Lecturer in Biblical and Religious Studies, University of Sheffield Meredith Warren is Lecturer in Biblical and Religious Studies at the University of Sheffield, and is a member of SIIBS, the Sheffield Institute for Interdisciplinary Biblical Studies. She directs the SIIBS research theme, Embodied Religion. Warren completed her degrees (BA, MA, PhD) at McGill University and from 2013–2015 held a postdoctoral position at the University of Ottawa funded by the Fonds de Recherche du Québec — Société et Culture. She has taught classes on women in early Judaism and Christianity, Koine Greek, ancient Mediterranean religions, and the early church. Meredith’s primary research interests lie in the cultural and theological interactions among the religions of ancient Mediterranean, especially early Judaism and Christianity. In particular, Meredith is interested in how shared cultural understandings of food and eating play a role in ancient narratives, including the Pseudepigrapha, Hellenistic romance novels, and the Gospels. Meredith’s doctoral work, recently published as My Flesh is Meat Indeed: A Nonsacramental Reading of John 6:51–58 (Fortress 2015), investigates how the Gospel of John makes use of Jewish, Christian, Greek, and Roman attitudes about sacrifice, divinity, and the consumption of human flesh in order to make claims about Jesus’ divinity. Her current book project, titled Hierophagy: Transformational Eating in Ancient Literature, examines how characters in literature are transformed by eating otherworldly food. An article emerging from this research, “My Heart Poured Forth Understanding: 4 Ezra’s Fiery Cup as Hierophagic Consumption,” was recently published at the journal Studies in Religion.
Professor of History, Vanderbilt University Marshall Eakin is a historian of Latin America specializing in the history of Brazil. Although his work spans all of Brazilian history, his major publications have concentrated on the processes of nationalism and nation-building, economic and business history, and industrialization—primarily in the twentieth century. His first book, British Enterprise in Brazil: The St. John d’el Rey Mining Company and the Morro Velho Gold Mine, 1830-1960 (Duke, 1989), traces the history of the most successful foreign enterprise in 19th- and 20th-century Brazil. Tropical Capitalism: The Industrialization of Belo Horizonte, Brazil (Palgrave, 2001) examines the industrialization of the second-largest industrial center in Brazil. Much of his work addresses audiences beyond the academy. This work includes Brazil: The Once and Future Country (St. Martin’s, 1997), a one-volume introduction to Brazil for beginners and two video courses with the Great Courses, The Conquest of the Americas and The Americas in a Revolutionary Era. His more recent book is The History of Latin America: Collision of Cultures (Palgrave Macmillan, 2007). Eakin’s latest book project is “Becoming Brazilians: Race and National Identity in Twentieth-Century Brazil” to be published by Cambridge University Press in 2017.
Project manager and author for Journalism, Media and Democracy (JMAD) Research Center, Auckland University of Technology Merja Myllylahti is a researcher at Auckland University of Technology in New Zealand. Her research interests lie in digital media economy , online news business models and media ownership. She is also a project manager and author at the AUT Center of Journalism, Media and Democracy (JMAD). She is experienced financial journalist and TV reporter having worked 15 years in London for newspapers, TV and online media.
Co-director of the NYU Center for Business and Human Rights and the Jerome Kohlberg Professor of Ethics and Finance at NYU Stern, New York University Stern Center for Business and Human Rights Michael H. Posner is the Jerome Kohlberg Professor of Ethics and Finance and a Professor of Business and Society at NYU's Stern School of Business, where he is working to launch the first-ever center on business and human rights at a business school. Prior to joining NYU Stern, Posner served from 2009 to 2013 in the Obama Administration as Assistant Secretary of State for the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor at the State Department. From 1978 to 2009, he led Human Rights First, a New York-based human rights advocacy organization. Posner is recognized as a leader and expert in advancing a rights-based approach to national security, challenging the practice of torture, combating discrimination, and refugee protection. He is a frequent public commentator on these issues, and has testified dozens of times before the U.S. Congress. As Assistant Secretary, Posner traveled extensively, representing the U.S. Government to foreign officials and representatives of civil society in countries of strategic importance to the United States, including China, Russia, Egypt, Burma, Bahrain, Nigeria, Afghanistan, and Pakistan, among many others. Throughout his career, Posner has been a prominent voice in support of human rights protections in global business operations in the manufacturing supply chain, the extractives industry, and the information and communications technology sector. As a member of the White House Apparel Industry Partnership Task Force in the mid-'90s, he helped found the Fair Labor Association (FLA), an organization that brings together corporations, local leaders, universities, and NGOs to promote corporate accountability for working conditions in the apparel industry. He was a founding member of the Global Network Initiative, a multi-stakeholder initiative aimed at promoting free expression and privacy rights on the Internet, and has spoken widely on the issue of Internet freedom. Posner spearheaded the U.S. Government's efforts to enhance the effectiveness of the Voluntary Principles on Security and Human Rights, which works to improve human rights around oil, gas, and mining operations. Posner played a key role in proposing and campaigning for the first U.S. law providing for political asylum, which became part of the Refugee Act of 1980, as well as the Torture Victim Protection Act, which was adopted in 1992. In 1998, he led the Human Rights First delegation to the Rome conference at which the statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC) was adopted. Before joining Human Rights First, Posner was a lawyer with Sonnenschein, Nath & Rosenthal in Chicago. He lectured at Yale Law School from 1981 to 1984, and again in 2009, when he taught with former Dean Harold Koh. He was a visiting lecturer at Columbia University Law School from 1984 to 2008. A member of the California Bar and the Illinois Bar, he received his J.D. from the University of California, Berkeley Law School (Boalt Hall) in 1975, and a B.A. with distinction and honors in History from the University of Michigan in 1972. Posner resides with his family in New York City.
Senior Lecturer in Geomatics, University of Melbourne Dr Mohsen Kalantari is a Senior Lecturer in Geomatics and Associate Director at the Centre for Spatial Data Infrastructures and Land Administration (CSDILA) in the Dept of Infrastructure Engineering at The University of Melbourne. He teaches Land Administration Systems (LAS) and Spatial Analysis and has several publications. Dr Kalantari is a spatial data engineer and in recognition of his research he has been awarded a prestigious Victoria Fellowship. The Victoria Fellowships recognise young researchers with leadership potential and aim to help them enhance their future careers, while developing new ideas which could offer commercial benefit to Victoria. He previously worked as a Research Fellow on a range of research projects at the CSDILA. He has also worked at the Department of Sustainability and Environment (DSE), Land Victoria and has an extensive knowledge of land administration systems of Australia. He completed his PhD in 2008.
Assistant Professor of Strategic Management and Globalization, Copenhagen Business School Marcus M. Larsen, PhD, is an Assistant Professor of Strategic and International Management at Copenhagen Business School. His research—which has been published in top-tier academic journals and received several international prizes—lies on the intersection of strategy, organizational theory and international business, with a particular focus on offshoring and emerging economy multinationals. He teaches students at all levels on issues relating to strategic management and international business and is the author of several teaching cases which are actively used around the world.
