Visiting Research Fellow, University of Adelaide Dr Katherine Tuft is Chief Executive of Arid Recovery, an independent not-for-profit running pioneering conservation science to help threatened species thrive across the Australian outback. She is a Visiting Research Fellow at the University of Adelaide and has a background in conservation research and management. She completed a PhD in ecology of rock-wallabies in NSW and spent six years living in the remote Kimberley working to understand and reverse the failing fortunes of mammals in northern Australia. Now at Arid Recovery, she manages Australia’s largest predator-proof fenced reserve and a centre for conservation research on arid ecosystem restoration and threatened species recovery. Kath is a founding member of Team Kowari, a deputy member of the Pastoral Board in South Australia, and a member of the Australian Wildlife Conservancy's Scientific Advisory Panel.
Associate Professor in Physiology, Chair of Science Committee, South African Society for Sleep and Health, Member of the World Sleep Society, University of the Witwatersrand I am an associate professor at the School of Physiology at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa. I trained as a clinical haematologist in Paris, France and subsequently did a postdoctoral fellowship in sleep and circadian rhythms at Harvard Medical School, Boston, USA. I started my academic career at the University of the Witwatersrand (Wits) and built a research focus on sleep and circadian physiology and how modifications in sleep and circadian rhythms are associated with non-communicable diseases, in particular immunological, cardiovascular and metabolic diseases. I have combined the use of precise laboratory experiments to investigate sleep and circadian rhythms and population epidemiological studies to investigate the association between sleep disturbances and HIV, and how this may modulate cardiometabolic risk. I have received funding from the NIH, the South African Medical Research Council, the South African National Research Foundation and recently from the Wellcome Trust to sustain those areas of expertise. I have joined the Ndlovu Research Consortium from University Medical Centre Utrecht (UMCU) as a scientific coordinator and assistant professor of global health to better investigate in longitudinal studies the relationship between sleep disturbances, chronic immune activation and cardiometabolic diseases (ongoing). I am also part of a stimulating collaboration with Prof von Schantz (Northumbria University) and Prof Gomez-Olive (Wits School of Public Health) investigating sleep and circadian rhythms in a large random sample of older rural South African adults. In another exciting collaboration with Prof Venter and Dr Chandiwana at Ezintsha (Wits clinical trials unit), we are currently investigating the contribution of obstructive sleep apnoea to chronic immune activation and cardiometabolic risk in a large cohort of treated HIV positive participants (the ADVANCE study, NEJM, 2019). Sleep issues are also a hallmark of long Covid. Together with the Ezintsha team, we are investigating the effects of long Covid on sleep after asymptomatic, mild and severe Covid 19 infection, and their association with chronic inflammation and mental health. Finally, we have partnered in a South African nation-wide collaboration during the Covid lockdown, with Drs Rae and Lipinska at University of Cape Town and Drs Davy and Wells at Rhodes University, which has set the ground for the founding of the South African Society for Sleep and Health (SASSH). As a group we have been the successful recipients of a large Wellcome Trust 5-year grant (2023-2027) to investigate the association between sleep, circadian rhythms and mental health in adolescents in South Africa and in the United Kingdom. I have supervised 15 MSc students and 5 PhD students and served as an external examiner to several academic programmes and postgraduate theses. My publication list can be found here: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/?term=scheuermaier&sort=pubdate . More CV details can be found on ORCID: https://orcid.org/my-orcid?orcid=0000-0003-3397-543X
Associate Professor. Cinema Arts, School of Creative Arts, University of Windsor Kim Nelson is the Director of the Humanities Research Group, and an Associate Professor of Cinema Arts in the School of Creative Arts, at the University of Windsor in Canada. She holds a PhD in Media Studies from the University of Babelsberg in Germany. Her work has screened at international film festivals and on university campuses across Canada, the US, and Europe and has been broadcast nationally on the Canadian Broadcast Corporation (CBC), as well as online with KCET in the US. She has received the University of Windsor’s Award for Excellence in Research, Scholarship, and Creative Activity, in the Emerging category in 2014, and Mid-Career, in 2020. She has held fellowships with the Cinema Research Institute at New York University, 2015-2016, the Humanities Research Group, at the University of Windsor, 2013-2014, and the DAAD (Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst, awarded by the German federal government) in Potsdam 2012-13. Her work has been supported by the Windsor Endowment of the Arts, the Ontario Arts Council, and she is the principal investigator on three current research projects funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. In addition, she has funding from the Canadian Ministry of Heritage under their Initiative for Digital Citizen Research in support of Moving Histories: an International Symposium on Screened History scheduled for November 2022. Her creative focus is on documentary, and innovative film forms, such as expanded cinema and live documentary. She has performed live documentaries in the US and Canada.
Associate Professor of Public Policy, University of Connecticut I am an Associate Professor of Public Policy at the University of Connecticut. My research focuses on child and family policy with an emphasis on understanding how policies affect fertility, family formation, and family violence. My research is interdisciplinary and draws on principles from program evaluation, economic demography, and applied microeconomics. I am the Co-Director of UConn’s Gun Violence Prevention – Research Interest Group (GVP-RIG) and the Co-Leader of the Connecticut Chapter of the Scholars Strategy Network. I was a Doris Duke Fellow for the Promotion of Child Well-Being and completed my doctoral degree in Public Administration at the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs at Syracuse University in 2013.
Professor, School for Resource and Environmental Studies, Dalhousie University Kate Sherren is an applied social scientist who spends most of her time thinking about landscape change. She studies how we see, use, experience, and value modified landscapes like farms, coasts, and hydroelectric dams—among other things—and how in the face of climate change we can work collectively towards more sustainable and just future for the places we live in and care about.
