Afshan Majid teaches History as Visiting Faculty at SSLA. She co-developed and co-teaches the first Big History course in a university in South Asia. She has a PhD in Medieval Indian History from the Centre of Advanced Study in History at Aligarh Muslim University in Aligarh, Uttar Pradesh. Her thesis involved a reconceptualization of Mughal society and culture as gleaned from 16th century historian Abdul Qadir Badauni’s work: Muntakhab-ut-Tawarikh. In addition to her specialisation in history, Afshan also holds a degree in Women’s Studies and has interdisciplinary publications in both fields.

She may be contacted at <afshanmajid15@gmail.com>.

Aidan W.H. Wong王瑋軒 is a PhD Candidate in Environmental Science, Policy and Management at the Hong Kong University of Science Technology. His research focuses on interdisciplinary learning and education for sustainability. He is Teaching Assistant for the university’s general-education course on Big History, Sustainability and Climate Change, and, since 2017, has been Instructor for the course on Big History and Sustainability For Gifted Secondary Students, in partnership with the Hong Kong Academy for Gifted Education. He has published a course handbook, Big History: A Scientific Origin Story (2019), in collaboration with the Hong Kong Scholars Program.

Aidan may be reached at <aidanwong12@gmail.com>.

Aishi Mitra is a student at the Symbiosis School for Liberal Arts (SSLA), where she is pursuing a degree in International Relations, with a double minor in Economics and Media Studies. She has worked as a research intern with Bharatiya Agro Industries Foundation in Pune, the Center for Land and Warfare Studies in Delhi, and United Religions Initiative, a global grassroots interfaith network. At SSLA, she was an editorial intern for Confluence: Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies and, as a member of SSLA’s Gender Committee, she helped to draft the gender policy for the university. Aishi is a professional Kathak dancer.

She can be reached at <aishi.mitra@ssla.edu.in>.

Albert Wang 汪大久 has served as the principal of Mingdao High School in Taiwan for twenty years. Established in 1969, Mingdao is one of Taiwan’s prominent private schools, with 7300 students. After the national K-12 curriculum reform in 2019, Mingdao became the first high school to adopt a course in Big History. Previously, Albert had been a software engineer in Silicon Valley and a system engineer at AT&T Bell Labs in the USA. He is Chairman of the Mingdao Cultural and Educational Foundation, which aims to broaden the horizons of education by incorporating advanced curriculum with global reach and local impact, such as Sustainable Development Goals and Big History.

Albert may be contacted at <da9wang1@gmail.com>.

Alexis Lau 劉啟漢 is a physical scientist by training, receiving his PhD in Atmospheric & Oceanic Sciences from Princeton University in 1991. He worked at the University of Washington and the US National Center for Atmospheric Research before joining the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology in 1994. Alexis is currently Chair of the Division of Environment and Sustainability, along with a joint appointment to the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering. His research focus is mainly on numerical weather prediction, air quality, health and exposure risks, and climate and environmental management. He also serves as Director of the Institute for the Environment at HKUST. In 2015, Alexis started teaching Big History in a general-education course on climate and sustainability. The course highlights the complex multiscale and multidisciplinary nature of sustainability challenges, the importance of evidence-based collective learning, and our past record of flexibility and adaptability in collaboration frameworks to meet past challenges. In 2016, Alexis started accepting research students to study the impacts of Big History and sustainability education.

He may be contacted at <alau@ust.hk>.

Ananta Kumar Giri is Professor at the Madras Institute of Development Studies, Chennai, India. He has taught and done research in universities in India and abroad, including Jawaharlal Nehru University (India), Aalborg University (Denmark), the Maison des sciences de l’homme (France) and the University of Kentucky (USA). He has an abiding interest in social movements and cultural change. Ananta has written and edited two dozen books in Odia and English, including Patha Prantara Nrutattwa (Anthropology of the Street Corner 2000), Social Theory and Asian Dialogues: Cultivating Planetary Conversations (editor 2018), and Beyond Cosmopolitanism: Towards Planetary Transformations (editor 2018).

His web-portal is found at <www.mids.ac.in/ananta> and he may be contacted at <aumkrishna@gmail.com>.

Andrey V. Korotayev is Head, Laboratory for Monitoring Destabilization Risks, National Research University Higher School of Economics, and Professor, Faculty for Global Processes, Moscow State University, Russia. Beginning as an historian of Arabia, he made focused studies, such as seen in ‘Two Social Ecological Crises and Genesis of Tribal Organization in the Yemeni North-East’ (1996). Andrey researches topics in quantitative cross-cultural anthropology and seeks to understand biological and social macroevolution, as in ‘A Compact Macromodel of World System Evolution’ (2005) and ‘Mathematical Modeling of Biological and Social Phases of Big History’ (2014). He is a founding member of the Eurasian Center for Megahistory & System Forecasting and founder of Evolution, an almanac dedicated to the study of Universal Evolution, and thus is closely linked with Big History. Most recently, he has produced, with David LePoire, a collective monograph, The 21st Century Singularity and Global Futures: A Big History Perspective (2020). He serves as a board member of the International Big History Association.

His point of contact is <akorotayev@gmail.com>.

Angela R. Wa∙tre Ingty is a teacher of English Literature (ret.) from the North Eastern Hill University, Tura Campus, in the West Garo Hills District of the State of Meghalaya in India. The Student Christian Movement of India had great influence on her life, deepening her understanding of social, economic, environmental, and gender concerns. During her service at the Tura campus, she did her PhD on ‘Garo Morphology: A Descriptive Analysis.’ Angela is a member of the Garo tribe and began to understand the richness of her own language and culture, as she came into contact with people who had deep knowledge of their heritage. There is now a sense of urgency as the process of modernisation takes place, with the loss of much of traditional knowledge and many values. She served as a member of the Meghalaya State Commission for Women from 2011 to 2014 and President of the Diocesan Women’s Fellowship for Christian Service of the Church of North India.

Angela may be reached at <awingty@yahoo.com>.

Anil Menon received his Ph.D. from Syracuse University, New York (USA) in Computer Science, specializing in evolutionary computation. He spent about nine years working as a research engineer in a variety of start-ups, editing the volume, Frontiers in Evolutionary Computation (2004), before shifting to writing fiction. His most recent work Half Of What I Say (2015) was shortlisted for the 2016 Hindu Literary Award. Along with Vandana Singh, he co-edited Breaking the Bow (2012), an international anthology of speculative fiction inspired by the Ramayana. His debut novel, The Beast With Nine Billion Feet (2009) was shortlisted for the 2010 Vodafone-Crossword Children’s Fiction Award and the 2010 Carl Baxter Society’s Parallax Prize. His short fiction has appeared in a variety of international magazines, including Interzone, Interfictions, Jaggery Lit Review, Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet, and Strange Horizons. His stories have been translated into more than a dozen languages including Hebrew, Igbo, and Romanian.

Anil’s contact is at <anilm411@gmail.com>.

Anita Patankar is Director of the Symbiosis School for Liberal Arts and has been involved in the field of education for over thirty-six years. She completed her PhD at Savitribai Phule Pune University in the better promotion and distribution of higher education. Since heading India’s first four-year liberal arts program, Anita has focused on developing competencies for inclusive and innovative learning processes, nurturing a deep acceptance of the long-term benefits of internationalization at home and a commitment to the creation of a more gender-just learning ecosystem. At present, she serves on the board of trustees of ECONET, an NGO dedicated to the welfare of tribal and disadvantaged populations, is Deputy Director of the Symbiosis Centre for International Education, is on the Indian Members Council of the Shastri Indo-Canadian Institute, and is a founding member of the Alliance of Asian Liberal Arts Universities.

She may be reached at <director@ssla.edu.in>.

Ann C. Pizzorusso is a geologist and Italian Renaissance scholar. She experienced many aspects of geology, from her Arizona University field-mapping days in the Grand Canyon to oil drilling, gem hunting, and cleaning contaminated soil and water. As Director of Environmental Affairs for Philips Electronics, she managed corporate compliance in the USA and Mexico, for which they received the World Environmental Center Award for Corporate Excellence. She then entered graduate studies in the Italian Renaissance at New York University, where she began art-science research projects that led to books and articles on da Vinci, Dante, and the geological patrimony of Italy. A native of New Haven, Connecticut, Ann divides her time between New York City and Italy, where she continues to write and lecture about the Earth and its beauty.

She can be reached at <tweetingdavinci@gmail.com>.

Anne-Marie Poorthuis is an independent researcher who works on the organizing of local society in relationship to all its points of contact. She developed these programs and published them via the networked-learning-school, LOOK, Open University (2011, in Dutch). She integrates Big History and Montessori education in her work. In 2016, she published her research about the education of Maria Montessori as an example of Big History. Together with Jos Werkhoven, Anne-Marie developed a framework for teachers in primary education from a Big History perspective. They coordinate the platform, Big History, in primary education in the Netherlands.

Her point of contact is <annemariepoorthuis@gmail.com>.

Anton Grinin is Senior Research Fellow, International Center for Education and Social and Humanitarian Studies, Moscow, Russia. With a Ph.D. in biology, his academic interests include bioethics, evolutionary and future studies, the history and philosophy of technology, and globalization. He specializes in the technological revolution unfolding in the 21st century, especially in cybernetics. These events will result in the profound transformation of the economy and society, posing ethic-legal and other risks. Anton also investigates correlations between the Cybernetic Revolution, Kondratieff waves, and issues of global ageing. The author more than fifty publications in Russian and English, including two monographs, he has won the Gold Kondratieff Young Scholars Medal and the Alexander Belyaev Literature Award.

He may be contacted at <algrinin@gmail.com>.

Ashish Kothari is a founder-member of Kalpavriksh, an Indian environmental NGO, and helps coordinate the Vikalp Sangam (Alternatives Confluence) process in India. A sociologist by training, he has taught environmental studies at the Indian Institute of Public Administration and served as guest faculty at a variety of universities, institutes, and colleges. Ashish has served on the Indian Government’s Environmental Appraisal Committee on River Valley Projects, and on Expert Committees to formulate India’s Biological Diversity Act and National Wildlife Action Plan. He was a member of the Steering Committees of IUCN's World Commission on Protected Areas and Commission on Environmental, Economic, and Social Policy, served on the Board of Directors of Greenpeace International and as chair of Greenpeace India’s Board, and is part of the core team coordinating the Global Tapestry of Alternatives. He has been active with a number of people’s movements, including Narmada Bachao Andolan (Save Narmada Movement – a major river in central India) and Beej Bachao Andolan (Save the Seeds Movement). He is the (co)author / (co)editor of over 30 books, including Alternative Futures: India Unshackled (2017) and Pluriverse: A Post-Development Dictionary (2018), and over 400 articles.

He may be contacted at <ashishkothari@riseup.net>.

A Hindustani classical vocalist, Avantika Sinha specializes in the semi-classical genre of Thumri and Dadra, a gharana style of song from North India. Avantika grew up in Kolkata and received her education at Loreto College. Trained in Hindustani classical music from a young age, she completed her Sangeet Visharad in the Patiala gharana (music academy) under the guidance of Smt Aarti Bagchi, after which she moved to Pune, where she specialised in the Thumri Dadra art form under the guidance of Pt. Dr. Sanjeev Shende and classical vocalist Smt Madhuri Joshi. She performs at concerts in India and abroad. She may be contacted at <avantikamusic@gmail.com>.

Baijayanti Chatterjee is Assistant Professor of History at Seth Anandram Jaipuria College Calcutta University. She completed her PhD from Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi in 2018 and was Charles Wallace Fellow to London in 2016. Her area of specialization, broadly, is environmental history and her recently published papers include ‘Ecology and Imperium: State Formation in Early Colonial Bengal’, Indian Historical Review, vol. 47, no. 2, December 2020.

Baijayanti may be contacted at <chatterjeebaijayanti@gmail.com>.

Barry H. Rodrigue罗柏安 is Professor of Anthropology, Symbiosis School for Liberal Arts, Symbiosis International University. He began his ethnographic work in Alaska, establishing the international journal, Archipelago, as a vehicle for networking communities around the North Pacific. He holds a PhD in Geography from Université Laval (Québec), along with post-graduate degrees in archaeology, history, and folklore. His efforts for global cooperation include work with the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, the Australian National University, the US Open World Leadership Program, and the Russian Academy of Sciences. Barry developed the first core curriculum course and first online course in Big History. As co-founder and global coordinator of the International Big History Association and the Asian Big History Association, he co-taught the first university course in Big History in South Asia in 2018. His co-edited collection with Andrey Korotayev and Leonid Grinin, From Big Bang to Galactic Civilizations: A Big History Anthology (2015–2017), included 100 scholars from 25 nations.

His webportal is at <www.rodrigue-global.org/> and he may be reached at <rodrigue@archinets.org>.

Benjamin Bishop is a Masters candidate in Linguistics and Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL) and from Ball State University in Muncie, Indiana (USA). During his tenure at Ball State, he instructed at the Intensive English Institute, served as President of the Graduate Student Advisory Board, and founded the Linguistics Club. He has presented extensively on the linguistics of Pop Culture, as well as structuralism in literature.

He may be reached at <benbishop100@gmail.com>.

Carl C. Anthony is a social and environmental justice leader. He was founding director of Urban Habitat, one of the United States’ first eco-justice organizations, known for pushing the mainstream environmental movement to confront issues of race and class. He also founded and co-edited the Race, Poverty and the Environment Journal. After leaving Urban Habitat to concentrate on writing, the Ford Foundation’s Sustainable Metropolitan Communities Initiative recruited him for their program development. Carl became aware of the potential to achieve economic and social equity for marginalized communities by treating city, suburbs and surrounding rural areas as an interdependent holistic system. He has taught at the Columbia University Graduate School of Architecture & Planning and the University of California, Berkeley’s College of Environmental Design and College of Natural Resources. In 1996, he was appointed Fellow at the Institute of Politics, John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University. Carl initiated the US Conversation on Regional Equity (CORE), a dialogue of national policy analysts and advocates for new metropolitan racial justice strategies. He returned to the West Coast, where he co-founded the Breakthrough Communities Project, dedicated to empowering grassroots communities in metropolitan regions and nurturing multiracial leadership, with active projects underway in California.

He may be reached at <carlcanthony@gmail.com>.

Carl Johan Calleman focuses on the evolution of consciousness as a driving factor behind the history of the universe. He gained his PhD in physical biology from the University of Stockholm in 1984 and became Senior Researcher at the Department of Environmental Health at the University of Washington in Seattle and served as an expert on chemical carcinogens for the United Nation’s World Health Organization. In 1993, he began work to ascertain the meaning of the Mayan calendar and has since published seven books on this topic that have been published in fourteen languages. His current focus is on Macrocosmic Quantum Theory, which he considers to be a way to help us understand the nature and timing of events in Big History.

Carl Johan may be reached at <carljohan.calleman@gmail.com>.

Chiara Codetta has master degrees in Political Science from the Klisters University of Milan and in Ethnological and Anthropological Sciences from Bicocca University. She then began a doctorate in ethnography at the University of California, Riverside. Chiara tutors and students at the Torre di Merlino school in Lecco, including those with learning disabilities. She also performs as a folk musician and has studied taiko percussion for more than ten years in Japan, Europe and the United States. Academia has always intertwined with the arts for her, and she conducts seminars on anthropology and Japanese culture in various educational settings. The Fourth IBHA conference blew her mind and inspired her to dig deeper into Big History.

Chiara may be reached at <khilibe@gmail.com>.

Christopher Lloyd graduated in History from Peterhouse, University of Cambridge, England. In 1991, he joined the Sunday Times and became its Technology Editor. Five years later, he served as editorial lead in creating the first Times and Sunday Times Internet Editions and co-founded LineOne, an online joint venture between News International, BT, and United News & Media. In 2000, he became CEO of the Oxford-based start-up, Immersive Education, a publishing company. After helping home-educate his two daughters, Chris grew frustrated with the highly unintuitive and fragmented nature of traditional education systems (divided into subjects, timetables and curriculums), so he decided to resume his writing career with a book that aimed to connect all knowledge from the beginning of time to the present day. What on Earth Happened? The Complete Story of Planet, Life and People (Bloomsbury 2008) went on to sell more than a half- million copies. Out of the proceeds, Chris founded, What on Earth Publishing, in 2010. Its explicit goal was to create a range of engaging, visual, non-fiction resources for children, teachers and parents that puts knowledge back together and helps children learn through their natural curiosity. The business started with a series of Big History timelines, known as ‘Wallbooks’, which tell giant stories of world history, nature, science and inventions in fold-out form with more than 1000 pictures. He then wrote a children’s version of his big history book, What on Earth Happened?, called Absolutely Everything! A History of Earth, Dinosaurs, Rulers, Robots and Other Things Too Numerous to Mention (What on Earth Books 2018). Since publication in October 2018, it has sold more than 100,000 copies in ten languages. His latest partnership is with Britannica, makers of the famous encyclopaedia, to launch a range of new non-fiction books for children, beginning with the Britannica All New Children’s Encyclopedia – What We Know and What We Don’t. The encyclopaedia is not divided into a traditional A-Z format but takes readers on a journey through big history in eight chapters. Since its launch in October 2020, it has sold more than 120,000 copies worldwide in fifteen languages. Chris divides his time between managing the business, writing books and giving lectures all over the world.

He may be contacted at <chris@whatonearthbooks.com>.

Claudio Maccone is an Italian SETI astronomer, space scientist, and mathematician. He started his career in 1972 with a Physics MSc at the Università degli Studi di Torino, in his hometown of Turin. After a second MSc in Mathematics, he moved to London, where, in 1980, he obtained his PhD at King’s College in Mathematics. Five years later, aerospace manufacturer Alenia Spazio hired him to design space projects. He has published five mathematical books and, notably, developed the Focal mission to magnify radio-wave images, using the Sun as a gravitational lens. Asteroid 11264 was named in his honour – Claudiomaccone – because of his pioneering efforts in this research and, last year, a $2 million grant was awarded by NASA to its Jet Propulsion Laboratory for further studies. In 2010, he made a presentation at the United Nations Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space about a plan for reserving the Farside of the Moon for astronomical and scientific research. Elected to the International Academy of Astronautics, in Paris, Claudio took a deep interest in the Search for ExtraTerrestrial Intelligence, as he envisioned how contact with ET civilizations would profoundly change the course of human history. He was elected Chair of the IAA SETI Permanent Committee in 2012 and significantly increased its number of members. In 2019, Claudio chaired the Big History symposium on SETI in Milan.

His contact points are <clmaccon@libero.it> and <claudio.maccone@gmail.com>.

Daniel Barreiros is Associate Professor at the Institute of Economics, Professor at the Graduate Program in International Political Economy, and a researcher at the Bioethics and Applied Ethics Center, Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. He received his Ph.D. in Social History from Fluminense Federal University, Niterói (Brazil) and is an alumni of the Institute on United States Foreign Policy (USA). Daniel is also a member of the Brazilian Association for Defence Studies and the Brazilian Historical Association. His research centres on the Big History of intersocietal conflict / cooperation, which includes geopolitics and future warfare scenarios.

He can be reached at <daniel.barreiros@ie.ufrj.br>.

David Baker is Senior Communications Advisor for CANZUK International, an NGO promoting cooperation between Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the United Kingdom. He is a big historian based in Sydney, Australia. He researches and develops Big History programmes for universities around the globe. He graduated with the world’s first PhD in Big History and has researched extensively in the fields of demography, evolutionary anthropology, and economic history. He regularly collaborates with physicists and biologists on transdisciplinary research. He wrote the online series, Crashcourse: Big History, and has developed curriculum materials for the Big History Project. David is also designer of Coursera's Big History MOOCs and the K-12 curriculum, Big History School.

He may be reached at <david@canzukinternational.com>.

David Blanks is Professor of History, Arkansas Tech University, Russellville, Arkansas, USA. A medievalist by training, specializing in religious and social history, he lived in Egypt for more than twenty years while teaching at the American University in Cairo. His published work has examined heresy and anti-clericalism in fourteenth-century Languedoc, Christian-Hindu encounters in sixteenth-century Vijayanagara, and Muslim-Christian encounters in the early modern Mediterranean. After expanding his field of study to include world history, at the 14th Annual World History Association conference in Ifrane, Morocco in 2005, David turned to Big History the following year and served as Executive Secretary of the African Network in Global History / Réseau African d’Histoire Mondiale. He is on the board of the IBHA and is Editor in Chief of the Journal of Big History.

He may be reached at <dblanks@atu.edu>.

David Christian is founding director of the Big History Institute, Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia. Originally a scholar of Russian history, he wrote A History of Russia, Central Asia and Mongolia (1998). He became an early advocate of macro-studies in the social sciences and has provided seminal frameworks for these narratives, as in his book, Maps of Time: An Introduction to ‘Big History’ (2004). He also co-authored the text Big History: Between Nothing and Everything (2014). David is an active lecturer at the World Economic Forum in Davos-Klosters (Switzerland) and elsewhere. He served as founding president of the International Big History Association and was co-founder, with Bill Gates, of the Big History Project, a free online syllabus of Big History for high schools.

David LePoire researches, develops and applies science principles in environmental issues, Big History evolutionary trends, and particle scattering. He has a BS in physics from CalTech, a Ph.D. in computer science from DePaul University, and over thirty years experience at the Argonne National Laboratory in the development of scientific analyses, software, training, and modelling. His research includes Big History synergistic trends among energy, environment, organization, and information.

David can be reached via email at <david.lepoire@gmail.com>.

Davidson Loehr wanted a profession that could help him seek answers to two of life’s biggest questions, so he earned a PhD that bridged theology, the philosophy of religion, science and language at the University of Chicago. He served for 23 years as a Unitarian minister and became a Fellow in the ground-breaking Jesus Seminar. He also engaged in the vocations of woodwork and photography. He got involved with Big History in 2014, most recently contributing a chapter on ‘The Nature of Humans, Science and Religion’ to the book, Science, Religion and Deep Time (2021). His pursuit of life’s two biggest questions is still underway – Who, at our best, are we? and How should we live, so that when we look back we can be glad we lived that way?

He may be contacted at <davidsonloehr@gmail.com>.

Diviya Makhija is a student at the Symbiosis School for Liberal Arts (SSLA), pursuing a degree in English, with a double minor in Sociology and Law. She is a member of SSLA’s Gender Committee and is Head of the Theatre Club (The Natak Society). Diviya served as an editor for Sutradhar, a cultural affairs magazine, and has been an active part of SSLA Presents, an annual theatre production. She also works as a volunteer with U&I Trust, an Indian educational NGO to help disadvantaged children, where she looks after fundraising, recruitment, and curriculum development.

Diviya is the Communications and Media Head of the IBHA-SSLA Big History Conference 2021, and can be reached at <diviya.makhija@ssla.edu.in>.

Edcel John S. Canlas is Faculty at Holy Angel University in Angeles City, Philippines. He teaches Big History 1, Big History 2, The Contemporary World, and Readings in Philippine History. He received his degree from the University of the Philippines – Baguio, cum laude. He is an elected member of The Honor Society of Phi Kappa Phi and Pi Gamma Mu International Honor Society. He is a member of The Asosasyon ng mga Dalubhasa, May-Hilig at Interes sa Kasaysayan (ADHIKA) ng Pilipinas. His research is on big history, decolonial studies, social history, legal history, 21^st century education, gender rights and issues, and Indigenous studies.

Edward Gordon Simmons teaches history part-time at Georgia Gwinnett College just northeast of Atlanta, Georgia (USA). His career as a college professor was interrupted by the military draft during the Vietnam War, after which he spent thirty-two years as a consultant and management trainer, working with the top management levels of Georgia’s largest human services agency. In retirement, he returned to his original career, combining history, science, and religious studies. He is the author of Talking Back to the Bible: A Historian’s Approach to Bible Study (winner of the 2016 Illumination Award for Spirituality). He wrote two chapters in the best-selling book, The Spiritual Danger of Donald Trump: 30 Evangelical Christians on Justice, Truth, and Moral Integrity (ed. Ronald Sider, 2020). His next book, Values, Truth, and Spiritual Danger: Progressive Christianity in the Age of Trump (forthcoming, Wipf & Stock Publishers).

Edward may be reached at <esimmon1@ggc.edu>.

Emlyn Koster was born in Egypt and has UK, Canadian and US citizenships. A geologist, museologist and humanist, he has been the CEO of the Royal Tyrrell Museum of Palaeontology, Ontario Science Centre, Liberty Science Center, and the White House-recognized North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences. He has chaired the Geological Association of Canada, Giant Screen Theater Association and the Institute for Learning Innovation boards and been a board member with the Association of Science-Technology Centers and the Challenger Center for Space Science Education. For the IBHA board he chairs its planning task force. He is also an ambassador for the International Coalition of Sites of Conscience and an adjunct professor of Marine, Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at North Carolina. His honours include Humanitarian of the Year by the American Conference on Diversity and Doctoral Alumnus of the Year by the Faculty of Science at Canada’s University of Ottawa. Transdisciplinary in approach, his research, publications and advocacy focus on the Anthropocene, which recognizes humanity as the predominant species and which, in a geological nanosecond, has ecologically detached itself from the Earth System.

Eric Nganfon Goubissih is a teacher at Amity International College, Primary Section, Grade 6, in Yaoundé (Cameroon). Teaching fulfilled his desire to help improve the world community. And so he became one of the founding members of the African Big History Association and serves as its first President.

He may be reached at <nganfoneric945@gmail.com>.

Esther Quaedackers is Lecturer in Big History at the University of Amsterdam, where she has been coordinating and teaching Big History since 2006. She has also developed and taught Big History courses at Amsterdam University College, the Eindhoven University of Technology, the Free University, and Utrecht University. In addition to educational approaches, Esther is developing ways to use Big History for research purposes. Among other efforts, she has been writing articles, chapters and a book about the Little Big History Approach, in which relatively small subjects are connected to aspects of Big History, in order to generate new ideas about how these subjects came to be the way they are.

Esther may be reached at <E.Quaedackers@uva.nl>.

Gargi Tupkar is pursuing her BA at the Symbiosis School for Liberal Arts in Anthropology, with a minor in Media Studies. Having an avid interest in history, she is also a writer for SSLA’s history publication, Historia, and has previously written for SSLA’s Sutradhar Magazine, as well as for InCulture, a rising initiative for Indian history and culture. She is part of the Community Outreach Cell of SSLA and has worked in the field with NGOs, such as U&I, a teaching initiative for young students in Pune’s local community of Viman Nagar, and Sadhana Village, a home for mentally disabled people. As a final year student, she is now working on her research dissertation, focused on queer art and performance in Pune.

Gargi may be reached at <gargi.tupkar@ssla.edu.in>.

Garret Potter is an elementary school teacher, father, and community volunteer. He is in Master of Education and Master of Information degree programs at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor (USA). His studies focus on Big History, public access to information, and learning experience design. His work has appeared in Portland, Oregon’s Orange Lining Project (where his poems are etched into cement at bus and light-rail stations), The Promethean, Groundcover News, Indiefeed, and Wordland Radio. In 2012, Eberhardt Press printed his debut book, Hide And Seek: A Poet’s Memoir, which seeks to empower readers to find alternatives to their otherwise commoditized needs. Garret has given over 500 performances, including the Victoria Spoken Word Festival and the Philadelphia ReSource Arts Conference, and he is an Ann Arbor Poetry Slam champion. Garret enjoys time with his ecologist spouse Jillian, his lively son Therrien, and Ann Arbor’s bicycle parks community. He has come from nine states and Japan to feel at home within the Big History community.

He may be reached at <garretwilliampotter@gmail.com>.

Gavin Lee 李佳達 is founder of Worldviews Academy, the first private institute to focus on providing Big History education in Taiwan. With a background in law and decisional science, he is a cross-sector leader in Taiwan. He has served multiple roles, including chief legal officer of a listed solar company, spokesperson of several national environmental campaigns, special assistant to the Prime Minister, and youth leader in the United Nations Development Program summit. As a Big Historian, Gavin has published books that cover diverse areas: about Chinese immigrants in the 19th century (2011), the 1904 Russo-Japanese War (2013), and the maritime silk road and world trade (2018). Gavin was a visiting scholar at Harvard and the University of California, Berkeley. He has dedicated himself to Big History education since 2018, and has brought Big History to five high schools, two Executive MBA programs, corporate training, and one of the largest Buddhist organizations in Taiwan.

He may be reached at <lee@worldview.asia>.

Gayatri Mendanha holds MAs in both Philosophy and English. She is an Assistant Professor at the Symbiosis School for Liberal Arts in Pune, where she teaches courses in Literature and Philosophy, from Creative Writing and Literature to Religion and Women Philosophers. She has also taught at the Jnana Deepa Institute for Philosophy and Theology, and at FLAME University.

She may be reached at <gayatri@ssla.edu.in>.

Grace Huang 黃致潔 is founder of Ithaca Language Consulting and a professional meeting facilitator, an emcee, and a Mandarin-English conference interpreter based in Taipei, Taiwan. With her wealth of experience, Grace has worked with heads of state, corporate leaders as well as renowned global organizations at home and abroad. She is fascinated by Big History and is a certified Big History trainer by Worldviews Academy, Taiwan.

Grace can be reached at <ithacalc@gmail.com>.

Helen Kaibara is an Assistant Professor of Modern Asian History, with a focus on Japan, at Jacksonville State University in Jacksonville, Alabama (USA). She received her Ph.D. in East Asian History from Michigan State University and was a Fulbright-Hays scholar at Rikkyo University in Tokyo (Japan). Her dissertation traced the transpacific origins of the Japanese-American ‘model minority’ myth in the early twentieth century. Her teaching fields are in East Asian History, General Asian History, Asian-American History, and World History. Her work has appeared in Transnational Migration and Asia: The Question of Return (2015), as well as in the journals Studies on Asia, The Virginia Review of Asian Studies, and Rikkyo American Studies.

She may be contacted at <helen.kaibara@gmail.com>.

Hem Sagar Baral is a writer, conservationist and family man who lives in Kathmandu, Nepal. Studying low-country, grassland birds for his PhD, he worked as CEO for both BirdLife Nepal <https://www.birdlife.org/asia/partners/nepal-bird-conservation-nepal-bcn> and Himalayan Nature <https://www.himalayannature.org/>. Amongst his initiatives, he introduced Special Conservation Site and Trees for Tomorrow concepts to manage biodiversity sites and nature restoration. Hem promoted socially responsible natural-history tours in Nepal and India in the early 1990s, and has popularized animal-watching amongst local people, including the production of local-language field guides, such as Wild Mammals of Nepal (2008). He has been involved in Red List Assessment of various taxa in Nepal, setting up the world’s first community-managed ‘vulture restaurant’ in Chitiwan, as a safe feeding station for rapidly declining vultures. He also established Nepal’s first bird-ringing centre, the Kosi Bird Observatory. Together with his wife, Kalpana, he founded the Autism Care Nepal Society in 2008, the largest centre to serve differently-abled people in the country. Currently, he leads a team of nearly two-dozen people for the Zoological Society of London’s Nepal Office.

Hem’s email <hem.baral@gmail.com>.

Himanshu Kulkarni is a hydrogeologist who has worked on aquifers and groundwater issues across India’s diverse landscape for nearly forty years. He obtained a PhD from Pune University, where he worked for thirteen years, as well as in the corporate sector. In 1998, he founded the Advanced Center for Water Resources Development & Management (ACWADAM), an NGO that seeks to bring communities closer to their aquifers and manage groundwater as a common resource. Through ACWADAM’s collaboration with educational institutions, Himanshu also works as adjunct faculty and advisor at Shiv Nadar University (Uttar Pradesh) for the MSc degree in Water Science and Policy. He is visiting faculty and a member of the Board of Studies at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai. He has been an advisor to the Government of India, a research scholar with the Indian Council of Scientific and Industrial Research, a UNESCO scholar, and a Fulbright Fellow.

Himanshu may be reached at <acwadam@gmail.com>.

Hirofumi Katayama is a professor at J.F. Oberlin University, Tokyo, where he specializes in environmental economics. He organized and teaches the first big history course in Japan <http://obhp.org>. In 2019, he and Nobuo Tsujimura organized the first Japanese Big History symposium, Big History and Liberal Arts, hosted by J.F. Oberlin University. Hiro’s goal is to construct a ‘Buddhist Big History’, which is based on the respect for all life and existence. His publications include Politics of Climate Change over the Arctic: Preliminary Thoughts on the Global Commons (Bunshindo 2014) and Free Market and the Commons: An Introduction to Environmental Finance (Jichosha 2008).

His e-mail address is <katayama@obirin.ac.jp>.

Imogene Drummond, MFA, MSW, ACSW, is an internationally collected painter, award-winning filmmaker, artist/educator, author of articles on cultural transformation, and former psychotherapist. Her experience, talent, and vision converge in the Art Sparks Creativity Programme. Her article ‘Options for the Future’ is the closing piece in the thought-provoking anthology, The Rule of Mars (2006), endorsed by Pulitzer Prize-winning scientist and author Jared Diamond. Due to her painting expeditions around the world, Drummond was invited to join the Society of Woman Geographers, whose membership includes explorers of ideas as well as geography, among them Eleanor Roosevelt, Amelia Earhart, and Jane Goodall.

She may be reached at <imogenedrummond@gmail.com>.

J.N. ‘Nick’ Nielsen is an independent scholar from Oregon who studies emergent complexity, especially as it relates to civilization and its future in the context of big history. He has spoken about the future of civilization at several conferences (100YSS, Icarus Interstellar, SSoCIA), including the 2014 IBHA conference in San Rafael, the July 2019 IBHA symposium in Milan (where he spoke on ‘Peer Complexity during the Stelliferous Era’), and the 2020 webinar, Being A Good Ancestor (speaking on ‘Scientific Approaches to Civilization’).

He may be contacted at <john.n.nielsen@gmail.com>.

Jahnavi Pandya is a psychologist in Mumbai and is pursuing a PhD in Counselling Psychology at the University of Iowa (USA). She has worked with the Mumbai Police and various schools, NGOs and businesses on issues ranging from grief, trauma and abuse to suicide, aggression and depression. She engages with society using empathy and compassion-building therapies. Jahnavi has reached more than 50,000 students through her stress management seminars in more than sixty schools around India and 1,400,000 students through her YouTube channel <Jahnavi Pandya>. Recipient of the 2020 Karmaveer Puraskaar by the International Confederation of NGOs and the United Nations, Jahnavi is also a national award-winning archer and musician. She has adapted the Bhagavad Gita into English verse, then set the verses to Indo-Western tunes, so the text would appeal to today’s youth.

She may be reached at <jahnavipandya11@gmail.com>.

James Tierney is a social worker, retired, in the State of Maine (USA). He earned a bachelor’s degree in government from St. Michael’s College in Colchester, Vermont, followed by a Master’s of Social Work at the University of Connecticut. He served as Regional Director of the Portland Office of the Maine Department of Human Services (MDHS) from 1967 to 1977 and taught for five years at the University of Southern Maine’s Department of Social Welfare. During the 1990’s, he worked with the American Child Welfare Association in Texas to help build a federally-mandated child-welfare information system, then helped to build a similar system in Maine. He finished his state service as Supervisor of the Adoption Unit at MDHS in Lewiston. An active family man, Jim enjoys back-country skiing, river-paddling, reading and gardening, and serves on the Brownfield Historical Society’s Board of Directors. Active in Big History since the IBHA’s inception, Jim has made presentations at all its conferences.

He may be reached at <run437@hotmail.com>.

Joel S. Regala is Assistant Professor and former Chair of the General Education Department, School of Arts & Sciences, Holy Angel University, Angeles City (Philippines). He finished his BSEd in History, Magna Cum Laude, at the Holy Angel University, then obtained his MA in Philippine Studies at the Asian Center, University of the Philippines, Diliman. Joel sits as a Vice President of ADHIKA (Asosasyon Ng Mga Dalubhasa May Hilig at Interes Sa Kasaysayan) Ng Pilipinas Inc. He attended the Big History Summer Institute at the Dominican University of California in 2017.

He may be contacted at <jregala@hau.edu.ph>

Jos Werkhoven is a retired Montessori teacher, counsellor, and educator. He has been an educational publisher and developer since 1995, having produced The Lines of Life (1997). His main focus is on Cosmic Education (Montessori) and Big History. With Montessori teachers and trainers, and others from a wide range of expertise, Jos established a Platform for Big History in Primary Education. Together they study the possibilities of giving Big History a basic place outside of Montessori education. Based on The Lines of Life and the work of the Platform, he and his wife, Anne-Marie Poorthuis, developed the Framework for Development. Work is currently underway to make a guide for teachers to work with this Framework. Jos also writes ‘Big History stories’ for children from the age of six.

You can reach him at <werkhoven@dearend.nl>.

Kartik Anilkumar is pursuing a degree at the Symbiosis School for Liberal Arts (SSLA) in Sociology, with a minor in Women & Gender Studies. Having an interest in poetry and performance, s/he was Secretary of the SSLA Poetry Club (It Could Be Verse), as well as a member of the Gender Committee and various SSLA theatre productions. S/he has written for Zeitgayst, a publication run by SSLA’s Queer Qrew, which deals with issues pertaining to various queerisms and queerness and its social, historical, political and cultural aspects. A presentation on ‘Queer Movements in South Asia,’ with a fellow classmate, was awarded Best Presentation at SSLA’s annual Red Carpet awards and they received a Director’s Special Mention (2021). They’re working on a paper that looks at the construction of the self in the Northern/Sanskritic Kinship organization in India.

Kartik may be reached at <kartik.anilkumar@ssla.edu.in>.

Ken Baskin is an independent researcher whose work integrates insights from complexity science, neuro-anthropology, and big history. After earning a PhD in English Literature in 1977, he spent fifteen years writing public-relations material for major firms. His books include Corporate DNA (1998), an examination of how to think about organizations as living things rather than just mechanisms, and The Axial Ages of World History (2014), an exploration of the similarities between the Axial Age and Modernity that he co-wrote with Moscow anthropologist Dmitri Bondarenko. Ken is currently reinterpreting religion as a way that human groups can know and adapt to the powerful forces that surround us.

He lives in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and can be reached at <baskinman47@yahoo.com>

Ken Gilbert has been engaged in a synthesis of knowledge since his 1960s undergraduate days at MIT. He has master’s degrees from the California Institute of Integral Studies (CIIS) and Wayne State University along with postgraduate research at the University of Edinburgh and Emory University. He has participated in conferences of the Templeton Foundation as well as at those of the World History Association of Texas and the IBHA. Ken’s thesis at CIIS, The Wisdom of the Veda, was published by the Sri Aurobindo Ashram Press in Puducherry, while his paper from the 2012 IBHA inaugural conference was included in Teaching and Researching Big History: Exploring a New Scholarly Field. He believes in the prospects for Big History contributing towards a timely transformation of our consciousness, culture and civilization via a grand unifying theory of evolution, along with an emerging cosmic story for global education and human unity. He is currently working on The Great Origins Story: Awakening to the Spirit of Universal Evolution.

He may be reached at <tgdrken@gmail.com>.

Kenji Ichikawa市川賢司 is a teacher at Aletheia Shonan Junior and Senior High School in Chigasaki, Kanagawa, Japan. He teaches world history and began the first high-school Big History class in Japan in 2016. As an extension of his teaching, he organizes field trips to nearby Enoshima Island, which provides students with important experience with which to understand the world and the cosmos. In 2019, he gave a report about his teaching of Big History and the liberal arts at the first international Big History symposium held in Japan, at J.F. Oberlin University in Tokyo.

He may be contacted at <fumimaya@jcom.zaq.ne.jp>.

Kishan S. Rana is a retired senior Indian diplomat. His 35-year career in the Indian Foreign Service included heading missions as Ambassador and High Commissioner for Algeria, Czechoslovakia, Kenya, Mauritius and Germany, Consul General in San Francisco (USA), and serving on Prime Minister Indira Gandhi’s staff. He took a second career in the late 1990s as a scholar and instructor of diplomacy. A Professor Emeritus at DiploFoundation, he has written 11 books, 150 articles, and a 100 book reviews. His major interests include diplomatic process, foreign ministry comparative studies, and economic diplomacy, with a special focus on China affairs.

His web-portal is at <https://kishanrana.diplomacy.edu/>.

Leonid E. Grinin is Director of Uchitel Publishing, Volgograd, Russia. Beginning as a teacher in rural schools, he founded his publishing firm to develop educational materials in the 1980s. He then completed a Ph.D. at Moscow State University and expanded Uchitel to serve a global market in Russian and English. A sociologist, philosopher of history, and economist, his work focuses on identifying regularities of macroevolution. Among his thirty monographs are From Confucius to Comte: The Formation of the Theory, Methodology and Philosophy of History (2012, in Russian); Macrohistory and Globalization (2012); and The Big History of the Universe’s Development: Cosmic Evolution (2013, in Russian). Leonid co-authored Great Divergence and Great Convergence: A Global Perspective (2015) and co-edits the international journals, Social Evolution and History and Journal of Globalization Studies. A founding member and Deputy Director of the Eurasian Center for Megahistory & System Forecasting, access to his portal, Social Studies, is found at <http://www.sociostudies.org/>.

Lewis Dartnell is an astrobiology researcher based at the University of Westminster (London), studying how microbial life, and signs of its existence, might persist on the surface of Mars. Alongside his research he writes regular science articles in newspapers and magazines, and appears in TV shows such as BBC Horizon, Wonders of the Universe, and documentaries on National Geographic, and the Discovery and History channels. Both Origins: How the Earth Shaped Human History and his previous book, The Knowledge: How To Rebuild Our World After An Apocalypse, are Sunday Times bestsellers.

Lewis may be contacted at <lewis.dartnell@gmail.com>

Lowell Gustafson is Professor of Political Science at Villanova University in Pennsylvania (USA). His course on ‘Our Social Nature’ uses a Big History approach, and he has also taught it at the Graterford maximum security prison near Villanova. He is currently researching how science explains the origin and development of polity. His publications include The Sovereignty Dispute over the Falklands (Malvinas) Islands (1988), The Religious Challenge to the State (1992 with Matthew Moen); Economic Development under Democratic Regimes: Neoliberalism in Latin America (1994); Thucydides’ Theory of International Relations: A Lasting Possession (2000); Ancient Maya Gender Identity and Relations (2002 with Amelia Trevelyan); Economic Performance under Democratic Regimes in Latin America in the Twenty-First Century (2003 with Satya Pattnayak), as well as many book chapters and articles. He has served as secretary, vice-president, and president of the International Big History Association (IBHA), and as editor of the Journal of Big History.

Lucy Kurien is founder of Maher Ashram (Mother’s Home), an interfaith haven of hope, love and belonging that is based in Pune, Maharashtra. She and Maher work to identify the root causes of violence and despair in communities, then develop projects to deliver services to address these issues and their effects, so that women, children and men can become healthy, happy and self-reliant. Sister Lucy have been showered with local, national and international awards, such as the 2015 Nari Shakti Puraskar (Woman Power Award) from the President of India and the ‘World’s 100 Most Inspiring People’ from Oooms Magazine in 2019.

She and Maher Ashram may be reached at <maher@maherashram.org>.

Lucy Laffitte teaches science in its widest contexts. She has a baccalaureate in natural science from the University of Oregon, a master’s in adult education/instructional design, and a doctorate in environmental resource management from North Carolina State University. She developed courses at the Oregon Museum of Natural History, the North Carolina Museum of Natural Science, and the Rachel Carson Institute, among others. She writes a newspaper column, founded an environmental radio program, created educational certificate programs, and developed digital learning for public television. Lucy has been teaching Big History to undergraduates and middle school students since 2015.

She currently serves as President of the International Big History Association and may be reached at <lucy.laffitte@gmail.com>.

Lyndsie Whitehead earned her BA in Speech Communication from Edinboro University and her MA in Teaching from the University of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. She is currently pursuing a PhD in Higher Education Leadership & Policy Studies at Howard University in Washington DC, where she focuses on internationalization among colleges and universities. Lyndsie has worked for more than a decade as an educator and received the US Presidential Award of Service for providing technical and professional development training for the staff at Adama University in Ethiopia, where she also organized a gender-equity symposium. Through collaboration with the Embassy of India, she has supported cross-cultural exchange, gender equity, and teacher preparation. She serves as advisor for the Women of Color Advancing Peace, Security and Conflict Transformation, which promotes international capacity building at historically black colleges and universities. As an advocate for social justice, Lyndsie was a participant in a roundtable discussion on civic engagement with former US Secretary of Education John B. King and activist Brittany Packnett.

She may be reached at <lyndsie.whitehead@gmail.com>.

M. Paloma Pavel is co-founder of the Breakthrough Communities Project. Her dissertation (Organizational Culture and Leadership Development) was part of a five-year study by the Carnegie Foundation on the workplace in the United States. She served as Director of Strategic Communications for the Sustainable Metropolitan Communities Initiative at the Ford Foundation and has been a Fulbright Scholar in community development, environmental literacy and climate justice. Paloma teaches in Bay Area institutions, lectures internationally on living systems and urban sustainability, and co-edits the Sustainable Metropolitan Communities Books series at MIT Press with Robert Gottlieb. Her publications include Breakthrough Communities: Sustainability and Justice in the Next American Metropolis (2009).

She may be reached at <palomapavel@gmail.com>

Ma. Rubeth Ronquillo-Hipolito is Assistant Professor at Holy Angel University in Angeles City, Philippines. She handles Philosophy subjects such as Ethics, Logic and Humanities along with Big History 1 and Big History 2. She has been in the teaching profession for eighteen years. Having served as the School of Arts and Sciences’ Big History Coordinator for 2019–2020, she represented the university during the Asian Big History Symposium held at J.F. Oberlin University in Tokyo, Japan in November of 2019. Rubeth received her Bachelor of Arts in Philosophy at the University of Santo Tomas and pursued her Master of Arts in Teaching to prepare her for a life in academe. Currently, she is the Coordinator for Region 3 under the International Organization of Educators and Researchers (IOER). In the future, she intends to foster Big History as a unique discipline and a valuable research endeavour.

She may be reached at <rhipolito@hau.edu.ph>.

Masako Sakata is Head of 虔十の会 (Kenju no Kai / Kenju Association), a conservancy that works to protect Mt. Takao’s ecology. She is a nature guide on this mountain, which is famous for its biodiversity, despite being located in the western suburbs of Tokyo. She serves as the Representative of the Japan Civil Network for the United Nations Decade on Biodiversity (JCN-UNDB) and an Executive Board Member of Communication, Education and Public Awareness, Convention for Biological Diversity <http://cepajapan.org/about/whatis/>. Masako has participated in the Convention for Biological Diversity’s Conference of Parties (COP) since COP 10 (2010) at Nagoya-City, Aichi Prefecture, Japan. In 2012, she participated in the Earth Summit (Rio+20) as a member of JCN-UNDB. Presently, she and the Kenju Association are developing a post-2020 global biodiversity framework, which will be adopted at COP 15 in Kunming, China. She may be reached at <kenjusakata@yahoo.co.jp>.

Maximillian Barnett is a PhD Student, Department of History and Archaeology, Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia. He currently teaches and aids in curriculum development in the fields of world history and law. He graduated with a Masters of Research in Big History and writes on the fields of demography, geography, anthropology, world history, and future studies. The current working title for his PhD is The Fork in the Road: Mapping Alternative Responses of Human Societies to Threats to their Complexity.

His digital gateway is via <maximillian.barnett@gmail.com>.

Meera Chakravorty is Doctoral Advisor in the Department of Cultural Studies, Jain University in Bangalore, Karnataka (India). Her work is in the areas of women’s studies, cultural and consciousness studies, and philosophy. She has translated award-winning literary works of authors from Sahitya Akademi (The Academy of Letters, India). The Tagore Cultural Centre in Bangalore awarded her literary work, which includes Landscape of Matter (2005) and Dynamics of Dissent: Theorizing Movements for Inclusive Futures (2019). She received the Global Perspective on Science and Spirituality Award from the John Templeton Foundation and Elon University, Interdisciplinary University, Paris, for her work on ‘Time,’ including her 2007 book, Consciousness, Time, and Praxis. Meera also received Honours from the Prime Minister of India for her work on the Vachana Poets, the revolutionary and marginalized poet-saints of Karnataka. She has served as a member on the Karnataka State Commission for Women.

She may be reached at <chakram.meera@gmail.com>.

Michael Chiao is an entrepreneur in Shanghai, China. He did his undergraduate degree in Sciences at Sichuan University in Chengdu, followed by an MBA from Liverpool John Moores University in England. He is the founder of several business software companies for small and mid-size enterprises in China.

Michael may be reached at <Michael_chiao@megichina.com>.

Mona Pereira completed her undergraduate and master’s degrees at Delhi University and Mumbai University, with a focus on human fitness and society. As part of her studies, she trained in the various techniques of yoga, learning traditional forms at the Bihar School of Yoga in North India. A certified yoga instructor, based in Pune, Maharashtra, she works with all people, from children to senior citizens, in classes and with individuals, as well as with a focus on women’s and men’s health. Mona teaches online, an especially important form of outreach, which has allowed her to engage with a global audience. Natural Living Yoga gives people hope and makes them physically strong and mentally fit to face life’s challenges. It helps people strengthen their joints and spine through restorative poses and stretches to improve blood circulation, remove fatigue, and calm the mind. Deep, mindful breathing helps to gently massage the internal connections of the body, allowing relaxation and revitalization. It is a big history of each person’s existence – connecting with the ‘universe within.’

She may be reached at <naturalliving3011@gmail.com>.

Nagarjuna G. worked as a STEM educationist at the Homi Bhabha Centre for Science Education, Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Mumbai, India. Academically trained in biology, history and the philosophy of science, he is interested in the historical roots of ‘being Human.’ As an educationist, GN designs and develops learning environments (online and offline) to promote close-to-life spaces for education, as at Stem Chat Games: ChatShaala <https://metaStudio.org>. He does his work through Gnowledge Lab <https://www.gnowledge.org>, an R&D project of the Homi Bhabha Centre for Science Education. He is an advocate for software freedom and copyleft philosophy in digital society, and, as an activist, promotes a culture that supports distributed and decentralized socio-economic communities.

GN may be reached at <nagarjun@gnowledge.org>.

Neha Dadke is pursuing her degree at the Symbiosis School for Liberal Arts (SSLA) in Sociology, with minors in Women & Gender Studies and History. She is a research intern for SSLA’s Gender and Ecology Studies and an officer for Community Outreach & Extension. Neha is a member of SSLA’s Gender Committee and helped formulate university initiatives and academic policy. She has worked as a research intern for the Association of Asia Scholars (New Delhi) and as an editorial intern for SSLA’s Confluence: Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies. A writer, she has published with Collision Literary Magazine, University of Pittsburgh (Pennsylvania), and has debated through the Indian Schools Debating Society and at the National Academy of Legal Studies & Research. She is presently the Secretary of the Community Outreach Cell at SSLA.

Neha may be reached at <neha.dadke@ssla.edu.in>.

Nigel Hughes is Professor, Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, University of California, Riverside, USA. He has published widely on Himalayan geology, as well as on the biology of trilobites and other fossil creatures, as with ‘The Cambrian Palaeontological History of the Indian Subcontinent’ (Earth Science Reviews, 2016). Nigel teaches Earth Sciences in novel ways in his ‘Testament of Time’ and ‘At Home in the Universe’ classes that have commonly featured visitors from India. Bangla and English versions of his book, Monishar Pathorer Bon / Monisha and the Stone Forest were published in Kolkata (India) in 2012 by Monfakira Press. He was recently a Fulbright-Nehru Senior Scholar at the Indian Statistical Institute in Kolkata. His hobbies include writing stories about geological subjects, playing the ukulele, and trying to improve his Bengali.

Nigel may be reached via his e-mail at <nigel.hughes@ucr.edu>.

Nobuo Tsujimura is adviser and webmaster for the Oberlin Big History Movement at J.F. Oberlin University, Tokyo <http://obhp.org/>. President of the Asian Big History Association, he convened its first panel at the IBHA’s 2018 conference and, in 2019, co-organized the first international big history symposium at J.F. Oberlin University with Professor Hirofumi Katayama. During the 2010s, Nobuo developed a series of Japanese books on Big History with the Institute for Global and Cosmic Peace, wrote a commentary for David Christian’s book Origin Story in its Japanese edition, and is now writing an introductory book about Big History.

He may be contacted at <palettehole@gmail.com>.

Oishika Neogi graduated from the Symbiosis School for Liberal Arts with a major in International Relations and a minor in Law. She served as student coordinator of our global Big History conference from 2019 to 2020. Presently, Oishika is Research Fellow at Karwan-e-Mohabbat / Centre for Equity Studies in Delhi, where she is working to help disadvantaged families. She writes news articles for various online journals and is enrolled for an MA in Conflict and Security Studies / International Affairs at The New School in Manhattan (New York), which she will begin next year.

She may be contacted at <oishika.neogi@gmail.com>.

Orla O’Reilly Hazra grew up in Canada, Ireland, California, Thailand, Okinawa, and Singapore. Her early adulthood was also a time of movement, living in the divided states of Ireland, Germany, and Korea. Raised as a Cartesian dualist, this reinforced her sense of homelessness. In 2009, she completed a PhD in Religious Education at Fordham University in New York, while working in an addictions unit. Her narrative research broke with Cartesian logic, as she integrated the complex ways that science, religion, indigenous peoples and women see the world. Orla recently returned to Sarasota, Florida, after ten years of living in Mumbai. Her husband is from Kolkata, so she continues collaborations with Tarumitra: Friends of Trees in Patna, Bihar, as well as with The Deeptime Network, while writing her magnum opus on the religion and poetic testimony of Big History pedagogy.

Her e-mail is: <ohazra@aol.com>.

Pallav Pandya is a singer, musician, and naturopath. Starting his career at age nine, he performed for old-age homes, including Mother Teresa’s ASHA Daan for abandoned children in Mumbai. This inspired him to compose socially-empowering songs about AIDS awareness, for those with emotional challenges, and for suicide prevention. A virtuoso, Pallav has performed in forty countries, including the Royal Albert Hall in London. In addition, he and his wife, Trupti Pandya, counsel people on domestic issues. Pallav believes that music can change the world and should be accessible to everyone. He uses Facebook Messenger as a global online music school with more than 15,000 students, while his YouTube channel has over 10,000 followers. His ‘train the trainer’ program is increasing the number of teachers so that it is now a 24/7 world-wide institute of music. Ragamony is Pallav’s system for professional musicians to learn to apply harmony in Indian ragas. These initiatives are online for free. His contact is <musicwithpallav@gmail.com>.

Paul Narguizian is Professor of Biological Science and Science Education at California State University, Los Angeles. His Big History Science Education research lab develops curricula for non-science and science majors with examples from the Big History and Journey of the Universe projects, popular films, science fiction, the nature and history of science, and data from scientific research. His students explore key research questions such as: What are the major milestones in biological discovery that expand our knowledge of life? What role should the grand narrative of the formation of the universe play in biology education? How can museum objects and natural history collections help us better understand Big History? Paul presented on the future of biology education at the 2019 IBHA symposium in Milan and published ‘Considering Grand Challenges in Undergraduate General Biology Education in the Journal of Big History (2020).

He may be reached at <pnargui@calstatela.edu>.

Perpetua Bih is a first grade teacher at the Government Bilingual Primary School in Bastos, Yaoundé, the capital of Cameroon. With a background in administration and business management, she taught a year in Kuwait City and then returned to teach in Cameroon. She is a founding member of the African Big History Association.

Peter J. Whitehouse, MD, PhD is Professor of Neurology at Case Western Reserve University and Professor of Medicine at the University of Toronto. He received his MD/PhD in Psychology from Johns Hopkins University as well as a faculty appointment. In 1986, he moved to Case Western Reserve University to develop an Alzheimer programme. Thirteen years later, he and his wife, Catherine, founded the Intergenerational School, a multiage, community-based project <www.tisonline.org>. His fields of endeavour are cognitive/brain health, integrated health care, intergenerational learning, interprofessional practice, deep bioethics, organizational aesthetics, narrative epistemology, transmedia performance arts, civilization transformation, and play. He also performs as the ‘Tree Doctor,’ a shamanic practitioner who asks what humans can learn from trees about their health. Currently, he leads InterHub in the Presencing Institute, Cambridge, Massachusetts. A forthcoming book is American Dementia: Brain Health in an Unhealthy Society.

Prashant Olalekar is a Jesuit from Bombay who completed his Doctor of Ministry in Peace Studies at the Graduate Theological Union, Berkeley, California in 2006. Recently retired as Head of the Department for Interreligious Studies, he was also Adviser of the All India Catholic University Federation unit at St. Xavier’s College, Mumbai. Prashant coordinated Jagruti (Awakening), an experiential value education programme for junior college students, which included exposure trips to slums and rural areas of India. He was Novice Director and Coordinator for Formation of the Bombay Jesuit Province, Episcopal Vicar for Religious of Vasai Diocese, and Director of Pasayadaan Holistic Spirituality Centre, Vasai, and Retreat House, Bandra. Co-founder of Samanvaya (Harmony), a network for grassroots research scholars to collaborate for community peace, Prashant also founded InterPlay India and organized Peace Pilgrimages to India from the USA and Australia. InterPlay and Movement Meditation workshops are popular with professionals, students, teachers, as well as marginalized groups like the tribal community, the differently-abled, sex workers, and slum dwellers. He has facilitated Movement Meditation retreats in India, the United States, and Ireland. An active member of the Big History movement, he makes presentations on topics related to Cosmic Spirituality for the World Union of Jesuit Alumni, the Jesuit Educational Association of South Asia, and Fireflies Ashram in Bangalore.

He may be reached at <prash7654@gmail.com>.

Priya Sundarrajan is Associate Professor, Department of Life Science and Biochemistry, St. Xavier’s College – Autnomous, Mumbai. She also serves as Director of the Caius Research Laboratory and is Member Secretary of its Institutoinal Biosafety Committee. As a geneticist and biotechnologist, her main research focus is on bioethanol and biofuel production, especially using yeasts, enzyme biotechnology and human genetics. Priya teaches cell biology, biotechnology, genetics, molecular biology, and environmental science to undergraduate and graduate students. She has a particular interest in integrative and multidisciplinary approach to teaching and learning.

She may be contacted at <priya.s@xaviers.edu>

Priyadarshini Karve is Director of Samuchit Enviro Tech and Visiting PhD Faculty at the Symbiosis School for Liberal Arts (SSLA) in Pune. After working for ten years in the academic, research and non-profit sectors, she started her own enterprise in 2005, which promotes environmentally sustainable energy and lifestyle products. Priya has invented solid biomass cooking devices, decentralised biofuel technologies, and methodologies for effective adoption of renewable energy by intended beneficiaries. In 2010, she developed a personal carbon footprint calculator for urban residents throughout India and conducted climate friendly lifestyle workshops for urban communities. Among her many educational initiatives, she is co-editor of a Marathi bi-monthly journal on science and education for teachers in Maharashtra. She co-developed and co-taught the first course on Big History in South Asia at SSLA in the spring semester of 2018 and continues with this pioneering work.

Priya may be reached at <pkarve@samuchit.com>.

Rachel Oser is a science educator at the Independent Schools Foundation Academy in Hong Kong, where she has taught Middle Years Program Science since 2012. She is a member of the ISF Shuyuan team of multidiciplinary studies, which manages educational research, integrates sustainability resources and other projects into classrooms, and helps to build the science curriculum. Rachel began her career teaching science in urban public schools in the US. She completed her master’s degree in Life Sciences at the University of Maryland and her PhD in Science Education from Curtin University in Perth, Australia. Her dissertation investigated the effects of virtual laboratories, and she spent summers at the RNA Molecular Biology Laboratory at Rockefeller University. She and her husband have four children and enjoy the stimulation that Hong Kong has to offer.

Rachel may be contacted at <roser@isf.edu.hk>

Radhika Seshan is Professor and Head of the Department of History (ret.), Savitribai Phule Pune University, Maharashtra. Her work has focused on medieval Indian economic studies, especially maritime and urban history. This resulted in her publication of books like Trade and Politics on the Coromandel Coast, Seventeenth and Early Eighteenth Centuries (2012); Ideas and Institutions in Medieval India, Eighth to Eighteenth Centuries (2013); and Constructions of the East in Western Travel Narratives, 1300 CE to 1800 CE (2020) She has also delivered lectures at higher education academies as part of continuing education for teachers throughout India. She is presently a faculty member in the Department of History at the Symbiosis School of Liberal Arts.

Rajani Gupte is Vice Chancellor of Symbiosis International [Deemed University]. She has a PhD in Economics from the Gokhale Institute of Economics & Politics in Pune and has been actively engaged with higher education for over thirty years, both as a professor and as a researcher. She has taught at several international universities, including Oakland University in Auburn Hills, Michigan (USA) and the Bremen University of Applied Sciences in Bremen (Germany). Integral to the leadership team at Symbiosis for over two decades, Dr Rajani is a founding member of the Symbiosis Institute of International Business (1992) and served as its head from 2004 to 2012, establishing it as one of the top-ranking business schools in India. She has also served as Dean in the Faculty of Management, Dean of Academics, and Pro-Vice Chancellor at Symbiosis. Dr Rajani is one of ten women who was selected from across Asia to attend the ‘Women in University Administration Programmes,’ sponsored by the US Department of State. She has served on several Indian governmental organizations, such as NITI Aayog (National Institution for Transforming India) and the University Grants Commission, as well as in leading corporations and international bodies, such as the International Trade Panel, the Confederation of Indian Industries, and the World Trade Organization. She has received numerous awards for her outstanding contribution and leadership in education.

She may be reached at <vc@siu.edu.in>.

Rashida Atthar is an environmentalist and social scientist. After graduating in Psychology and Sociology from St. Xavier’s College, Mumbai, she pursued a master’s degree in Social Work and has been employed in the health, communication and development sectors. Her advanced research certificate is in development, for which she produces papers on sustainability, communication, and global NGOs at national and international conferences. Her papers have been published and one judged best at an international conference. Rashida has also presented papers in botany, based on her observations and study of the Mumbai forest. Her work blends theory, practice, and research. She has been a visiting faculty for environment and development communication at graduate and post-graduate levels. Rashida has mentored three groups of international and national climate leaders, as part of the Climate Reality Project. She is involved in research, education and restoration work in environment and climate, with an emphasis on science and solutions. Research methodology is one of her forte.

She may be contacted at <atthar.rashida@gmail.com>.

Renu Vinod is Adjunct Faculty at SSLA, where she teaches Sociology. She obtained her PhD from Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi, where her research focused on participatory democracy movements in India. She continued her work in the development sector in Delhi and then at Savitribai Phule Pune University. Her research and advocacy deal with issues of informal sector livelihoods, the right to information, participatory democracy, and corporate social responsibility. Renu was recipient of the Erasmus Mundus Scholar Grant to the University of Groningen (Netherlands) and to Uppsala University (Sweden) in 2013. She received the Erasmus Mundus’s Experts4Asia Consortium Grant for postdoctoral research at Uppsala University in 2016. She published this research as a chapter on first-generation white-collar Indian immigrants to Sweden in India Migration Report (Routledge 2019). Renu has other publications in the areas of the digital divide in education, informal livelihoods, and the clash of modern and traditional values in India. She headed the research team which wrote the Indian Central Information Commission’s first Annual Report, which was tabled in the Indian Parliament in the year 2007. She is currently writing a textbook on the Sociology of Modernity in India.

Renu may be reached at <renu.vinod@ssla.edu.in>

Richa Minocha was born in Simla, a small town in the predominantly rural state of Himachal Pradesh in North India. She completed her Master’s degree from Himachal Pradesh University and went to Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi for her doctorate. Her post-doctoral work at the London School of Economics & Political Science (UK) focused on ecological, cultural and religious linkages. She first taught at Himachal Pradesh University in Simla and was the founding member of Jan Abhiyan Sanstha, a grassroots organization promoting conservation, livelihood, gender, and social development. In 2017–18, Richa served as core Indian faculty for environment under the initiative, ‘Rethinking Food Security: Agriculture, People and Politics’, a program of the School of International Training (USA). She is Associate Professor with the Symbiosis School for Liberal Arts. where she works on women’s issues, ecology, and anthropology. She is a member of the Forum for Crèche & Child Care Services, the Pakistan-India Peoples’ Forum for Peace & Democracy, and Egalitarian Trails.

She may be reached at <richa.minocha@ssla.edu.in>

Robert Dalling taught his first Big History course in 2003, using his book, Human Nature, Worth, and Civilization. This course is a celebration of our species. To create the fifty-hour video version of the course <www.HumanismWeb.net>, he travelled to fifty nations to record 3D videos of people and places, while relying on the kindness of strangers every few minutes. He lived in West Berlin in 1973 and worked on an engineering project in Ceaucescu's Romania in 1983. His Ph.D. is in physics with engineering courses in fluid mechanics and nuclear engineering. Robert has written eight books, including Workbook and Solutions Manual for Quantum Mechanics, Mathematical Physics, and Special Relativity. He has other presentations and publications in chaos, heat flow, laser spectroscopy, and relativistic quantum mechanics, as well as a patent for a method of calculating the Lyapunov exponent in chaotic systems. Before teaching, he spent thirteen years writing bookkeeping and database software for retail tractor dealerships. This taught him how major corporations, franchises, and small businesses operate. His hobbies are teaching precious students and watching Barfi and other Bollywood movies with them, learning Hindi, traveling our world, learning and listening to music from every nation, and watching movies from every nation.

He is teaching his sixteenth year at The Louisiana School for Math, Science and the Arts and can be reached at <rdalling@lsmsa.edu>.

Robert Sylvester is a commentator and activist whose work bridges human ecology and natural history. Trained as a rural sociologist, he is a retired civil servant of the Alaska Department of Community & Regional Affairs and the Alaska Department of Health & Social Services. An active outdoorsman, he has experienced the rigors of the commercial fishing trade and was a long-time member of the Juneau Mountain Rescue group. Bob has travelled widely, spending time with activists in Ecuadorian jungles and along the Peruvian Andes as well as in the urban landscapes of Myanmar and China. An avid white-water rafter, he enjoys the Tatshenshini and other wild rivers in Canada. His writing has appeared in the Southeast Alaska Archipelago, and he presently works with Sasha Blikshteyn Photography in Tacoma, Washington (USA).

He may be reached at <hikeak@yahoo.com>.

Roy Pereira served as Provost/Vice-Principal (Academics) of St. Xavier’s College (Autonomous) in Mumbai, where he taught in the Department of Chemistry and began a programme in Neuroscience from 1993. He was awarded two research fellowships at the Berkeley Campus, Santa Clara University (2016) and at St. Louis University (2017) in the United States. Roy’s current research considers the effects of cell phones, internet use and social media on the brain, on which he spoke at Google Headquarters. His research also involves understanding the mind-body link, the effect of meditation on health outcomes, and ways of dealing with stress in our lives. In this connection, he spoke at Harvard University in 2017. He also has Masters Degrees in Chemistry, Philosophy and Biblical Theology. His presentations are interactive and strive to explain complex concepts of Neuroscience in easy-to-understand ways through use of multimedia, music and the piano. He joined Creighton University in February 2020, teaching in the School of Medicine.

Roy may be contacted at <roy@jesuits.net>

Ruthu G J is a student in the Symbiosis School for Liberal Arts, pursuing studies in International Relations, Political Science, and Sociology. She serves as the SSLA Internship Officer and with the Gender Committee, having assisted in formulating Symbiosis International University’s Gender Policy. She actively involves herself in the preparation and teaching of kids from underprivileged backgrounds. Ruthu has interned with the Sociology Group of the Gandhi Research Foundation and currently works as a research intern for Barry Rodrigue and VGKK in researching materials about the Soliga tribe of Karnataka. She is passionate about current affairs, public policies, sustainable development, and quality education. Ruthu can be reached at <ruthu.g@ssla.edu.in>.

Sanjay Subodh did his PhD on Aligarh historiography from Panjab University in Chandigarh. He then joined Kurukshetra University and, in 2005, the University of Hyderabad, where he is Professor in the Department of History. He has been twice recipient of Best Research Paper Award from the Indian History Congress, and has served as President of the Medieval India section of the Indian History Congress, the Andhra Pradesh History Congress, and the Punjab History Conference. Since 1995, Sanjay has researched Medieval structures, their architecture and technology of construction. He is interested in understanding the functional part of a structure and the technology that makes it operational. He sees history as a practicing discipline and his researches are of an interdisciplinary nature. He authored Historiography of Medieval India (2003) and a number of research articles.

Sanjay can be reached at <san_sahay@yahoo.com>.

Seth Shostak is Senior Astronomer and Institute Fellow at the SETI Institute, in Mountain View, California. He has an undergraduate degree in physics from Princeton University, and a doctorate in astronomy from the California Institute of Technology. For much of his career, he conducted radio astronomy research on galaxies and has published approximately sixty papers in professional journals. Seth has written 600 popular magazine, newspaper and web articles on various topics in astronomy, technology, film, and television. For a decade, he chaired the International Academy of Astronautics’ SETI Permanent Committee and co-authored a college text on astrobiology, Life in the Universe. He weekly hosts the SETI Institute’s science radio show, ‘Big Picture Science,’ and he has written, edited and contributed to a half-dozen books. His most recent being Confessions of an Alien Hunter: A Scientist’s Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (National Geographic 2009).

Shailaja Deshpande is certified in sustainable management and conservation from the Ecological Society of Pune, holds diplomas in field botany from the Agharkar Research Institute, and has trained in groundwater resources from the Advanced Center for Water Resources Development & Management. In 2013, she worked on a catchment basin project, funded by Global Forest Watch in Pune. Her conservation work continued from there. She was a founder of the Jeevitnadi Living River Organization and serves as its director. The members of Jeevitnadi come from diverse backgrounds and work to revive the rivers of Pune. They raise public awareness and participation by encouraging the elimination of pollution through toxic-free lifestyles, developing scientific and ecological management plans, and seek project and river sustainability. In 2017, Shailaja received the Green Hero Award from the Energy & Resources Institute (New Delhi) and, in 2020, the India River Forum conferred her with its Bhagirath Prayas Samman award.

She may be contacted at <shailajadesh@gmail.com>.

Shamshuddin Jusop grew up in a farming community in the east coast state of Kelantan, Malaysia. He graduated with a degree in Geology from the University of Malaya, Kuala Lumpur. He then went to Newcastle University (England) for an M.S. and studied for his doctorate at Ghent University in Belgium. Working at Universiti Putra Malaysia (UPM) since 1972, he taught soil science to both undergraduate and graduate students. Now he is now a Senior Research Fellow at the Faculty of Agriculture, UPM. Shamshuddin is past-president of both the Malaysian Society of Soil Science and the East and Southeast Asia Federation of Soil Science Societies; he is also an Honorary Member of the Belgian Royal Academy for Overseas Sciences. In 2014, he was elected as a Fellow of the Academy of Sciences Malaysia and the prestigious Science & Technology Award was conferred on him by the Malaysia Toray Science Foundation.

His e-mail address is <shamshud@upm.edu.my>.

Shashikala Gundlupet is a professional Bharatanatyam dancer and Carnatic vocalist. She holds an MBA from the ICFAI Business School in Pune and is the founder-director of the Vrtti Natya Raga Dance Academy. Shashikala is also Visiting Faculty at SSLA, where she teaches Carnatic classical music and the Natyashastra, the 2000-year old Sanskrit treatise about the performing arts.

She may be reached at <gundlupet.shashikala@gmail.com>.

Shubhangi Swarup is author of the critically acclaimed novel, Latitudes of Longing, a passionate story of Love, Geography, Asia, and Big History. An international bestseller translated into more than thirteen languages and published worldwide, it won the Tata Lit Live! Debut Fiction prize and Sushila Devi award for women writers, was short-listed for the JCB prize and the Hindu prize for fiction, and long-listed for the International Dublin Literary prize. She holds an MSc in Violence, Conflict and Development from the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, and was the Charles Pick Fellow of Creative Writing at the University of East Anglia (England).

She lives in Mumbai and may be contacted at <shubhangi.swarup@gmail.com>.

Shweta Sinha Deshpande is Associate Professor, Symbiosis International University, Pune, India. An archaeologist, educator and ceramic analyst, her studies deal with cultural interactions in central and western India during the third and second millennia BCE. This has resulted in publications such as ‘Human Response to Holocene Climate Changes in Western India between 5th and 3rd Millennium BCE’ (2004), as well as the co-authored book, Mesolithic Bagor: Independent Beginnings of Sedentism and Ceramics, a Prelude to the Ahar Culture of South East Rajasthan, India (forthcoming). She has also taught at Deccan College and done statistical analysis for major government initiatives at institutes like the Yashwant Rao Chavan Academy for Development Administration in Pune. She presently serves as Deputy Director of the Symbiosis School of Liberal Arts (SSLA) and as Co-Coordinator of the Indian Association of Big History, which is based at the SSLA.

Siddhartha is an author, journalist and social activist who writes on ecological, cultural and social issues for leading Indian and international publications. He studied law in India and sociology in Paris and participates in many global organizations, including as international coordinator of the Ecumenical Institute for the Development of Peoples – International, Paris (INODEP), a centre of alternative education founded by Paulo Freire. He is a board member for the Asian Cultural Forum for Development (ACFOD) Bangkok, one of the oldest and most active organizations for ecological and social issues and is a former international committee member of the World Social Forum. For the past twenty years, Siddhartha has organised ecological and cultural workshops in many countries in the Asia-Pacific region on sustainable development. He founded Fireflies Ashram, outside Bangalore, India in 2001. A major international centre for ecological and cultural activities, it is encourages inter-cultural dialogue. Its website is at <http://www.fireflies.org.in/>.

Sisir Roy is Senior Homi Bhabhha Fellow and visiting professor at the National Institute of Advanced Studies at the Indian Institute of Science campus in Bengaluru, Karnataka. He is a theoretical physicist and served as Professor, Indian Statistical Institute, Kolkata for more than thirty years. At present, he researches and teaches about interdisciplinarity, including consciousness studies. Among his publications are Demystifying Akasha: Quantum Vacuum and Conciousness (2010), Understanding Space, Time, and Causality: Modern Physics and Ancient Indian Traditions (2020), and Microbial Communication (2020). He may be reached at <sisir.sisirroy@gmail.com>.