Associate professor, Jordan University for Science and Technology Dr. Samer Talozi is an Associate Professor in the Department of Civil Engineering at the Jordan University of Science and Technology, where his research focuses on water resources, planning, and management at the national and regional levels. His work has been published in several journals, including Nature Sustainability, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Water Policy, and more.
PhD Candidate in Social Psychology, University of Arizona I am a PhD candidate in social psychology at the University of Arizona. I hold a BA in neurobiology and behavior from Cornell University and an MS in the psychology of human-animal interaction from Purdue University. My career focuses on the role of service dog partnerships in biopsychosocial outcomes for people with disabilities. From 2010-2021, I worked for the world’s largest service dog provider, Canine Companions. I am an Assistance Dogs International (ADI) Certified Service Dog Instructor and, in 2016, I was promoted to the leadership role of National Director of Training and Client Services. In 2021, recognizing a need to build the empirical evidence base underlying the service dog intervention, I joined the Organization for Human-Animal Interaction Research Education (OHAIRE) under Dr. Maggie O’Haire as a PhD student. My research leverages a transdisciplinary approach to translate service dog partners’ lived experiences into actionable data. I am a University of Arizona One Health Research Fellow, a member of Psi Chi International Honor Society, and recipient of the 2024 APA/APAGS Award for Distinguished Graduate Student in Professional Psychology.
Senior Lecturer in Social and Organisational Psychology, University of Sussex Business School, University of Sussex, University of Sussex I received my PhD in Social Psychology from the University of Sheffield in 2015, supervised by Professors Richard Crisp and Eran Halperin. My postoc was in the Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University. Following this, I held a position of lecturer (assistant professor) in the Surrey Business School. I believe that social and organizational issues cannot be examined without taking into consideration psychological factors and phenomena. On the other hand, I believe psychology loses much of its relevance if it does not address 'real' questions regarding the dynamics between people and groups. My research focuses on the role of emotions in decision-making, conflict resolution, leadership and management, and negotiations. This includes emotional experiences (when people feel an emotion) and emotional expressions (when people express an emotion). My work spans organizational, social, and political contexts, and examines the way these frameworks are affected by one another. In addition to researching the effects of emotions on behaviours and attitudes, I examine ways to regulate emotions experimentally using interventions. In particular, I study the role of hope in social contexts, including conflict and intergroup relations, collective action and civil engagement, negotiations, and decision making. Along these lines, I develop experimental techniques to induce and regulate hope.
PhD Candidate, Literature and Music, University of Liverpool Stephanie Hernandez is a PhD student of Literature and Music at the University of Liverpool. Using interdisciplinary approaches, she is researching the echoes of Romanticism in the popular music of the 1960s and 1970s, from The Doors to Patti Smith. Her research incorporates literary analysis, musicology, fashion history and concepts of performance. She has delivered the presentations 'Beatle Wives and the Curation of the Beatles Legacy' (PCA/ACA, 2023) and 'Joni Mitchell's Blue and Mental Health' (Popular Music and Wellbeing, 2023). At the University of Liverpool, she has participated in the IASPM Conference (2022) and the Tay Day (Liverpool's Version) Conference (2024). While completing her Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in English Literature, Stephanie worked at both The Beatles Story, Liverpool and Handel & Hendrix in London, which fostered her interest in the cultural legacy of historically musical spaces. Stephanie is also a music journalist who has written for Rolling Stone UK, Warner Music UK and others. Her academic publications include 'Yoko Ono's Avant Garde Humour', in The Beatles and Humour (2023), and 'Marketing: How Gamification Produced a Vinyl-Mania' in the Journal of Popular Music Studies (2021).
Senior Lecturer in Communication, Auburn University Susan Fillippeli is a senior lecturer in the School of Communication & Journalism. With a PhD in communication from the University of Iowa, she has held faculty positions at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, The University of Puget Sound, and Auburn University. Areas of interest are rhetorical criticism and theory, public address, persuasion, political communication, and the rhetoric of social movements. In 2001 Fillippeli left Auburn University to pursue a career in the private sector where she served as a communication consultant to political candidates and businesses, and for a software development firm where she worked as a communication and training professional and project manager specializing in corporate communication strategies, crisis communication management, proposal development, campaign management, corporate communication, and training and development. While working in the private sector she earned certification as a project management professional (PMP). Fillippeli was appointed by Governor Bob Riley to serve two terms on the Alabama Women’s Commission, and by Commissioner of Agriculture and Industries John McMillan to serve on the Lee County Board of Registrars. She has been active in local and state politics for more than 20 years and is a member of First Presbyterian Church in Auburn where she has served three terms as an elder. Throughout both her academic and corporate career, Fillippeli’s first love has always been teaching. She blends her academic training with her private sector experience in making her classroom a living laboratory for Auburn students.
Senior Lecturer, Institute of Caribbean Studies and Reggae Studies Unit, The University of the West Indies Sonjah Stanley Niaah is a Jamaican cultural studies and music scholar, cultural activist and international speaker. She is the first Ph.D. Cultural Studies graduate from the University of the West Indies (UWI), and the first to be appointed Lecturer and Senior Lecturer in Cultural Studies there. The inaugural Rhodes Trust Rex Nettleford Fellow in Cultural Studies (2005), Sonjah Stanley Niaah is a former head of the UWI's Institute of Caribbean Studies & Reggae Studies Unit, and is a leading author, teacher and researcher on Black Atlantic performance geographies, popular culture and the sacred, and Caribbean Cultural Studies more broadly. Stanley Niaah is the author / editor of numerous publications.These include Dancehall: From Slave Ship to Ghetto (University of Ottawa Press, 2010); Dancehall: A Reader on Jamaican Music and Culture (UWI Press, 2020); Dancehall In/Securities: Perspectives on Caribbean Expressive Life (Routledge, 2022); A Study on the Creative Industry as a Pillar of Sustained Growth and Diversification - The Film And Music Sectors In Jamaica, UNECLAC Studies and Perspectives Series - No. 72 (2018); ”I’m Broader than Broadway: Caribbean Perspectives on Producing Celebrity' (Wadabagei, Vol. 12: 2, 2009); and ‘Of Sacred Crossroads: Cultural Studies and the Sacred’ (Open Cultural Studies Vol. 3, No.1, 2019).
