AUTHORS’ BIOGRAPHIES

Iyad Abumoghli is the Founder and Director of the Faith for Earth Coalition of the United Nations Environmental Programme (UNEP). For around forty years, he has been focusing on strategic planning, sustainable development, interfaith collaboration, and innovation. He has held senior-level positions at the UN including as Regional Representative of UNEP in West Asia, Director of Innovation at Regional Office of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) for the Arab States, Environment Advisor at the Regional Facility in Beirut, Global Practice Manager for the Environment Group in New York, Assistant Representative of UNDP in Jordan. He holds a doctorate degree in Engineering from University of Bath/UK, and is an outstanding graduate of the Virtual Development Academy – Johns University. He has contributed numerous papers and book chapters that contemplate the interplay of religion and the environment, ethics, values, and spirituality in the context of environmental governance.

Elizabeth Allison is an environmental social scientist who studies the convergence of religion and ethics with environmental policy, practice, and politics. She is Professor of Ecology and Religion at the California Institute of Integral Studies in San Francisco, California, where she founded and chairs the graduate program in Ecology, Spirituality, and Religion and created the Religion & Ecology Summit conference series. She is a member of the Advisory Group for the Yale Forum on Religion & Ecology and an editorial board member for the journal Worldviews: Global Religions, Culture, and Ecology. Her many scholarly articles appear in journals like Ecology & Society, WIREs Climate Change, Religions, Mountain Research and Development, Journal for the Study of Religion, Nature, and Culture, and in numerous edited volumes. She is co-editor of After the Death of Nature: Carolyn Merchant and the Future of Human-Nature Relations.

Philip P. Arnold is Associate Professor and Chair of the Department of Religion at Syracuse University, as well as a core faculty member of Native American and Indigenous Studies. He is the Director of the Skä·noñh—Great Law of Peace Center, which repurposes the site that formerly celebrated the Jesuits coming to Onondaga Nation Territory in 1656-58. The new Center now tells the ancient story of the formation of the Longhouse tradition known as the Great Law of Peace at Onondaga Lake and its influences on American culture. He is the author of many books, including The Urgency of Indigenous Values (Syracuse University Press, 2023). He is the President of the Indigenous Values Initiative, which is a non-profit organization to support the work of the Skä·noñh—Great Law of Peace Center and other organizations and initiatives to educate the general public about the indigenous values of the Haudenosaunee.

Whitney Bauman is Professor of Religious Studies at Florida International University (FIU) in Miami, Florida. He is also co-founder and co-director of Counterpoint: Navigating Knowledge, a non-profit based in Berlin, Germany, which holds public discussions over social and ecological issues related to globalization and climate change. His publications include Religion and Ecology: Developing a Planetary Ethic (Columbia University Press, 2014), and coauthored with Kevin O’Brien, Environmental Ethics and Uncertainty: Tackling Wicked Problems (Routledge, 2019); and 3^rd edition of Grounding Religion: A Fieldguide to the Study of Religion and Ecology, co-edited with Kevin O’Brien and Richard Bohannon, (Routledge, 2023). He is also the co-editor with Karen Bray and Heather Eaton of Earthly Things: Immanence, New Materialisms, and Planetary Thinking (Fordham University Press, 2023). His next monograph is entitled, A Critical Planetary Romanticism: Literary and Scientific Origins of New Materialism (Columbia University Press, Forthcoming 2025).

Sandy Bigtree, Bear Clan, is a citizen of the Mohawk Nation at Akwesasne. She is a founding board member of the Indigenous Values Initiative, which fosters collaboration between the academic community and the Haudenosaunee to promote the message of peace. She helped organize the: “Roots of Peacemaking” educational festivals in 2006 and 2007; the “Doctrine of Discovery Conference” in 2014; and co-edited the Neighbors of the Onondaga Nation (NOON) educational booklet. She was an original Planning Committee member of Skä•noñh: the Great Law of Peace Center and sits on the Educational Collaborative committee. In 1984-85, she was the Administrative Assistant to the American Indian Law Support Center at the Native American Rights Fund in Boulder, Colorado. In 1980-82 she performed with Native Americans in the Arts theatre troupe at LaMama, New York City, and toured the northeastern United States. From age one to age thirty, Sandy performed weekly on radio, TV, and other venues around Central New York.

Jason M. Brown was born and raised in Southern California and studied anthropology and international development as an undergraduate at Brigham Young University. His master’s work was completed in forestry and theology from Yale. He completed his PhD in 2017 from the Institute for Resources, Environment and Sustainability (IRES) at the University of British Columbia. As a Lecturer at Simon Fraser University, Jason teaches courses in comparative religion and ecological humanities for the department of Global Humanities and occasionally environmental ethics for the School of Resource and Environmental Management. He is the author of Dwelling in the Wilderness: Modern Monks in the American West (Trinity University Press, 2024).

Kimberly Carfore is an Adjunct Professor of Environmental Studies and Theology and Religious Studies at the University of San Francisco. Her research interests include wilderness, dualism, ecofeminism, philosophy, and representing the voice of the Earth. Dr. Carfore is the author of several articles and book chapters, including “Ecopsychology without Nature-Culture Dualism” (2014), “Doing Theology with Snakes: Face-to-Face with the Wholly Other” (2018), and co-author of “Planetary Love: Ecofeminist Perspectives on Globalization” (2012). She is the founding director of Wild Women, a non-profit organization oriented around women’s experiences in nature.Christopher Key Chapple is Doshi Professor of Indic and Comparative Theology and founding director of the Master of Arts in Yoga Studies at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles. He has published more than twenty books including Karma and Creativity (1986), Nonviolence to Animals, Earth, and Self in Asian Traditions (1993), Reconciling Yogas (2003), Yoga and the Luminous (2008), Living Landscapes: Meditations on the Elements in Hindu, Buddhist, and Jain Yogas (2020), and several edited volumes on religion and ecology. He has received numerous grants for his research, including from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Fulbright Nehru Fellowship program. He serves on the advisory boards for the Forum on Religion and Ecology (Yale), the Jaina Studies Centre (London), the Dharma Academy of North America (Berkeley), the South Asia Studies Association (Los Angeles), the Center for Religions and Spirituality (LMU), and the International School for Jain Studies (Delhi).

Lisa E. Dahill is Miriam Therese Winter Professor of Transformative Leadership and Spirituality at Hartford International University for Religion and Peace (formerly Hartford Seminary). She also directs the school’s Center for Transformative Spirituality and its Graduate Certificate in Eco-Spirituality. She is co-editor of Eco-Reformation: Grace and Hope for a Planet in Peril (Cascade Books, 2016) and author of numerous works on rewilding Christian spirituality and worship. A scholar and translator of Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s writings in the Fortress Press Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works series, she is also past president of the Society for the Study of Christian Spirituality and convener of the Ecology and Liturgy Seminar of the North American Academy of Liturgy.

Heather Eaton is a Professor of Leadership, Ecology and Equity at Saint Paul University in Ottawa, Canada. Her research focuses on Environmental Humanities; the relationships among analyses, ethics and aesthetics, specifically wonder, in ecological discourses; the need for ecological literacy; the importance of nonviolence peace and justice studies on gender, ecology, religion; and animal rights. She has developed Master’s and Bachelor’s degrees in Leadership, Ecology and Equity, and is involved in conferences, workshops, teaching and publishing in these areas. Publications include Earthly Things: Immanence, New Materialisms, and Planetary Thinking, with Karen Bray, Whitney Bauman (Fordham, 2023), Advancing Nonviolence and Social Transformation with Lauren Levesque (Equinox, 2016), The Intellectual Journey of Thomas Berry (Lexington Press, 2014), Ecological Awareness: Exploring Religion, Ethics and Aesthetics, with Sigurd Bergmann (LIT Verlag, 2011), Introducing Ecofeminist Theologies (T&T Clark 2005); and with Lois Lorentzen, Ecofeminism and Globalization (Rowman & Littlefield, 2003).

David L. Haberman is Professor Emeritus of Religious Studies at Indiana University. Much of his work has centered on the culture of Braj, an active Indian pilgrimage destination long associated with Krishna and known for its sacred sites, temple festivals, and performative traditions. His recent research tracks the relationship between religion, ecology and nature, with a focus on Hindu views of and interaction with nonhuman entities. His publications include Journey Through the Twelve Forests: An Encounter with Krishna (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994), River of Love in an Age of Pollution: The Yamuna River of Northern India (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006), People Trees: Worship of Trees in Northern India (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013), and Loving Stones: Making the Impossible Possible in the Worship of Mount Govardhan (New York: Oxford University Press, 2020). He is also an environmental activist, with a special focus on forest protection.

Melanie L. Harris is a leading scholar in Ecowomanism, poet, professor, and mother. A graduate of Spelman College, Union Theological Seminary in New York City, and Harvard University, Harris weaves her academic work with her artistry as a singer, researcher, and writer. Ordained in the African Methodist Episcopal church, Harris cultivates practices of compassion through interfaith dialogue and interreligious practice featuring Buddhist meditation, Christian mysticism, and Ecowomanist thought. Dr. Harris is the author of multiple books, including Gifts of Virtue, Alice Walker and Womanist Ethics, and Ecowomanism: Earth Honoring Faiths and African American Women, and dozens of scholarly articles. She is the founding director of The Ecowomanist Circle LLC, a collective of ecowomanist and environmental writers.

Graham Harvey is emeritus professor of religious studies at The Open University, United Kingdom. His research largely concerns “the new animism,” especially in the rituals and protocols through which Indigenous and other communities engage with the larger-than-human world. His publications include Food, Sex & Strangers: Understanding Religion as Everyday Life (2013), and Animism: Respecting the Living World (second edition 2017). He is editor of the Routledge series “Vitality of Indigenous Religions” and the Equinox series “Religion and the Senses.”

Sam C. King is an educator, writer, speaker, and environmentalist. He serves as a Research Associate for the Yale Forum on Religion and Ecology, and Project Manager for the Emmy Award-winning Journey of the Universe film and multimedia project, curating a monthly newsletter and hosting the Journey of the Universe: 10 Years Later podcast. As Director of Integral Ecology for the Marist school network, he works with youth leaders from diverse backgrounds to promote education and action on climate change, biodiversity loss, pollution, and environmental justice.

R. Craig Kochel is Professor of Geology emeritus at Bucknell University, where he helped found the Environmental Center. His areas of research include fluvial geomorphology, hydrology, geologic hazards, and planetary geology. His books include Process Geomorphology (with Jerry Miller and Dale Ritter), Sapping Features of the Colorado Plateau: A Comparative Planetary Geology NASA Field Guide (with Alan D. Howard), and Flood Geomorphology (with Victor Baker and Peter Patton). He has conducted research in Alaska, New Zealand, Iceland, Chile, and many parts of the western and eastern United States.

Charisma K. Lepcha teaches anthropology in Sikkim University, India. Her research interest includes religion, indigeneity, environment, material culture and visual anthropology of Sikkim and Darjeeling Himalaya. She has co-edited two books titled The Cultural Heritage of Sikkim (2019) and Communities, Institutions and Histories of India’s Northeast (2022). She was a Fellow at the Indian Institute of Advanced Studies (IIAS), Shimla (2018-2019) and a Visiting Scholar at the Harvard-Yenching Institute, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA.

Sam Mickey is a teacher, author, and editor working at the intersection of religious, scientific, and philosophical perspectives on human-Earth relations. He is an adjunct professor in the Theology and Religious Studies department and the Environmental Studies program at the University of San Francisco, in California. He is the Reviews Editor for the journal Worldviews: Global Religions, Culture, and Ecology, and he is an author of several books, including On the Verge of a Planetary Civilization: A Philosophy of Integral Ecology (Rowman & Littlefield, 2014), Whole Earth Thinking and Planetary Coexistence: Ecological Wisdom at the Intersection of Philosophy, Religion, and Ecology (Routledge, 2015), and Coexistentialism and the Unbearable Intimacy of Ecological Emergency (Lexington Books, 2016). He is also an editor of several books and an author of dozens of articles and book chapters. Sam is the host of the Forum on Religion and Ecology podcast (Spotlights).

İbrahim Özdemir is a professor of philosophy at Uskudar University, Istanbul, Turkey, and a visiting professor at Clark University, Worcester, Massachusetts. His diverse background as a researcher and teacher includes environmental philosophy and ethics, ecology, and religion, practical ethics, philosophical counseling, critical thinking, and Islamic philosophy. Dedicated to sustainability and ethical responsibility, Dr. Özdemir has contributed significantly to global environmental efforts, including the 2015 Islamic Declaration for Global Climate Change and UNEP’s “Environment, Religion, and Culture in the Context of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development” (2016). Recently, he was instrumental in drafting the 2024 UNEP document “al-Mizan: A Covenant for the Earth.” His books include Rumî and Confucius on Meaning of Life (2020), The Ethical Dimension of Human Attitude Towards Nature (2008), and Globalization, Ethics and Islam, editors: Ian Markham and İbrahim Özdemir, (2005).

Rachael Petersen is program lead for the Thinking with Plants and Fungi Initiative, an interdisciplinary exploration into how cutting-edge science on plants is challenging our notions of mind and matter. Her research explores pantheism, the intersection of science and religion, and how we relate to the minds of more-than-human beings, especially plants. A creative writer and translator, her work has been published in Aeon, The Sun, Harvard Divinity Bulletin, Tricycle Magazine, Peripheries Poetry Journal, The Rumpus, The Outline, Psymposia, and elsewhere.

Sarah Pike is Professor and Department Chair of Comparative Religion and Humanities at California State University, Chico. Her research focuses on ritual studies, new religious and spiritual movements, and the relationship between humans and the natural environment. From 2015-2018 Sarah was President of the International Society for the Study of Religion, Nature, and Culture (ISSRNC), and she is author of the books Earthly Bodies, Magical Selves: Contemporary Pagans and the Search for Community (2001), New Age and Neopagan Religions in America (2004), and For the Wild: Ritual and Commitment in Radical Eco-Activism (2017). Her current research projects include an ethnography of the ancestral skills movement and a study of ritualized relationships with landscapes after wildfires.

Russell C. Powell is a research affiliate at the Center for the Study of World Religions at Harvard Divinity School. Prior to joining the CSWR he taught at Boston College as a Core Fellow and Visiting Assistant Professor of Environmental Theology and Ethics. Russell earned his doctorate in the multidisciplinary Religion and Society program at Princeton Theological Seminary in 2019. He has also held teaching positions at the College of the Holy Cross, Amherst College, and Princeton University.

Larry L. Rasmussen is the Reinhold Niebuhr Professor Emeritus of Social Ethics, Union Theological Seminary, New York City. He lives in retirement in Santa Fe, New Mexico. He is the author, most recently, of The Planet You Inherit: Letters to My Grandchildren When Uncertainty’s a Sure Thing (Broadleaf Books, 2022). Winner of the 2023 Nautilus Gold Prize for best book in Ecology & Environment.

Jim Robinson is a member of the Religious Studies Department at Iona University, where he serves as Director of the Deignan Institute for Earth and Spirit. Jim teaches courses that invite students to reflect on the intersection of religion, ecology, and social justice. He recently received the Catherine McCabe Award for Innovation and Excellence in Teaching at Iona. Jim received his PhD in Theology from Fordham University, his MTS from Harvard Divinity School, and his BA from Drew University. He is a GreenFaith Fellow, and he is actively involved in the College Theology Society and the International Thomas Merton Society. He is also actively involved in a number of religious communities that are striving to embody ecology and justice, including Agape Community (Hardwick, Massachusetts), Benincasa Community (Guilford, Connecticut), and Maryhouse Catholic Worker (New York City).

Terra Schwerin Rowe is Associate Professor of Philosophy and Religion at the University of North Texas and author of Toward a Better Worldliness: Ecology, Economy, and the Protestant Tradition (2017, Fortress Press) and Of Modern Extraction: Experiments in Critical Petro-theologies (T&T Clark, 2023). She has co-edited with Joerg Rieger Liberating People, Planet and Religion: Intersections of Ecology, Economics and Christianity (Rowman & Littlefield, 2024) and with Evan Berry an SSRC essay forum on “Religion and Energy.” With Lisa Sideris and Christiana Zenner she has co-edited a series on Religion in Extractive Zones in Religions, including a collectively written essay, “Religions in Extractive Zones: Methods, Imaginaries, Solidarities.” She is founding co-chair of the AAR seminar on Energy, Extraction, and Religion; on the steering committee of the academy’s Religion and Ecology unit; and a member of the Petrocultures Research Group.

Dan Smyer Yü is Kuige Professor of Ethnology at School of Ethnology and Sociology, Yunnan University and a Global Faculty Member at the Global South Studies Center, University of Cologne. Currently he serves as a member of the Advisory Board of Yale Forum on Religion and Ecology and the Founding Co-lead of the Thematic Working Group on Himalayan Environmental Humanities at the Himalayan University Consortium, Nepal. His research interests include environmental humanities, indigenous ecological knowledge, and Himalayan borderland studies. His recent publications are Himalayan Climes and Multispecies Encounters (Routledge, 2024), Multipolar Climes of the Himalaya, Andes and Arctic (Routledge, 2023), Trans-Himalayan Borderlands: Livelihoods, Territorialities, Modernities (AUP, 2017), and “Freeing Animals: Sino-Tibetan Buddhist Environmentalism and Ecological Challenges” (Religions, 2023). His research projects have been funded by the British Academy Sustainable Development Program, the Swedish Research Council, German Ministry for Education and Research Fund, and Himalayan University Consortium.

Mary Evelyn Tucker and John Grim are affiliated faculty with the Yale Center for Environmental Justice at the Yale School of the Environment. They direct the Yale Forum on Religion and Ecology, https://fore.yale.edu/, which arose from ten conferences they organized at Harvard’s Center for the Study of World Religions. They are series editors of the Harvard volumes from the conferences on Religion and Ecology. Tucker specializes in East Asian religions, especially Confucianism. Grim specializes in indigenous traditions, especially Native American religions. Grim and Tucker have written a number of books including Ecology and Religion (Island Press, 2014) and edited the Routledge Handbook of Religion and Ecology (2017). They are editors for the series on Ecology and Justice from Orbis Books, https://fore.yale.edu/Publications/  Books/Ecology-and-Justice-Series. They have created six online courses in “Religions and Ecology: Restoring the Earth Community,” https://online.yale.edu/courses/religions-and-ecology-restoring-earth-community-specialization. They were students of Thomas Berry and collaborated over several decades to edit his books. They also wrote Thomas Berry: A Biography with Andrew Angyal (Columbia, 2019). With his article “The New Story,” Berry was a major inspiration for Journey of the Universe. With Brian Thomas Swimme, Tucker and Grim created this multi-media project that includes a book (Yale, 2011), an Emmy award winning film, a series of Conversations, and online courses from Yale/Coursera, https://www.journeyoftheuniverse.org/online-courses. Until 2020, following in Berry’s footsteps, Grim served as president of the American Teilhard Association and Tucker as Vice President for over three decades.

Nancy Wright received a Master of Divinity degree from Union Theological Seminary, New Your City, a Master’s Degree in Environmental Conservation Education from New York University, and a Doctorate of Ministry degree in Transformational Leadership, focused on watershed leadership, from Boston University School of Theology. She worked for a total of nine years at two ecumenical agencies with a focus on stewardship of Creation: CODEL (Coordination in Development), which fostered international leadership in sustainable development through thirty-eight Christian organizations, including Lutheran World Relief; and then, Earth Ministry, in Seattle. The Lutheran congregation she served in Burlington, Vermont, for sixteen years, created the Congregational Watershed Manual, https://vtipl.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/CongregationalWatershedManual-InterreligiousEdition-Jan2019.pdf. Currently she is Pastor for Creation Care at the New England Synod, Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, and a Certified Forest Therapy guide. She coauthored (with Fr. Donald Kill) Ecological Healing: A Christian Vision (Orbis, 1993) and articles on Christianity and Environmental Justice and Eco-Spirituality.