Visual Effects Artist and Lecturer in Digital Communication, Auckland University of Technology Aditya 'AD' Narayan is a Digital Communications lecturer in the School of Communication Studies. He is active in Aotearoa's film and television industry. He has spent a decade working in visual effects and motion design. Some of his latest film and TV credits include work on The Royal Treatment (Netflix), Evil Dead Rise (New Line Cinema / Warner Bros.), Red, White and Brass (Piki Films), and Joika/The American (Four Knight Films). He has also been a Visual Effects Supervisor for TVNZ's Wilde Ride and for Lightbox Original High Road - an award-winning web series spanning three seasons of content. He has supervised VFX and CG on several high-budget commercial projects.
Research Assistant, Faculty of Health Sciences, Simon Fraser University Alexandra Beukens is an MSc student in the Faculty of Health Sciences at Simon Fraser University (SFU). She has worked as a research assistant with SFU’s Pacific Institute on Pathogens, Pandemics, and Society, as well as the One Health - Health Implementation Science Collaborative. Her MSc research applies a One Health approach to explore the combined health and social impacts of highly pathogenic avian influenza and natural disasters on farmers.
Senior Research Associate, School of Religion, Philosophy and Classics, University of KwaZulu-Natal Prof Tony Balcomb is the author of 48 published articles and chapters in books and of two books – Third Way Theology – Reconciliation, Revolution and Reform in the South African Church during the 1980’s and Journey into the African Sun – Soundings in Search of Another Way of Being in the World.
Postdoctoral Scholar in Chemical Engineering, University of Chicago Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering Aman Agrawal started his postdoctoral research at UChicago in Fall 2023, co-advised by Profs. Matthew Tirrell (PME) and Jack Szostak (Chemistry). He received his PhD in Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering from the University of Houston working with Dr. Alamgir Karim. His dissertation research focused on studying polyelectrolyte coacervate droplets out-of-equilibrium where he subjected coacervate colloids to chemical gradients in order to stabilize them against fusion or form complex morphologies (nested droplets and vesicles) and electrical gradients to organize them in pattern or generate internal flow. Prior to this, Aman received his BTech and MTech degrees in Chemical Engineering at Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur. In his master's research, he worked with Prof. Ashutosh Sharma on carbon-metal-oxide hybrid materials for energy storage in batteries and supercapacitors. Research works: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=mSjoV3YAAAAJ&hl=en
Associate Professor of History, Michigan State University I am a historian specializing in modern Chinese history with a particular interest in the social and cultural history of Chinese Communism. I serve as co-director of the PRC History Group, an international scholarly organization dedicated to increasing research and knowledge on the People’s Republic of China. I have written widely on the global histories of the Chinese Communist Party and Maoism. At MSU, I teach classes about Chinese history, gender and sexuality, and the history of the global left.
Assistant Professor of East Asian Languages and Cultures, University of Notre Dame Amanda Kennell researches Japanese culture and what it can tell us about the modern media environment, with a particular emphasis on new technologies and the popular media that blanket the average person's daily life. Her book, Alice in Japanese Wonderlands: Translation, Adaptation, Mediation (2023), uses adaptations of Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland novels as a window onto how media function today. She is currently working on a book dissecting how media affect human responses to the environment and therefore affect climate change. She speaks and writes on topics such as technology and anime, the global importance of Dungeons & Dragons, the role of mental health in Yayoi Kusama's art, and machine translation (also known as AI translation).
