Meet the HWW Team

Dr. Rose M. Brewer, PhD is The Morse Alumni Distinguished Teaching Professor and past chairperson of the Department of African American & African Studies, University of Minnesota-Twin Cities. She is an affiliate faculty member in the Departments of Sociology and Gender, Women and Sexuality Studies. An activist scholar, Professor Brewer publishes extensively on Black radical feminism, political economy, social movements, race, class, gender and social change. She was a founding board member of Project South: Institute for the Elimination of Poverty and Genocide; a past board member of United for a Fair Economy, and a founding member of the Black Radical Congress. She is the Principal Investigator of the Humanities Without Walls study, “Environment Justice Worldmaking.” And, she is the 2024-2025 President of the Society for the Study of Social Problems (SSSP). As a core organizer of the 2007, 2010 and 2015 US Social Forums, the struggle for social transformation in those Forums centered the environmental justice fights of Frontline Communities. Indeed, her commitment is to change the world for people and the planet.

Dr. Yuichiro Onishi teaches in the Department of African American & African Studies and Asian American Studies Program at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities. He is the author of Transpacific Antiracism: Afro-Asian Solidarity in 20th-Century Black America, Japan, and Okinawa (NYU Press, 2013) and co-editor of Transpacific Correspondence: Dispatches from Japan’s Black Studies (Palgrave, 2019). His writings on Afro-Asian internationalism and radicalism appear in various edited volumes, most recently Black Transnationalism and Japan (Leiden University Press, 2024) and Citizen of the World: A History of W. E. B. Du Bois’s Late Career and Legacy (Northwestern University Press, 2019). 

Dr. Karen Brown is Director of the Interdisciplinary Center for the Study of Global Change (ICGC), where she directs international and interdisciplinary education and research programs including the ICGC Scholars fellowship programs and a partnership with the Centre for Humanities Research at the University of the Western Cape in South Africa.  Dr. Brown also serves as a Graduate Faculty member in Feminist Studies, the Human Rights Program, the Humphrey School of Public Affairs and the Organizational Leadership, Policy and Development department. Her academic interests focus on gender and public policy in global context, international women's and children's human rights, girls in international policy, and international research ethics and methods.

Dr. Fatemeh Shafiei is the Director of Environmental Studies, Associate professor of Political Science, and Co-Chair of Sustainable Spelman Committee at Spelman College in Atlanta, Georgia. She served as Chair of the Department of Political Science from 2012 to August 2021. Dr. Shafiei has been an expert/leader in advancing environmental justice for decades. She was a member of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)’s National Environmental Justice Advisory Council (NEJAC) in 2012-2018. She is also co-founder of the Greater Atlanta Regional Centre of Expertise (RCE) on Education for Sustainable Development. She has successfully secured several federally funded grants from the EPA and UNCF/Mellon Program for her research in environmental policy and education areas and has served as the principal investigator for those projects. She has received the Fannie Lou Hamer, Outstanding Community Service Award (2023) from National Conference of Black Political Scientists (NCOBPS) and the Damu Smith Power of One Award (2017) from the Deep South Center for Environmental Justice, Dillard University, to name the most recent recognitions.

Dr. Emina Buzinkic is a is a researcher, activist, and writer at the intersections of migration, refuge, education, transnational solidarities, and feminist praxis. Emina engages in research, writing, education, public agitation, and resistance activism in the fields of migration and border regimes, militarization, xenoracism, ethno-nationalism, civil society, peace and anti-war movements, and the neoliberalization of public goods. She continuously explores the possibilities of migration justice through the actions of social movements and people’s tribunals, advocates for socially responsible academia, and is writing a book titled Storying Social Distancing: Race, Border and Refugee. She earned her doctorate in critical educational, cultural, feminist, and human rights studies from the University of Minnesota in the USA. She is a member of the editorial collective for the journal AGITATE! – Unsettling knowledges and the organizations IMISCOE, Comparative International Education Association (CIES), and American Education Research Association (AERA). She published in both local and international journals. Currently, she is employed as a postdoctoral researcher with the project ENDURE – Inequalities, Community Resilience and New Governance Modalities in a Post-pandemic World, which is financially supported by the Croatian Science Foundation.

Nazir Khan has co-led the formation of the Minnesota Environmental Justice Table, where he is helping to build and weave together a growing movement led by frontline communities for a regenerative, caring, and sustainable society — and against the sacrifice of these communities for profit. He has been involved over the last 15 years in the climate, labor, and HIV/AIDS movements and borne witness to these movements transforming society, often starting with a few individuals working on some local issue.

Dr. Shekela Wanyama (she/her/hers) Dr. Shekela Wanyama (she/her/hers) builds community through crafting innovative and meaningful choral experiences. She is passionate about building a 21st century practice of art music that is inclusive, engaging, honest, and brave. A freelance conductor-educator based in Minneapolis, Dr. Wanyama serves on the faculties of the University of Minnesota and Hamline University, and the music staff at Unity Church-Unitarian.

Ruby DeBellis graduated from the Humphrey School of Public Affairs with a Master’s of Science in Science, Technology, and Environmental Policy (MS-STEP) in 2023. She got connected with the EJ Table and Humanities Without Walls (HWW) work through the EJW class in her final semester of her Master’s program, and stayed on after graduation as a research assistant. She now serves as a HWW consultant for the project, in addition to working full-time at a strategic communications firm in their Public Affairs department, where her work focuses on clean energy, housing, and environmental justice communications. 

Jasmine Adam is a dual MPH/MUPR student at the university of Minnesota. Her research includes cervical precancerous lesions of women infected with HIV,  E1 detection using pap smear samples, and interested in vaccinology, global health, reproductive health rights, and infectious diseases.

Hannah Jo King (she/they) is a PhD candidate in Natural Resources Science & Management at the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities. Their dissertation is on environmental justice, specifically in tribally-driven research with Wild Rice and in Black homesteading communities of Oklahoma. 

Laura Bell is the Center Administrator for the Interdisciplinary Center for the Study of Global Change (ICGC).  She is honored to be supporting the EJW initiative with administrative and logistical functions.