A2RU - Key Persons
Job Titles:
- Member of the Executive Committee
Job Titles:
- Student Program Assistant
Carolina Janicke was born and raised in Rochester Hills, MI. She is currently a sophomore at the University of Michigan and in the process of transferring to the School of Information, where she will be getting a Bachelor of Science in Information. She plans to focus on User Interface design and experience. She is on the business team for Formula 1 SAE Mracing! In her free time she likes to go to car shows, take and edit photos, and cook.
Job Titles:
- Program Coordinator / Conference Director
Prior to joining a2ru, Charisse honed her coordination skills while serving as the Conference Coordinator for the School of Environment and Sustainability at the University of Michigan. There, she planned and executed international conferences with up to 500 attendees from over 50 different countries. She has also served as the Meeting and Event Coordinator for the Early Modern Colloquium and the Workshop Co-Coordinator for the Religion in the Early Modern Atlantic Rackham Interdisciplinary Workshop.
Currently, she volunteers with UM's Sexual Assault Prevention and Awareness Center's Raise the Bar program to teach bar, restaurant, and transportation staff how to identify consensual versus perpetrating behavior and serve as active bystanders. She also encourages students to find ways to combine their academic interests with community engagement through a scholarship she established at Wagner College, Academics for Activism. This scholarship is awarded annually to students who plan to enter higher education for the express purpose of strengthening their ongoing activist work in underprivileged communities.
Charisse received a BA in English from Wagner College. She also holds a MA in English Language and Literature and a PhD in English and Women's Studies from the University of Michigan. She has created and taught courses in English, Political Science, and Women's Studies, almost all of which have included gameful design. Her teaching philosophy is centered on the idea that learning should be fun, skill-based, and personalized. She continues to fulfill her passion for teaching by tutoring students in the Ann Arbor community.
Job Titles:
- Member of the Executive Committee
- Director of the Division of the Arts
Chris Walker is the Director of the Division of the Arts at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He is a Professor in the Dance Department and founding artistic director of the First Wave program in the Office of Multicultural Arts Initiatives. Walker co-directs #BARS Workshop at The Public Theatre in NYC, a lab series for artists to investigate the intersection between contemporary verse and theater, created by Rafael Casal and Daveed Diggs. He is also a senior choreographer with the National Dance Theatre Company of Jamaica, and program director for the New Waves Dance & Performance Institute in Trinidad & Tobago.
Walker creates contemporary dance, theater and performance artwork rooted in the visual and performance cultures of the African Diaspora. He works in the disciplines of dance, theater, film/video. He served as movement director for two-time Pulitzer Prize winner Lynn Nottage's Mlima's Tale, which ran at the Public's Martinson Hall and he is the recent choreographer for The Secret Life of Bees, The Musical produced by Atlantic Theatre in NYC. Walker has collaborated with Laura Anderson Barbata to develop Jus Luv/Rolling Calf a Jamaican ‘mas' for her Intervention: Indigo project, a performance that was presented in the 2015 Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade in Brooklyn, NY.
His concert dance work has been presented in Europe, Asia and throughout the Americas. His collaboration with Kevin Ormsby and KasheDance in Toronto titled FACING Home: Love & Redemption is currently and has been on tour internationally since its premiere in 2015. He has received numerous international and national grants and honors for his creative research work. He recently completed a Romnes Fellowship, which supported his research on homophobia in the African Diaspora and in 2020 he was named one of the School of Education's Impact 2030 Faculty Fellows.
Job Titles:
- Member of the Executive Committee
- Professor of Music
Dan Cavanagh is Professor of Music and Interim Dean of the College of Liberal Arts at the University of Texas at Arlington. A composer and pianist who has garnered numerous awards in both areas, he received a 2009 gold medal prize from the International Music Prize for Excellence in Composition. In 2017 he was awarded a Special Judges' Citation in the American Prize for Chamber Music Composition for his work for trumpet ensemble and drum set, Waves. As a composer Cavanagh has written or arranged for Latin Grammy-winning AfroBop Alliance, the legendary Patti LaBelle, and a wide range of classical and jazz performers across North America and Europe. He has released four critically acclaimed jazz CDs as a leader. His new recording with James Miley featuring John Hollenbeck will be released in October 2022 on S/N Alliance (Japan). His music can be heard on many other recordings both classical and jazz and continues to be commissioned and programmed around the world. Cavanagh has also performed extensively in North America and internationally. He has been a finalist in the EuropaFest Jazz Contest in Bucharest, and in the Jacksonville Jazz Festival Piano Competition. Prior to serving as interim Dean, Cavanagh held various academic leadership roles, including program director, music department chair, and associate dean. From 2015-2020, he served as the Co-Chair of Region VI for the Society of Composers. Cavanagh chairs Downtown Arlington's Cultural Arts District Partners group and serves as Vice Chair for the Board of Trustees for the Dallas Wind Symphony.
Job Titles:
- Member of the Executive Committee
Job Titles:
- Member of the Executive Committee
As Learning Technologist for the University of Nevada, Las Vegas College of Fine Arts, Dr. Yvonne Houy supports faculty in all of its seven areas (Architecture, Art, Entertainment Engineering Design, Dance, Film, Music and Theatre)-over 120 tenured and tenure-track faculty, part-time professors of practice and graduate teaching assistants. Her goal is to improve faculty satisfaction and student learning outcomes through a wide variety of online educational resources for in-person, hybrid and fully online courses. A graduate of Cornell University (M.A. & Ph.D.) and the University of California, Berkeley (B.A.), and former Visiting Assistant Professor at the highly selective, liberal arts-focused Pomona College, Dr. Houy understands the needs and challenges of higher education institutions that value research, teaching, and diversity. This is enhanced by her interdisciplinary career: After earning her Ph.D. in the Humanities with a media studies emphasis, she followed her interest in online learning technologies and computer programming to become a learning technologist and professional development facilitator. Believing deeply in the power of learning to drive equity, she is an active member of the international Computer Science For All movement, and, since 2016, a national professional development facilitator for the Code.org Advanced Placement Computer Science Principles curriculum. At the regional level, she has produced events such as the Las Vegas Maker Faire, the local STEAM educators' showcase Explore.Learn.Inspire., the interdisciplinary Las Vegas Make-a-thon 2.0 on the future of experience design, and online transdisciplinary design charrettes to transform arts education. In all these projects and her courses she enjoys teaching artists and designers how to use coding and mobile app development as a new creative "canvas." Influenced by Aikido and transformative mediation, she is known in the UNLV community as a resource who bridges divergent perspectives for productive collaborations. She facilitates challenging and complex conversations such as for Design Sprints and conflict mediations. She serves on the UNLV Faculty Technology Advisory Board and as the UNLV Faculty Senate representative for the UNLV AI policy committee, and is the founding editor of Tradition-Innovations in Arts, Design, and Media Higher Education, a new peer-reviewed digital journal. Her scholarship focuses on socially and culturally disruptive mobile technologies, propaganda technologies and techniques, and research-based best practices for online student engagement, which is intertwined with her interests in Flow experiences, mental states conducive to productivity and creativity, and her 15+ years of experience in Aikido, the martial art known for balancing conflict resolution and collaboration.
Job Titles:
- Member of the Executive Committee
- Special Advisor
Ivica Ico Bukvic is a discipline-agnostic creative exploring and building creative technologies for a better tomorrow. His current research trajectories include low-latency synchronous musical co-creation over distance, aural immersion and broadening of human cognitive bandwidth in automotive scenarios, large-scale digital signal processing, including spatialization, and data sonification, and enhancing K-12 education through integrated technology-mediated experiential learning.
Job Titles:
- Chairman of the Executive Committee
- Co - Chair of the Executive Committee
- Senior Vice Provost for Academic Initiatives
Jason Geary is Senior Vice Provost for Academic Initiatives, Dean of the Mason Gross School of the Arts and Distinguished Professor of Music at Rutgers University. For twelve years beginning in 2004, he taught musicology at the University of Michigan School of Music, Theatre & Dance, where he also held the role of Associate Dean for Graduate Studies, Equity, and Inclusion. Prior to arriving at Rutgers, he served for four years as Director of the School of Music at the University of Maryland and was Special Advisor for the Arts within the College of Arts & Humanities. While at Maryland, Geary enhanced entrepreneurship training for students, forged ties between the arts and sciences, increased diversity across the school, and fostered more inclusive programming, all while significantly growing the school's fund balance and more than tripling its annual fundraising totals. He also launched several community engagement initiatives, including a student live-in residency at a senior retirement community that garnered national attention, and was involved in the creation of an arts leadership minor for undergraduate students. At Michigan, Geary spearheaded multiple efforts to improve the quality of graduate programs and led a comprehensive strategic planning process around enhancing diversity, equity, and inclusion.
Job Titles:
- Member of the Executive Committee
- Associate Professor at Texas a & M University 's School of Performance
Jinsil Hwaryoung Seo is an associate professor at Texas A&M University's School of Performance, Visualization, & Fine Arts. She is also the founding director of the Soft Interaction Lab and serves as the director of the Institute for Applied Creativity. Seo holds a PhD degree in Interactive Art and Technology from Simon Fraser University in Canada and an MFA degree in Computer Arts from the School of Visual Arts (SVA) in New York.
Job Titles:
- Associate Professor
- Member of the Executive Committee
José Manuel Izquierdo is associate professor of music, and Director of Research and Postgraduate studies in the Faculty of Arts of the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile. During the last five years he has been leading the PhD in Arts, a pioneering program in Chile and South America, the first in the region with an interdisciplinary focus on Practice as Research in performance, visual arts and music. With a PhD from the University of Cambridge (where he was selected as a Gates Cambridge Scholar), his research focuses on music and culture and Latin America, and opera studies, with a focus on mobilities and the circulation of music. He has a particular interest in problems of postcolonial approaches to culture and heritage in Latin America, having led several projects in rethinking the ways in which Western art forms have operated in the region since colonial times. His publications have earned him several awards, including the Otto Mayer Serra prize for musicology, and the Tosc@ award for transnational opera studies.
Job Titles:
- Member of the Executive Committee
Working in collaborative and cross-disciplinary modes, Kevin produces artworks, archives, and scholarship on such subjects as race and space, public memory, history of technology, and state violence. Recognition for his work has included grants from the National Science Foundation and National Endowment for the Humanities, presentation at conferences across Europe and North America (ISEA/ DEAF/CAA/NCA/ACM-SIGCHI), publication in edited journals and anthologies (Routledge/CCCS/Palm Press/UCLA), and invited residencies (Banff/USC-IML/Bratislava). As an educator, administrator, and researcher, Kevin is focused on integration of practice-based, historical and theoretical approaches to learning about technological mediation. This work has included the development of several interdisciplinary project-based courses, workshops, and initiatives for students and faculty from the sciences, arts and humanities, with emphases on prototyping, reflection, and methodologies of collaboration.
Job Titles:
- Member of the Executive Committee
- Professor of Engineering Education at Virginia Tech
Lisa D. McNair is a Professor of Engineering Education at Virginia Tech and Deputy Executive Director of the Institute for Creativity, Arts and Technology (ICAT). From 2018 to 2023 she was Director of the Center for Educational Networks and Impacts (CENI), the education, outreach, and engagement arm of ICAT. She has held leadership positions in the university's interdisciplinary initiatives and served as Assistant Department Head of Graduate Programs and Chair of the Promotion & Tenure Committee in the VT Engineering Education department. In 2013 she began training as a sculptor and stone carver with Bob Lockhart and Darcy Meeker and applies this experience to both her art and to collaborative education. Her overarching goal is to create learning experiences that are research-informed and that transverse perspectives within and beyond the university. Her funded NSF projects have included revolutionizing the culture of the VT ECE department, identifying practices in intentionally inclusive Maker spaces, and exploring professional identity development in Civil Engineering students with disabilities. She is currently conducting ethnographic research on historical and social forces shaping cold climate building projects in Alaskan housing and beginning a collaborative project with researchers from the arts, neuroscience, and immersive technologies to bridge physical and disciplinary distances. Her work in CENI focuses on building networks between the university and multiple community sectors and supporting engagement in science, engineering, arts, and design. In addition to directing 11 PhD dissertations and serving on an additional 17 PhD committees, Dr. McNair has funded and mentored 6 post-graduate scholars (5 PhD, 1 MFA) with a range of professional accomplishments and goals, including scholars seeking tenure-track positions as well as academic and industry-based administrative careers. She earned a PhD in Linguistics at the University of Chicago, and an M.A. and B.A. in English at the University of Georgia. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6654-2337
Seo's interactive art has been showcased locally, nationally, and internationally at notable venues such as ISEA, SIGGRAPH ASIA, IDMAA, TEI, and Creativity & Cognition. Her contributions extend to publishing in various journals and conference proceedings, covering topics like tangible/embodied interaction, interactive design, participatory design, and learning technology.
Job Titles:
- Architect
- Member of the Executive Committee
- Professor of Landscape Architecture
Mallika Bose is Professor of Landscape Architecture and Associate Dean of Research, Creative Activity and Graduate Studies in the College of Arts and Architecture at Penn State. In this role she supports and promotes arts and design research/creative activity and is an advocate for expanding the role of arts/design research in higher education and society. Graduate education is at the core of the research enterprise in higher education, and she works actively to diversify the student body and the types of research/creative activity undertaken in the College of Arts and Architecture at Penn State. Mallika is committed to making visible the role of arts and design in equitable development, human flourishing and the responsible stewardship of our planet.
Mallika is trained as an architect specializing in Environment-Behavior Studies. She is interested in how the built environment impacts human behavior especially for disadvantaged groups. Her research areas include: Built Environment and Active Living/Healthy Eating; Public Scholarship and Community Engaged Design and Planning; Gender and Development; and Design/Planning Pedagogy. Her scholarship has been published in Landscape Journal, Habitat International, International Development and Planning Research, Journal of Planning Education and Research, and Journal of Urban Design among others. She co-edited a book on community-engaged teaching/scholarship titled - Community Matters: Service-learning in Engaged Design and Planning - which received the 2015 Great Places Book Award from the Environmental Design Research Association (EDRA). She served on the board of EDRA for several years and was the Chair of the EDRA Board of Directors in 2012-13. In 2016 Mallika joined the National Advisory Board of Imagining America - Artists and Scholars in Public Life. She co-directs the Collective of Publicly Engaged Designers (CoPED), an initiative of Imagining America.
Job Titles:
- Executive Director
- Member of the Executive Committee
- Executive Director of the Alliance for the Arts
Maryrose Flanigan is the executive director of the Alliance for the Arts in Research Universities (a2ru), where she oversees a network of universities which are committed to advancing arts-based and interdisciplinary research, practice, and teaching in higher education. She serves on a presidential advisory group for the arts initiative at a2ru's headquarters at the University of Michigan and is part of the advisory cohort for the Imagining America's Leading and Learning Initiative: Shifting Institutional Culture to Fortify Public Scholarship, funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
Prior to joining the staff at a2ru, she served in various roles at the National Endowment for the Arts: as division coordinator for Literature and Arts Education, as a specialist for the creative writing and translation fellowships; and served as program manager for national programs Poetry Out Loud and the NEA Big Read. She has also served as associate editor for Office of Communications and Public Affairs (OCPA) at the Association of American Colleges and Universities (AAC&U); and associate director for the Association of Writers and Writing Programs (AWP). Maryrose has an M.F.A. in poetry from American University.
Job Titles:
- Member of the Executive Committee
Job Titles:
- Member of the Executive Committee
- Artist
Patrick Earl Hammie is a visual artist-painter, sculptor, illustrator-who uses portraits and allegories to examine personal and shared Black experiences and offers stories that expand how we express notions of gender and race today. Hammie studied drawing at Coker University (2004) and received an MFA in painting from University of Connecticut (2008). His works and collaborations have been exhibited in Germany, India, South Africa, and the United States, at venues that span the California African American Museum, The Drawing Center, John Michael Kohler Arts Center, Kunstwerk Carlshütte, National Underground Railroad Freedom Center, Wausau Museum of Contemporary Art, and the Zhou B. Art Center. He was an artist-in-residence at the John Michael Kohler Art Center and the inaugural recipient of the Alice C. Cole '42 Fellowship from Wellesley College. His works are included in public and private collections including the David C. Driskell Center (Maryland), Kinsey Institute Collections (Indiana), Kohler Company Collection (Wisconsin), JPMorgan Chase Art Collection (New York), and William Benton Museum of Art (Connecticut). He has been supported by fellowships and grants from the Joyce Foundation, Midwestern Voices and Visions, Puffin Foundation, Tanne Foundation, the states of Illinois and Connecticut, and other private foundations. Hammie currently serves as an Associate Professor and Chair of Studio Art at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign in the School of Art + Design.
Job Titles:
- Member of the Executive Committee
- Executive Director of the Institute for Creativity
- Senior Specialist at University College
Executive Director of the Institute for Creativity, Arts, and Technology (ICAT) and Professor of Computer Science, Virginia Tech, Emeritus and Special Advisor for Creatives and the Future of Work
R. Benjamin Knapp is the Executive Director of the Institute for Creativity, Arts, and Technology (ICAT) and Professor of Computer Science at Virginia Tech. ICAT seeks to promote research and education at the boundaries between art, design, engineering, and science. Dr. Knapp also leads the Music, Sensors, and Emotion research group, with researchers in the UK and the US.
For more than 20 years, Dr. Knapp has been working to create meaningful links between human-computer interaction, universal design, and various forms of creativity. His research on human-computer interaction has focused on the development and design of user-interfaces and software that allow both composers and performers to augment the physical control of a musical instrument with direct sensory interaction. He holds twelve patents and is the co-inventor of the BioMuse system, which enables artists to use gesture, cognition, and emotional state to interact with audio and video media.
In previous positions, Dr. Knapp has served as a Fulbright Senior Specialist at University College, Dublin, and chief technology officer of the Technology Research for Independent Living Centre. As the director of technology at MOTO Development Group in San Francisco, Calif., he managed teams of engineers and designers developing human-computer interaction systems for companies such as Sony, Microsoft, and Logitech. He co-founded BioControl Systems, a company that develops mobile bioelectric measurement devices for artistic interaction. Dr. Knapp has also served as professor and chair of the Department of Computer, Information, and Systems Engineering at San Jose State University.
He earned a doctorate and master's degrees in electrical engineering from Stanford University and a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering from North Carolina State University. Dr. Knapp has been a PI in several pan-European projects including, CAPSIL (Common Awareness and Knowledge Platform for Studying and Enabling Independent Living) and SIEMPRE (Social Interaction and Entrainment Using Music Performance) and coordinated the EU project, BRAID (Bridging Research in Ageing and ICT Development).
Job Titles:
- Member of the Executive Committee
- Associate Dean for Research
Rogério M. Pinto is Associate Dean for Research and Innovation and Berit Ingersoll-Dayton Collegiate Professor of Social Work at the University of Michigan's School of Social Work; he is also Professor of Theatre and Drama in U-M's School of Music, Theatre & Dance.
Born in Belo Horizonte, Brazil, Pinto focuses on finding academic, sociopolitical and cultural venues for broadcasting voices of oppressed individuals and groups. Funded by the National Institute of Mental Health, his community-engaged research focuses on the impact of interprofessional collaboration on the delivery of evidence-based services (HIV and drug-use prevention and care) to marginalized racial/ethnic and sexual minorities in the United States and Brazil. Pinto conducts art-based scholarly research. He performed "Marília," a one-person play, on New York City's Theatre Row in 2015 and at the University of the Free State in Bloemfontein, Vrystaat, South Africa in 2016. "Marília" won the United Solo Festival Best Documentary Script. In "Marília," Pinto explores the tragic death of his three-year-old sister and how it haunts and inspires the family she left behind. Funded by the University of Michigan Office of Research and several other sources, he built the "Realm of the Dead," an art installation to investigate his own marginalization as a gender non-confirming, mixed-race and Latinx immigrant. "Realm of the Dead" was presented at the School of Social Work as part of its Centennial celebration in 2021.
Shannon Fitzsimons Moen's professional practice bridges the performing arts and higher education; in administrative, artistic, and educational roles, she has honed her ability to connect artists, educators, audiences, and ideas in unexpected and illuminating ways that spark dynamic discovery and growth.
Prior to joining a2ru, Shannon served as the inaugural University Programs Manager at UMS (University Musical Society), the performing arts presenter at the University of Michigan. Shannon designed and managed UMS's portfolio of university-based arts-academic integration programs, which she grew to serve nearly 3,700 students in 2018-2019. Key initiatives included "Engaging Performance," a team-taught course introducing U-M undergraduates to the performing arts through the lens of the UMS season; two granting programs for faculty to develop arts-integrative teaching skills; and a commissioned series of white papers and case studies on arts integration best practices for faculty.
Shannon also produced several UMS main stage performances and its Research Residency program each season. Projects included work by Yo Yo Ma, Ivo van Hove/Toneelgroep Amsterdam, the Takacs Quartet, Martha Graham Dance Company, Ping Chong + Company, Thé tre des Bouffes du Nord, Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Julia Wolfe, pianist Igor Levit, rapper/poet Omar Offendum, solo performer Edgar Oliver, and Alec Baldwin.
Prior to joining UMS, Shannon worked as a dramaturg, audience educator, and theatre writer for companies across the country including The Public Theater/Under the Radar, Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Steppenwolf, Lookingglass, California Shakespeare Theater, and African-American Shakespeare Company. She also designed and taught courses in American theatre history and dramaturgy at Northwestern University.
Educated at Hamilton College and Northwestern University, Shannon recently earned a master's degree in Higher, Adult, and Lifelong Education at Michigan State University.
Job Titles:
- Chairman of the Executive Committee
- Co - Chair of the Executive Committee
- Editor of "the Urban Wisdom of Jane Jacobs
Sonia is also the editor of "The Urban Wisdom of Jane Jacobs" (with Diane Zahm), published by Routledge, and the author of "Twenty Years of Transition: The Evolution of Urban Planning in Eastern Europe and the Former Soviet Union, 1989-2009" (UN HABITAT; with Kiril Stanilov). She is an elected Fellow of the American Institute of Certified Planners. She is currently the Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Planning History (JOPH)-the official peer-reviewed journal of the Society for American City and Regional Planning History (previously, she was Co-Editor-in-Chief of JOPH). Through her career, she is or has been member of the editorial boards of ten scholarly journals, including Planning Perspectives, Planning Research and Practice, and Urban Design International.
Job Titles:
- Member of the Executive Committee
- Research Administrator
Soul Brown is a research administrator, doctoral candidate, youth worker, writer, creative practitioner, and social justice educator. Presently, she directs the RISD Research office at Rhode Island School of Design, where she promotes faculty and graduate students' generation of new knowledges and ways of making through the conduct of sponsored, interdisciplinary, transformative research. Soul also is a PhD candidate in an interprofessional educational leadership and healthcare administration program at Pacific University (Oregon). Her research focuses on historical and contemporary experiences of Black student success in the United States through the frameworks of Critical Race Theory and Community Cultural Wealth. She employs qualitative methodologies of Voice Scholarship and Phenomenology to explicate counternarratives of BIPOC schooled experiences. This fall she is co-teaching a course on the Pathology of Race and Racism in Healthcare.
Job Titles:
- Member of the Executive Committee
- Professor at the Rochester Institute of Technology
Susan Lakin is currently a Professor at the Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT) in the College of Art and Design. She has a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Photography from Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California and worked as a freelance photographer in Los Angeles, Sweden and Australia. In addition to her commercial photography work, she owned and operated a professional retail photographic supply store in Burbank, CA.
Attracted to RIT's strong photography and computer science departments, Susan accepted her teaching position shortly after completing an MFA in Art Studio with an emphasis in digital arts at the University of California, Santa Barbara. She works across disciplines in her academic and art practices, which led to her role as a Fellow in the School of Individualized Study, an RIT academic unit that provides flexible individualized education pathways. Additionally, she serves on the RIT Center for Engaged Storycraft Steering Committee in the College of Liberal Arts, an interdisciplinary center working and playing with story-based creativity, research, and technical craft.
Susan's artwork has received numerous awards and is part of the permanent collection at the Santa Barbara Museum of Art, Oakland Museum of California, the Griffin Museum of Photography, and Photography Museum of Lishui, China. She has produced multiple interactive transmedia projects exploring the intersections of music, art, and technology. More recently, she is engaged with immersive technology and collaborates on community projects in the nonprofit sector. She is a founding member and co-chair of the RIT Frameless Labs, a collective to advance research, innovation and artistic creation in fields of virtual and augmented reality. She is chair of the 2020 annual Frameless Labs XR Symposium, an event and online journal for the community of VR/AR makers to encourage collaboration, growth of existing ventures and inspiration for new projects and technology.
Job Titles:
- Member of the Executive Committee
Tamara L. Falicov is the inaugural dean of the UMKC School of Humanities and Social Sciences. Dean Falicov comes to UMKC from the University of Kansas, where she was an associate dean in Arts, Humanities and Area Studies in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences and a professor in the Department of Film and Media Studies and the Center of Latin American and Caribbean Studies. Falicov is the author of two books: Latin American Film Industries and The Cinematic Tango: Contemporary Argentine Film, with a co-edited book forthcoming. Her research interests have ranged from Latin American film studies and film festival research to assisting medical researchers in understanding language and culture in the treatment of Latinx patients and families. She earned her Ph.D. in Communication from the University of California, San Diego.
Veronica Dittman Stanich holds a PhD in Dance Studies from the Ohio State University. Her interview- and observation-based research investigating audience responses to postmodern dance has been published in Dance Chronicle and Dance Research, and presented to the Congress on Research in Dance. Her work on the a2ru research team has resulted in workshops, whitepapers, and other resources concerning arts integration impacts; issues around tenure and promotion for the arts, design, and interdisciplinary practices; and interdisciplinary collaboration. Veronica is the Managing Editor of Ground Works, a2ru's online platform for arts-integrated research.