Ofelia Barrios is the Senior Director of Community Health Initiatives at Iris House in New York City.  She has worked in the areas of HIV/AIDS for over sixteen years. Currently serves as the Senior Director of Community Health Initiatives at Iris House, Inc. in New York City.  Ms. Barrios has expertise in HIV program planning, prevention education, behavioral interventions, coalition building, evaluation, strategic planning, advocacy, policy, grant writing, capacity building and technical assistance, and request for proposal process. She holds a Masters Degree from the University of New Mexico, a Bachelors Degree from Middlebury College and is also a graduate of the CDC/ASPH Institute for HIV Prevention Leadership Institute.

Peggy McCracken is Professor of French and Women’s Studies at the University of Michigan.  She also has an appointment in Comparative Literature.  Professor McCracken’s research focuses on the French Middle Ages with a focus on gender and sexuality in medieval romance. She is currently working on a book about embodiment and sovereignty called In the Skin.  She is the author of numerous books including Marie de France: A Critical Companion, co-authored with Sharon Kinoshita (2012).  Her other recent works include a translation of Gui de Cambrai’s twelfth-century Barlaam et Josaphatand a co-authored book, with Donald S. Lopez, Jr., called In Search of the Christian Buddha. I am currently working on a book about embodiment and sovereignty called In the Skin.

Morgane Veronique Richardson is a fourth wave antiracist feminist and social media strategist. In 2008, she founded Refuse The Silence: Women of Color in Academia Speak Out (www.refusethesilence.com) to reconcile the existing hegemony within elite academia with the desire for diverse campuses.  Subsequently, in 2009, she co-founded a social media firm, MixtapeMedia, which works on pro-social campaigns for clients such as the United Nations. Morgane’s reflections on women, race and education have been published in numerous blogs and magazines including, Bitch, Feministing, The Burlington Free Press, and The Chronicle of Higher Education. In 2010, she was featured as one of More Magazine’s “New Feminists You Need To Know.”  She is an adjunct professor at the City University of New York and social media event planner for JustPublics@365.  Morgane holds a B.A. in Sociology/Anthropology and The History of Art and Architecture from Middlebury College and an M.A. in Gender and Peace Building from the United Nations University For Peace. 

Banu Subramaniam is associate professor of Women, Gender, Sexuality Studies at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. She is coeditor of Feminist Science Studies: A New Generation (Routledge, 2001) and Making Threats: Biofears and Environmental Anxieties (Rowman and Littlefield, 2005). Trained as a plant evolutionary biologist, she seeks to engage the social and cultural studies of science in the practice of science. Spanning the humanities, social sciences, and the biological sciences, her research is located at the intersections of biology, women’s studies, ethnic studies and postcolonial studies. Her current work focuses on the genealogies of variation in evolutionary biology, the xenophobia and nativism that accompany frameworks on invasive plant species, and the relationship of science and religious nationalism in India.

Darla Thompson is a dissertation scholar at Middlebury College and is affiliated with the Program in American Studies. She is completing her doctorate at Cornell University’s Science and Technology Studies.

Michelle Voss Roberts is Assistant Professor of Theology and Culture at Wake Forest University’s Divinity School.

Bernadette Wegenstein is an Austrian media & film theorist and documentary filmmaker. She is a  Research Professor at Johns Hopkins University. She writes and teaches about body theory, technology, feminist film theory, and documentary film. My first documentary Made Over in America is a filmic essay about the culture of makeover television. She recently completed the documentary See You Son Again, a contemporary exploration about Holocaust education. For more information, visit seeyousoonagain.com.  Professor Wegenstein is the author of the monographs “Die Darstellung von AIDS in den Medien” (1998), “Getting Under the Skin” (2006), “Die Arbeit am eigenen Koerper” (2008), “The Cosmetic Gaze” (2011), among other publications on body criticism, feminist issues and film.

 E. Frances White is Professor of History and Black Studies at Gallatin and the Department of Social and Cultural Analysis in the Faculty of Arts and Science. She has served as NYU’s Vice Provost for Faculty Development from 2005 to 2008 and Dean of the Gallatin School from 1998 to 2005. She has been awarded fellowships from the Danforth Foundation, the Mellon Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Humanities, among others. She has also been a Fulbright Senior Research Scholar in Sierra Leone and the Gambia. Before coming to NYU, she taught at Fourah Bay College of the University of Sierra Leone and at Hampshire College. Her awards include the Catherine T. and John D. MacArthur Chair in History (1985-1988) and the Letitia Brown Memorial Publication Prize for the best book on black women (1987). Her teaching and research interests include the history of Africa and its diaspora, history of gender and sexuality, and critical race theory. Her books include Sierra Leone’s Settler Women Traders, Women in Sub-Saharan Africa, and Dark Continent of Our Bodies. She is at work on a book about Afro-British Cultural Studies.