Dean, Vermont School for the Environment, and Professor of Law, Vermont Law & Graduate School Jennifer Rushlow is Dean of Vermont School for the Environment, Professor of Law, and Faculty Director of the Environmental Law Center at Vermont Law School. Dean Rushlow is also serving temporarily as Interim Dean of Vermont Graduate School. Dean Rushlow received her Juris Doctor from Northeastern University School of Law and Master of Public Health from Tufts University School of Medicine. Dean Rushlow practiced law at the non-profit advocacy organization Conservation Law Foundation (CLF) and the law firm Anderson & Kreiger in Boston. Her practice focused on environmental and land use law, climate change, agriculture, transportation, and environmental justice. While at CLF, Dean Rushlow argued and won a landmark climate law case before the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, Kain v. Department of Environmental Protection, 474 Mass. 278 (2016). She also founded CLF’s Farm and Food program, including the Legal Food Hub, a free legal services clearinghouse for farmers and food businesses. She was named a 2016 Lawyer of the Year by Massachusetts Lawyers Weekly for her work on the Kain case. Mayor Martin Walsh also honored Dean Rushlow with a Greenovate Boston Award in 2016 for her work on the Legal Food Hub. In 2015, she was honored by Governor Deval Patrick with an appointment to serve on the Massachusetts Zero Emission Vehicle Commission. Dean Rushlow published an article about the Kain case, “Behind the Curtain: Insiders’ View of Developing and Enforcing State Climate Change Laws,” 50 Envtl. L. Rep. 10466 (2020). In 2022, Dean Rushlow joined Plater, et al. as a co-author for the environmental law casebook Environmental Law and Policy: Nature, Law, and Society, 6th ed. (Wolters Kluwer), for which she is contributing a new chapter on energy and climate law. In addition to climate law and policy, Dean Rushlow has published on issues related to air pollution, environmental health, land use, administrative, and municipal law. Dean Rushlow regularly appears in the media, including coverage by the New York Times, Time Magazine, National Public Radio, the Boston Globe, E&E News, and others. Dean Rushlow serves as Chair-Elect of the Association of American Law Schools (AALS) Section on Environmental Law. She is also appointed by the Vermont courts as Reporter for the Advisory Committee on the Rules of Evidence, for which she authors Reporter’s Notes for rules amendments. She is admitted to practice in Massachusetts and Vermont, as well as the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts, and the U.S. Courts of Appeals for the First and Ninth Circuits. Dean Rushlow’s courses taught include: Air Pollution Law and Policy, Climate Change and the Law, the Environmental and Natural Resources Clinic, Evidence, and Food Justice and Sustainability.
Professor Emeritus of Ophthalmology; Cell and Developmental Biology, University of Pennsylvania Jean Bennett was recruited to the Scheie Eye Institute at University of Pennsylvania’s School of Medicine in 1992 where she has spent the past 3 decades developing gene-based strategies for treating inherited retinal degenerations. There she has run a true bench-to-bedside translational research program and, in the process, has trained hundreds of physician-scientists, many of whom are now leaders in translational research around the globe. She was the scientific leader of a team that translated reversal of blindness in animal models to demonstration of efficacy and safety of gene therapy in children and adults. She was the scientific director of clinical studies at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia that led to first FDA-approved gene therapy for a genetic disease (blindness due to RPE65 deficiency, studies that were sponsored by a company that she co-founded (but in which she waived financial benefit), Spark Therapeutics). She helped develop the primary outcome measure for that trial that led in 2017 to the first US FDA-approved gene therapy product. It also led to approval of the reagent, “Luxturna”, by the European Medicines Agency. Jean continues to develop gene-based therapies for retinal degenerative diseases and to tackle some of the limitations of current gene therapy technologies. She recently co-founded Opus Genetics to help those patients and families that suffer from conditions that are so rare that they have been neglected by big pharma. Jean graduated from Yale College with a BS in Honors Biology, received her PhD (Zoology, Cell and Developmental Biology) from University of California, Berkeley and her MD from Harvard Medical School. She then received post-graduate training at Yale University and Johns Hopkins in Human Genetics and Developmental Genetics. An internationally recognized expert in gene therapy, Dr. Bennett has authored more than 120 peer-reviewed papers.
Professor of Arab studies, University of Oslo I do research on language, ideology, culture and society in the Arab Middle East and North Africa. Geographically, my research focuses on Egypt, Palestine, Lebanon and Tunisia. My publications include books on the political role of journalism in the Arab Middle East and North Africa, independent Arab comics, and the rhetoric of Islamist activists in the Middle East. Currently, I serve as Head of Research at the Department of Culture Studies and Oriental Languages at the University of Oslo.
Associate Professor in Journalism, University of Stirling I am an Associate Professor in Journalism at University of Stirling and hold a PhD in Media and Communications, a PG Dip in Journalism Studies from Cardiff University and a BA Honours Degree (2.1) in Archaeology from University of York. My PhD thesis (published by Palgrave Macmillan as the monograph Familiar Strangers, Juvenile Panic and the British Press) focused on the interplay between news media portrayals of children and young people as victims and threats and parental and juvenile attitudes towards risk. The focus of my current research is on the intersection between media and political discourses, social attitudes and the lived experiences of people from marginalised groups - primarily those experiencing economic and intersectional disadvantages. Prior to becoming a lecture in 2003, I worked for a decade as a professional journalist - starting on local newspapers but ending my full-time reporting career as a specialist writer for the Independent on Sunday.
Dr. Jadey O’Regan is a Lecturer in Contemporary Music Practice at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music (University of Sydney). She is the co-author of "Hooks in Popular Music" (2022) with Dr. Tim Byron (University of Wollongong), which combines pop musicology and music psychology to understand pop music in an interdisciplinary way. She teaches songwriting, production, performance, music analysis and music history, and her research interests include the musical analysis of pop music, genres, songwriting, and creativity. She is an experienced music communicator who has been featured on Channel 7’s ‘The Morning Show’, ABC’s ‘The Music Show’, triplej, ABC News and at music conference BIGSOUND. She is also a performing musician and songwriter. Jadey is the current secretary for the International Association for the Study of Popular Music - Australia/New Zealand (IASPM-ANZ).
Senior Lecturer in Psychology & Clinical Psychologist, Swinburne University of Technology Dr. Jessica Mackelprang is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Psychological Sciences at Swinburne University of Technology. Prior to relocating to Australia, she earned her PhD in Clinical Psychology at Nova Southeastern University (Florida, USA) and completed postdoctoral fellowships in rehabilitation psychology and trauma research at the University of Washington (Seattle, USA). Dr. Mackelprang's research studies psychological (e.g., posttraumatic stress disorder) and physical trauma (e.g., traumatic brain injury) among populations that have been marginalised, with a focus on supporting community members affected by homelessness and the frontline workers who serve them. Her work aims to reduce inequities in health service access and improve health outcomes among these populations. She also studies gender equity in academia. Her research involves a combination of quantitative, qualitative, and mixed methods. A Clinical Psychologist by training, she has delivered psychotherapy in community health and hospital settings to individuals across the lifespan who are affected by life-altering injury or chronic illness, in addition to mental health difficulties. Alongside providing postgraduate research supervision, she teaches into undergraduate and postgraduate courses in psychology and counselling on topics related to health, trauma, and grief and loss. Dr. Mackelprang is an Associate Editor for Clinical Psychologist, a Member of the Australian Indigenous Psychology Education Project Community of Practice, Past Chair of the Swinburne Indigenous Psychology Committee, and a Deputy Leader for the Swinburne Women's Academic Network (SWAN) Promotions Program.
