indian Affairs. He was Senior Executive Fellow at the John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, and has worked with more than 200 tribes across the nation. Joe consults with tribal governments and communities on Indian law and treaties and advocacy for tribes to exercise treaty rights on federal lands, and implement traditional practices. He has also been involved in the evolution of several of the 26 tribal colleges throughout the country and has assisted many with establishing traditional ecological knowledge programs.
Michael Mountain
Through the 1990s, as editor of Best Friends magazine, he brought together grassroots groups and people all across the country to help build the no-kill movement that helped bring the number of homeless pets being killed in shelters down from 17 million a year to fewer than 5 million.
“Today,” he says, “it’s not just dogs and cats who are losing their homes. Our fellow animals are being made homeless all over the world: from elephants and tigers, who are being hunted and encroached upon to extinction ... to life in the oceans, where 90 percent of predatory fish are now gone due to overfishing, and where the coral reefs, where most fish are birthed, are now dying due to warmer, polluted waters ... to animals large and small who are being forced to leave their homes in search of new habitat due to climate change ... to dolphins who are torn from their homes to entertain people by doing party tricks in tanks.
“Zoe will do online what we did with Best Friends magazine in the 1990s, becoming the go-to place for news, both serious and light, philosophical and quirky, and bringing us all together to help transform the way people relate to the animals, nature and, by extension, each other.”Michael adds that he’s delighted to be part of the Kerulos faculty: “Speaking as an Oxford dropout from the 1960s, I’d say that the Kerulos Institute is providing the kind of education that all universities should be offering!” As part of Kerulos, Michael is especially concerned with helping people understand that almost all the ills of the world today stem from our sense of disconnection from the natural world – and therefore from our own nature. “The Earth is our home,” he says, “and the other animals are our family and our neighbors. We’re destroying our home and killing our neighbors. No good can come of this. It’s time to build a whole new relationship to our fellow animals. And Kerulos will be laying the foundations and providing much of the key groundwork for this.”
Vera Muller-Paisner, LCSW
Fabio Napolitano, PhD
Laurel Neme, PhD
She hosts the weekly radio show, The WildLife, on WOMM-LP in Burlington, Vermont featuring interviews with scientists and other wildlife investigators. Laural has appeared on ABC News Nightline, NPR's Science Friday, C-SPAN, among others, and presented to professional groups, including Interpol's Wildlife Crime Working Group and the Society of Wildlife Forensic Scientists, the American Museum of Natural History in New York, St. Louis Zoo and the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, DC. She is a fellow at the University of Vermont's Institute for Environmental Diplomacy and Security and on the international advisory boards of Wildlife Alliance and Wildlife Friendly Enterprise Network.
Bruce Nock, PhD
More importantly, Bruce has a natural affinity for animals. Learning about their behavior and physiology has been a lifelong labor of love. He received a Master of Science degree in psychobiology from Bucknell University and a Ph.D. from the world renowned Institute of Animal Behavior, Rutgers University. Bruce is the author of the acclaimed book Ten Golden Rules of Horse Training: Universal Laws for all Levels and Riding Styles, the newly released book Ride For Tomorrow: Dressage Today, and The Biology of Natural Horsemanship, a series of articles about stress—its nature, the damage it can do to a horse and how to minimize it.
Bruce is the founder of Liberated Horsemanship , a group of selected experts dedicated to helping people and horses worldwide by providing multidisciplinary, science-based information about the care and use of horses. The mission of Liberated Horsemanship is to help horse owners and equine professionals maximize the health and welfare of horses without sacrificing the fun and enjoyment of horse guardianship and use. To date, people from 15 countries and 45 US states have attended Liberated Horsemanship clinics and events in Warrenton, Missouri.
Susie O'Keeffe, MS
The educational element of Susie's work includes an undergraduate course that examines contemporary and historic case studies of naturalists who have used creative perception, and prolonged contemplation, as forms of inquiry and understanding. Traditional conservation approaches are compared and contrasted with emerging ideas about our capacity for mutual exchanges with other beings, and the emerging understanding of animal cultures, intelligence and emotion. Students are introduced to the idea of creative perception, moral consciousness and forms of contemplative practice as valid tools of inquiry. They explore role that these practices and ways of understanding play in addressing our ongoing destruction of life and landscape. Students express what they have discovered, felt, dreamed and imagined through art forms of their choice.
lauren Ornelas
Dave Perry, PhD
Dave is a Professor (emeritus) in the Department of Forest Ecosystems and Society at Oregon State University, and lead author of the acclaimed textbook, Forest Ecosystems. He is a member of the National Commission on the Science of Sustainable Forestry, and on the Board of Directors of two nonprofits, the National Center for Conservation Science and Policy, and Na Huapala ‘O Hawai’i, which is dedicated to restoration and perpetuation of traditional Hawaiian values.
Dave’s research interests have focused on various aspects of ecosystem function, including especially how cooperation among species contributes to ecosystem health. He has taught ecology, silviculture, ecosystem management, and currently an online course in the ecology of sustainable resource management. He has conducted short courses on ecosystem management in Canada, Chile, and Brazil.
Nina Pierpont, MD, PhD
Nina Pierpont, MD, PhD, is a physician in New York State, specializing in behavioral medicine (children and adults). She attended Yale as a National Merit Scholar, graduating with honors. She holds her PhD in Population Biology/Ecology from Princeton, and MD from The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. Residency was at the Children's National Medical Center (Washington, DC) and the Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center (Dartmouth School of Medicine). She's a board certified pediatrician licensed in the State of NY and Fellow of the American Academy of Pediatrics.
Nina lived in the (Peruvian) Amazon jungle in a tent for two years studying bird behavior—the subject of her doctoral thesis. She then shifted into medicine, in order to give her science a human face. She has practiced medicine, briefly, on the Navajo reservation, and was a pediatrician at a native-run hospital on the Alaska tundra for two years (second year, as chief)—living with Yup'ik Eskimos. For three years, she was the pediatrician to the Mohawk Nation on the St. Regis reserve, NYS. She is the author of a handful of scientific articles, and best known as the name behind Wind Turbine Syndrome. Her book, "Wind Turbine Syndrome: A Report on a Natural Experiment" (K-Selected 2009), has sold thousands of copies, globally, has been translated into half a dozen languages, and continues to infuriate the global wind energy industry. Nina lives on the northern boundary of the Adirondack Park with a featherweight cedarstrip canoe, a paddle, and a husband absurdly named after a couple of Reformation figures—and plays Chopin Nocturnes on a Schimmel grand.
Annie Potts, PhD
Annie Potts is the Co-Director of the New Zealand Centre for Human-Animal Studies, which is based in the School of Humanities at the University of Canterbury, Christchurch, Aotearoa New Zealand. She has a PhD in Critical Psychology and a more recent background in Gender Studies and Cultural Studies. She is the author of The Science/Fiction of Sex: Feminist Deconstruction and the Vocabularies of Heterosex (published in Routledge’s Women & Psychology Series, 2002) and co-editor of Sex and the Body (Dunmore Press, 2004). Her latest book, Chicken, is an illustrated natural and cultural history of Gallus domesticus (Reaktion, 2011), and she is also the co-author (with Philip Armstrong and Deidre Brown) of Kararehe: Animals in New Zealand Art, Literature and Everyday Life (Auckland University Press, 2011). Annie is also working on projects related to the link between social violence and animal abuse; the sexual exploitation of nonhuman animals in science and psychological research; and the changing representations of nonhuman animals in 120 years of cinema. She currently teaches courses on the depiction of ‘animality’ and human-animal relations in mythology, folklore, film, graphic novels, and new media. Annie lives in a multispecies household in the port town of Lyttelton, and has a passion for re-homing unwanted and abused chickens. She also writes a regular column on art and animal advocacy for the Australian magazine Vegan Voice.
Jill Robinson
Born in the UK, Jill Robinson arrived in Hong Kong in 1985 and spent the next 12 years working as a consultant for the International Fund for Animal Welfare ( IFAW). Repeatedly faced with scenes of widespread animal cruelty, Jill decided to introduce the concept of “animal welfare through people welfare” and founded “Dr. Dog” in Hong Kong in 1991 – the first animal-therapy programme of its kind in Asia. Today, over 350 dogs and their dedicated volunteers make regular visits to hospitals, disabled centres, schools and elderly homes in 10 cities across Asia, spreading warmth and love to people in need, while promoting companion animals as our friends and helpers.
In 1993, a chance visit to a bear farm in southern China changed Jill's life. Exposing the plight of endangered Asiatic black bears (also known as moon bears) cruelly farmed and milked for their bile, and learning how easily herbs and synthetics could replace bear bile, Jill embarked on a journey to end the practice of bear farming once and for all. In 1998, she founded Animals Asia. Less than two years later, Animals Asia signed a breakthrough agreement with the Chinese authorities to rescue 500 farmed bears and work towards promoting herbal alternatives to bile and the elimination of bear farming. Today, the Moon Bear Rescue has seen the rescue of 276 bears in China and the opening of a new rescue centre for 200 farmed bears in Vietnam. Jill is a former member of the Hong Kong Government’s Animal Welfare Advisory Group and Honorary Adviser to the Ocean Park Conservation Foundation, Hong Kong. Among diverse accolades, Jill has been awarded an MBE by Queen Elizabeth in recognition of her services to animal welfare in Asia, presented with the USA Genesis, the Marchig Animal Welfare Award, was appointed World Animal Day Ambassador for Asia, and is a frequent guest on international television and documentaries.
Elke Riesterer, CMT
Elke is a Certified Massage Therapist and registered Jin Shin Do Practitioner with the broad experience of having worked with people and animals for over 25 years. She has been volunteering in the capacity of an all species Body Therapist at the Oakland Zoo since 1997 and uses a combination of body-centered therapies including her most favored modality, the Tellington Touch (TTouch™). The focus of her work centers in general around the complex well being issues of Elephants worldwide. Besides her work with Elephants at the zoo, Elke also tends to animals such as the giant Aldabra Tortoises, Monitor Lizards, Snakes and Giraffes. She has lectured extensively and has brought her work to the Elephant and Rhino Orphanage in Nairobi, Kenya, and toThailand and India at many locales. In addition to many exotic species, Elke works with Horses, Dogs and other home animals. Her upcoming book describes her love and healing journey with Elephants in different countries. Numerous articles have featured her mission.
Christina Risley-Curtiss, PhD
Christina is Associate Professor of Social Work at Arizona State University with more than 20 years experience in both public health and child welfare. Her primary areas of research are in the other animal-human bond and child welfare. Her social work elective course—Other Animal-Human Connections—won the HSUS 2004 Society and Animals New Course Award. She is past chair of The Arizona Humane LINK, a coalition of animal welfare and human service agencies and is a member of the National Humane Link Coalition.
Christina has received grants from the Kenneth A. Scott Charitable Trust, a KeyBank Trust and the Animal Welfare Trust to develop an assessment and intervention program for children and youth who have abused animals. She is a Fellow at the Oxford Centre on Animal Ethics, is on the human-animal studies committee of Animals and Society Institute (ASI) and a fellow for the University of Denver School Of Social Work Institute on Human-Animal Interactions. She has presented at Oxford on the role of other animals in child welfare, at the American Humane Association Annual Conference on other animals and communities of color, at the Social Work Spirituality Conference on spirituality and other animals; at the first Veterinary Social Work Summit held in Knoxville, TN; and in Canada on assessment and treatment of animal abuse. She does hands-on rescue work including having volunteered to help animals during the Katrina rescue and she was a founding member of a TNR feral cat program at ASU. She currently lives in a trans-species cultural home with a number of cats and chickens, a dog and horse.
Charlie Russell
Charlie's visionary and courageous work has overthrown countless widely held convictions concerning the nature of grizzly bears. He is the only person to ever successfully demonstrate that, when treated as intelligent beings, worthy and deserving of respect, grizzly bears will co-exist peacefully with humans.
His experience includes an 18 year exploration of how grizzlies used and shared his ranch situated on the boundary of Waterton / Glacier International Park near the border between Alberta and Montana. During this time he developed systems that allowed his cattle and the bears to co-exist. In 1992-93, Charlie lived on Princess Royal Island to create a film about the Spirit Bear with award winning wildlife filmmakers Jeff and Sue Turner. His first book, Sprit Bear—Encounters with the White Bear of the Western Rainforest, chronicles the two years spent living with and filming these little understood animals.
From 1996 to 2006 Charlie explored how human fear, anger and aggression have shaped the human-bear conflict. Determined to examine whether or not trust, kindness, openness and respect could transform our relationships with grizzlies, Charlie lived at the heart of a very dense population of bears in Kamchatka, Russia. In this rugged and remote area, he pioneered raising ten orphaned cubs rescued from a Russian zoo. To gain maximum understanding about bears that do not fear humans, Charlie and his project partner, Maureen Enns, established deep and lasting bonds with the cubs, as well as several of the wild bears in the region. Wild and free after six years, the cubs grew into peaceful, trustworthy adult bears. They demonstrated no signs of violence or aggression toward humans.
Charlie's latest best selling book, Grizzly Heart – Living Without Fear Among the Brown Bears Of Kamchatka, chronicling this extraordinary story and visionary work, is published in five languages. He also co-authored with Maureen Enns a companion photo album, Grizzly Seasons – Life with the Brown Bears of Kamchatka. Several films have brought this remarkable story to the world, including the 1997 documentary for PBS Nature: Walking with Giants: The Grizzlies of Siberia. In 2005 the BBC film Bear Man of Kamchatka was made. Jeff and Sue Turner created a 90 minute theatre production entitled The Edge of Eden from which much of the footage for the BBC film was taken. To date this moving film has won 12 awards in both European and North American film festivals.
At 67, Charlie is working to bring co-existence home through the Pacific Rim Grizzly Bear Co-Existence Study. When he is not out sharing his experience and knowledge with audiences throughout the World, he is enjoying his granddaughter and his other great passion – flying the airplane he built himself.
Ray Ryan
In 1981, I went San Diego State to get a degree in Psychology. There, I worked in the psychology department caring for two Barbaray apes. The male, Mac, was almost three feet tall when he stood up. After years of being caged up, he was a little crazy—always grabbing at his head and biting his arm. The female, Sarah, was smaller and only wanted to be groomed and was the sweetest thing around. I was able to take care of them for about two-and-a-half years, and did my best to change their living conditions. Their outside play was in a chain link enclosure, which was in clear view of all of the students as they left campus to go to the parking lots. Eventually we constructed dark framed screens around the enclosure so that thay could see the students as they walked past as some sort of diversion. The saddest day was when Sarah passed away. The autposy indicated that she had died from years of neglect, where food was used as a motivator to work, and not as a life source. She evently just passed away after living off her fat reserves between the muscle layers. That really brought to light the plight of research animals, especially primates and apes and the slow pain and death that some, if not most go through.
After graduating, I went to work with African elephants at the San Diego Wild Animal Park, an affiliate of the Zoo. It was a huge learning experience, but not always positive. I had never been around so much tension and anger in people—all of which was taken out on the animals. Everybody in the elephant department beat the elephants. I found out quickly that in order to keep my job, I would have to do the same. It's hard to describe the power you have, when you are able and told to hit and punish an animal when she is on chains and can't get away. It's a sick and cruel way of working with and around any animal. Starving animals to get them to respond is horrible enough, but to brutally beat them to get a quicker response is beyond cruelty. At the time I was there, 99% of the keepers were male: the elephants were a matriarchal culture being beaten by an aggressive group of men—and if you look at circuses today, it's still the same. But I learned that the elephants were kind and if you just let them do thing on their own, they would do what needed to be done. It became so much more peaceful. However, no matter how close I felt to the elephants, and the bonds that we shared, I just could not work there any longer, particularly after several violent incidents had occurred. Leaving the elephant brought deep sadness. Working with the eles was by far the most intense and spiritual experience I could have ever asked for. Now, I hope to return that gift to them.
Allen M. Schoen, DVM, MS, PhD (hon.)
Dr. Schoen has held faculty positions at Colorado State University College of Veterinary Medicine and Tufts University College of Veterinary Medicine in addition to being a faculty member of the Chi Institute for Traditional Chinese Medicine. He is certified in both veterinary acupuncture (1982) and veterinary chiropractic (1990). He is a former President of the International Veterinary Acupuncture Society (IVAS).
Dr. Schoen is a pioneer who has dedicated his professional career to the advancement of complementary and alternative veterinary medicine. He is the founder and director of the Center for Integrative Animal Health, a division of Global Communications for Conservation, Inc. (GCC). He is the co-editor of Complementary and Alternative Veterinary Medicine, Principles and Practice, and the editor of both Veterinary Acupuncture: Ancient Art to Modern Medicine and Problems in Veterinary Medicine: Veterinary Acupuncture. Dr. Schoen is the author of Kindred Spirits, How the Remarkable Relationship between Humans and Animals Can Transform our Lives (Broadway, Random House, 2001) and author of Love, Miracles & Animal Healing (Simon & Schuster, 1995). He has published numerous research articles on complementary and alternative veterinary medicine (CAVM). He has lectured on CAVM throughout the world including Europe, Scandinavia, Australia, New Zealand, South America, Africa, the U.S. and Canada.His research grants include one from the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation for developing CAVM curriculums for veterinary schools, and one from the Gauntlett Foundation for developing new approaches to chronic disease. He has received research grants through GCC, Inc., from the Janet Stone-Jones Foundation, and from the McIntosh Foundation. Dr. Schoen is a charter fellow of the American College of Acupuncture, an organization of physicians dedicated to scientific acupuncture. Dr. Schoen was appointed to the American Veterinary Medical Association's (AVMA) six member committee on alternative and complementary veterinary medicine for whom he developed approved guidelines for CAVM in 1996. He has been on numerous editorial boards of journals and advisory committees of various veterinary nutritional companies. He authored a column with Time-Warner's Pathfinder web site titled The Healing Arts. He was a consultant for a new Public Broadcasting System television series on health care as well as having his own radio show.
In addition, Dr. Schoen maintains a referral practice in large and small animal integrative veterinary medicine. Through this practice he has developed new approaches to such degenerative conditions as cancer, arthritis, liver disease and others. Dr. Schoen continues to create innovative natural nontoxic approaches to animal health, environmental health and human health care and integrate them into a new interdisciplinary program with a commitment to compassionate care for all beings.
Ken Shapiro, PhD
Dr. Dame Daphne Marjorie Sheldrick, DBE, MBS
Living as she did within a National Park, she had the opportunity to observe and study most species at both the field level and in a captive situation. Rearing their orphaned young has brought to her a unique and unparalleled understanding of the "inside story" of wild creatures. - knowledge of their minds and emotions, the role of instinct where it impacts on behaviour, the importance of scent and chemistry in their daily lives, telepathic capabilities, individuality, vocalizations, and the ability to interpret the subtleties of a complex body language.
For over 25 years, from 1955 until 1976, Daphne Sheldrick lived and worked alongside her late husband, David, the famous founder Warden of Kenya's giant Tsavo National Park. During that time she raised and rehabilitated back into the wild community orphans of misfortune from many different wild species, including Elephants aged two and upwards; Black Rhinos, Buffaloes, Zebra, Eland, Kudu, Impala, Duikers, Reedbuck, Dikdiks, Warthogs and many smaller animals such as civets, mongooses and birds. She is a recognized International authority on the rearing of wild creatures and is the first person to have perfected the milk formula and necessary husbandry for both infant milk dependent Elephants and Rhinos. The key to her success has been her life-long experience of wild creatures, an in-depth knowledge of animal psychology, the behavioral characteristics of the different species, and, of course, that most essential component, a sincere and deep empathy. For her work in this field Daphne Sheldrick was decorated by the Queen in 1989 with an M.B.E., elevated to U.N.E.P.’s elite Global 500 Roll of Honour in 1992, among the first 500 people worldwide to have been accorded this particular honour, and awarded an Honorary Doctorate in Veterinary Medicine and Surgery by Glasgow University in June 2000.
In December 2001 her work was honoured by the Kenya Government through a prestigious decoration - a Moran of the Burning Spear (M.B.S.), and in 2002 by the B.B.C. when she received their Lifetime Achievement Award. In the November 2005 issue of the Smithsonian Magazine Daphne Sheldrick was named as one of 35 people worldwide who have made a difference in terms of animal husbandry and wildlife conservation. In the 2006 New Year’s Honours List, Queen Elizabeth II appointed Dr. Daphne Sheldrick to Dame Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire, the first Knighthood to be awarded in Kenya since the country received Independence in 1963.
Barbara Smuts, PhD
Smuts received a Bachelors Degree in Anthropology from Harvard University and a Ph.D in neurological and biological behavioral science from Stanford Medical School and has studied baboons, dolphins, and chimpanzees. In the 1970s she began research with Jane Goodall on chimpanzees in Gombe National Park. She uses perspectives derived from evolutionary theory, studies of complex systems, and developmental research to examine the dynamics and functions of long-term social relationships. Her work focuses on social behavior in primates, wolves, and domestic dogs in the areas of play, social reciprocity, cooperation, greetings, conflict resolution, emotions, and mood. Questions that inspire her wok include: How do other animals develop trusting relationships in the absence of spoken language? What do animals understand about the beliefs and intentions of their social partners? And how can understanding of nonhuman social relationships help us to better understand human behavior?
Ann Southcombe
Ann Southcombe is an Animal Relation Specialist and licensed wildlife rehabilitator who, for over 35 years, has dedicated her life to the care of gorillas, squirrels, lynx, bears, and many other species in captivity. It has been her goal to learn and perfect how to facilitate their process of “meaning making” as they renew their lives after trauma and hardship. Ann has learned there is a delicate balance in being with them as a human yet relating on their terms. Ann is the author of several books and conducts wortkshops and lectures throughout North America including series called “Kinship With Animals” that shares her experiences with diverse species to raise public awareness concerning the deep emotional feelings and intellectual capabilities of other animals on the planet. Ann brings profound knowledge of animal experiences and values to intergate into human science and culture. Ann has no formal academic degree: her teachers have been the animal individuals who she has cared for. She therefore exemplifies the new kinds of learning and knowledge that can teach other humans and include other animals' participation in knowledge-making.
Ed Tick, PhD
Ed is Co-founder, Director and Senior Clinician of Soldier’s Heart: Veterans’ Safe Return Initiatives. He has been a psychotherapist for 35 years, specializing in working with veterans and others suffering with Post-traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) since the late 1970s. He has served as distinguished visiting faculty at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, West Point, Ft. Hood, and numerous universities, colleges and cultural centers around the world. He is internationally recognized as an expert on veterans, PTSD, and the psychology of military-related issues.
Ed leads semi-annual international educational, healing and reconciliation journeys to Greece and Viet Nam. He has published four books: Sacred Mountain, Encounters with the Vietnam Beast (1989), The Practice of Dream Healing (Quest, 2001), The Golden Tortoise: Viet Nam Journeys (Red Hen, 2005), and the award-winning War and the Soul (Quest, 2005), credited with transforming the trauma field to include spiritual and cultural dimensions of wounding and healing. His work has been translated and published in Greece, Japan, Viet Nam and Bulgaria. He is also a poet and author of over 100 articles in psychology, holistic health, mythology and spirituality, literature, philosophy, culture and travel.
Spirituality, soul, the Earth, and their well-being are at the center of all Ed’s work.
Thidi Tshiguvho, PhD
Thidi’s work highlighted how snakes were believed able to communicate with humans about the biological and social condition of sacred forests they inhabit. Her research also compares the basis for (1) respectful vs. abusive treatment of plants and animals within indigenous and western societies, and (2) “othering” other beings in general. Thidi’s recent interest is on the behavioral similarities between humans and other species, particularly in terms of how they respond to environmental stress.
For the past 10 years, Thidi has taught ecology, conservation biology, geography, and other environmental science courses at several universities in South Africa and the USA. She is currently at Clark University, the Department of International Development, Community and Environment, working on Aids 2031 and other projects. Previously, she was part of National Science Foundation task force to establish a Long-term Ecological Research site in South Africa.
I. P. (Paddy) Burges Watson, MD, OAM
Paddy obtained a Doctorate in Medicine from Trinity College Dublin in 1990 and is a past President of the Australasian Society for Traumatic Stress Studies. In 2006, he was awarded a Medal of the Order of Australia (OAM) for services to psychiatry and war veterans. He is now retired, but remains an honorary Fellow of the University of Tasmania and currently is researching the evolutionary background of PTSD.
Kathy White
Cristina Zenato
An avid diver since childhood, Cristina is renowned for her gift of developing positive, intimate relationships with sharks and the ability to apply touch techniques that relax sharks so that she may remove painful hooks from their mouths. This psycho-physiological state (referred to as tonic immobility) is not generated in defense, but indicates the sharks' profound trust and sense of safety around this marine trans-species ambassador. Cristina's work has put a personal face on sharks and brings a profound unique understanding of these species.
Cristina's experiences, observations, feeding, and other interactions with sharks have played a key role in discrediting myths that have vilified and justified the mass killing of sharks. Fluent in five languages,Cristina is actively sought after to participate in documentaries and diverse venues that support shark conservation including: BBC Nature, Discovery Channel, National Geographic, Ushuaia Nature, ABC, Diver Magazine, Skin Diver, Sport Diver, and Protect the Sharks Foundation. Cristina is a qualified NSS-CDS Full Cave Instructor, TDI Cavern and Cave Instructor, TDI Advanced Nitrox, Decompression Procedures and Extended Range Instructor, TDI Advanced Wreck Instructor, PADI Master Scuba Diver Trainer, NAUI Open Water, Scuba Instructor, and SSI Rescue Instructor.
Cristina summarizes her attitude toward her work this way: "I dive for a living, and after all these years I still live for diving."
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"Science in service to animals"
