Nina P. Azari

Dr. Azari earned her first Ph.D. degree in human experimental psychology and completed several years of postdoctoral training and research in human brain imaging at the NIH. She is completing a second Ph.D., in Religious & Theological Studies, and is writing a dissertation on the philosophical-theological implications of neuroscientific studies of religious experience—most specifically her own collaborative work on the subject. Consequent to being awarded an Alexander von Humboldt Fellowship, she initiated an international collaboration with the department of Neurology at the University of Duesseldorf in Germany. In parallel with her ongoing neuroscientific collaboration in Germany, Dr. Azari has pursued her advanced studies in philosophy, religion, & theology. Correspondingly, she has expanded her collaborative team in Duesseldorf to include faculty in the departments of philosophy and psychology, with whom she has been examining the mutual relationship between philosophy, religion, theology, psychology, and neuroscience. This interdisciplinary, international collaboration has found expression most recently in a first-ever PET-rCBF study of a Christian religious experience carried out by Dr. Azari and her German collaborators. Dr. Azari has recently accepted an appointment at the Heyendaal Interdisciplinary Institute for Theology, Sciences, and Culture at the University of Nijmegen in The Netherlands.

Mohammed A. Bamyeh

Dr. Bamyeh is currently Visiting Associate Professor at the Center for Contemporary Arab Studies at Georgetown University. He has previously taught at SUNY-Buffalo, New York University, The University of Massachusetts and Truman College, and has been an SSRC-MacArthur Fellow in International Peace and Security. He received his Ph.D. in sociology from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1990. His subsequent areas of interest have included cultural globalization, modernity and spirituality, and historical sociology, themes on which he has published widely. In addition to many scholarly articles he is the author of two books: The Ends of Globalization (Minnesota, 2000), and The Social Origins of Islam: Mind Economy, Discourse (Minnesota, 1999), which was recognized with an Albert Hourani Book Award from the Middle East Studies Association. He is the founding editor of the journal Passages: Interdisciplinary Journal of Global Studies, the book series editor of World Heritage Studies on Multiculturalism and Transnationalism, and the co-editor of the new book series Commodities in Motion, published by Indiana University Press.

Linda L. Barnes

Dr. Barnes directs the Spirituality and Child Health Initiative in the Department of Pediatrics at Boston Medical Center. She also directs The Boston Healing Landscape Project at Boston University School of Medicine, a urban-ethnographic research initiative funded by the Ford Foundation that looks at how culture, complementary and alternative approaches to healing, and different religious traditions come together in the African Diaspora communities of Boston, Massachusetts. She is an Assistant Professor of Medical Anthropology in the Department of Pediatrics in the Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences at B.U. School of Medicine and in the Department of Social and Behavior Sciences at B.U. School of Public Health. She is also a Visiting Lecturer in the Department of Social Medicine at Harvard Medical School. She chairs the Religions, Medicines, and Healing Consultation program unit of the American Academy of Religion, and serves on the national board of the AAR.

Reflecting her cross-training as a medical anthropologist and a historian of world religions, Barnes’s work explores different dimensions of her interdisciplinary training—the social history of Chinese healing practices in the West, viewed through the histories of race, religion, and medicine; intersections of spirituality, culture, and complementary and alternative medicine; issues in cultural competence in medical practice; and the interfaces between healing traditions and world religions. She has published in Tracing Common Themes: Comparative Courses in the Study of Religion Culture (Scholars Press, 1991), as well as in Culture, Medicine & Psychiatry, Ambulatory Pediatrics, Annals of Internal Medicine, the Park Ridge Center Bulletin, and Bioethics Forum. She also has articles or chapters forthcoming in Cross-cultural Medicine (American College of Physicians-American Society of Internal Medicine), the Encyclopedia of Religion and American Cultures (ABC-CLIO Press), the Journal of the American Academy of Religion, and Medical Anthropology Quarterly. Her book, Needles, Herbs, Gods, and Ghosts—China, Healing and the West to 1848 is being published by Harvard University Press.

Mario Beauregard

I am currently associate professor at the departments of radiology and psychology, Université de Montréal (Québec, Canada). I have obtained a B.Sc. in Psychology (1985) and a Ph.D. in Neuroscience (1992) from Université de Montréal. My Ph.D. work was done under the supervision of Dr. Laurent Descarries and focused on the microiontophoretic characterization of dopaminergic neurotransmission in the rat’s central nervous system. After obtaining my Ph.D., I did a first postdoctoral fellowship (1992-1994) with Dr. Jocelyne Bachevalier, at the department of Neurobiology & Anatomy, University of Texas Medical School (in Houston). My research topic was the development of memory and socioemotional behavior in non-human primates. Then, I completed a second postdoctoral fellowship at the Montreal Neurological Institute, McGill University (1994-1996), working this time on the neural basis of implicit memory in humans, under the guidance of Dr. Howard Chertkow. As an independent researcher, the leitmotiv of my research program concerns the investigation of the neural substrate underlying the relationship between self-consciousness, volition, and emotion regulation. In order to do so, I use functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), positron emission tomography (PET), and multi-channel EEG. Other major research interests of mine regard the mind-brain question and the neurobiology of spiritual transformation.

Helen K. Black

Dr. Black is a religious studies scholar and gerontologist. Her research focuses on the spiritual and cultural aspects of elders' identities, and those who work with them. Particularly, she explores how personal spirituality and culture influence the subjective meaning of "lived experiences," such as poverty, childlessness, or forgiveness, within the context of the respondent's entire life. Personal meaning is elicited through the ethnographic, narrative method of qualitative research, and especially through the elicitation of the respondent's life story. Dr. Black was Principal Investigator on a project concerning the relation of forgiveness to religious adherence, a co-investigator on a study exploring defintions and theories of spiritual suffering, and an ethnogrpaher on various qualitative studies. Currently, she is exploring how personal spirituality influences the attitudes and behaviors of long-term care staff who work in nursing homes and assisted living facilities. Dr. Black's contribution to her field of study is to advocate the respondent as expert on personal spirituality and key interpreter of his/her own individual and communal past, present and anticipated future. Dr. Black has published in edited anthologies, peer reviewed professional and scientific journals, and is the co-author of Old Souls: Aged Women, Poverty, and the Experience of God, published by Aldine de Gruyter.

Michael Boivin

Dr. Boivin completed his graduate training in the experimental analysis of behavior program at Western Michigan University and in 1987. Dr. Boivin completed a sabbatical post-doctoral research year with the Neuropsychology Program at the University of Michigan Medical Center. There, he was involved in neuropsychological assessment and brain-imaging studies related to various neurodegenerative diseases. Since coming to Indiana Wesleyan University in 1996, he has taught courses pertaining to research methodology and biopsychology and has supervised the undergraduate psychology research program. Dr. Boivin has a keen interest in the integration of the brain/behavior sciences with a Christian view of the person, and has published articles in this area as well as served as an Behavioral Science Associate Editor for the journal, Christian Scholars Review. More recently, Dr. Boivin was one of 30 scholars and scientists selected for the three-year Templeton/Oxford program on the History of Science and Christianity, where he published and presented work relevant to a theological perspective on evolutionary psychology and the pharmaceutical revolution in psychology and psychiatry. As a result of both this research training in neuropsychology as well as his ongoing interest in at-risk children in the cross-cultural setting, Dr. Boivin conducted research in the Congo (formerly Zaire) during the 1990-1991 as a Fulbright research scholar. Since that time, Dr. Boivin has completed a Masters in Public Health degree at the University of Michigan and completed developmental neuropsychological research related to health issues in Laos and in Senegal, West Africa. His latest project involves a quality-of-life and neuropsychological assessment of women being treated for breast cancer.

Pascal Boyer

Dr. Boyer studied philosophy and anthropology at University of Paris and Cambridge where he did his graduate work with Jack Goody on memory processes involved in the transmission of oral literature. He has done anthropological fieldwork in Cameroon on the transmission of the Fang oral epics and on Fang traditional religion. Since then he has mostly worked on the experimental study of cognitive capacities underlying cultural transmission. This work is focused on the development of core domain concepts (such as 'person', 'animal', 'artifact') in young children and on the representations associated with such core concepts in adults. The aim is to gather developmental, behavioral and neuro-cognitive evidence for domain-specific capacities in human minds. An anthropological application of these results was a series of studies on supernatural concepts and their retention in memory, as well as a more general description of the cognitive processes involved in transmission of religious concepts. After teaching in Cambridge, San Diego, Lyon and Santa Barbara, Boyer moved in 2000 to his present position at the departments of anthropology and psychology at Washington University, St. Louis.

William Bushell

Dr. Bushell is a medical anthropologist at MIT. His research focuses on leading edge medical and neurobiological discoveries of innate bioprotective and regenerative capacities of the body, and how these capacities can be profoundly amplified by meditative and yoga or yoga-like practices – the very same practices used to accomplish spiritually transformative goals throughout the world’s religious traditions. The health-enhancing effects of these practices appear to be considerably more powerful than previously recognized in Western cultures. Dr Bushell recently presented an analysis at the Society for Neuroscience Meetings (San Diego, 2001) showing that these practices may actually result in brain regeneration through stimulation of resident stem cells in the adult brain (Developmental Brain Research 132(1,2): A26). His analysis demonstrates that such spiritually transformative practices may also result in: the ability to stop pain with an effectiveness equal to or greater than that of the most powerful drugs; the ability to significantly minimize or even prevent physical trauma caused by a broad range of mechanical, chemical, thermal, radiological, and other agents; the ability to retard and even reverse fundamental aging mechanisms, thereby delaying or preventing the onset of age-related degenerative diseases (heart disease, stroke, Alzheimers, cancer, diabetes, etc). In fact, Dr Bushell’s analysis indicates that these practices may even provide significant protection from deadly infectious diseases, including those caused by anthrax and other agents of biological terrorism. Dr Bushell’s work has been endorsed by a number of leading medical researchers, several of whom have become members of his research team. He recently co-directed a conference on this subject with Robert Thurman and His Holiness the Dalai Lama. Dr Bushell was a Fulbright Scholar, a Harvard Postdoctoral Fellow, and graduated from Columbia University Phi Beta Kappa, Magna Cum Laud.

W. Keith Campbell

Dr. Campbell is a social/personality psychologist who completed his doctoral training at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and his postdoctoral training at Case Western Reserve University. He is currently an assistant professor of psychology at the University of Georgia. His research interests include the self and interpersonal relationships. Recently, he has focused on understanding “ego” in the guises of narcissism, self-esteem, and entitlement. Much of this effort has been directed toward understanding the negative personal and relational consequences of inflated self-views. His research has appeared in outlets such as Journal of Personality and Social Psychology and Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin.

Dale D. Chitwood

Dr. Chitwood is professor of medical sociology and chairperson of the Department of Sociology, University of Miami, Coral Gables, Florida, with secondary appointments in the Departments of Epidemiology & Public Health and Psychiatry & Behavioral Sciences within the School of Medicine. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Kentucky in 1980 and holds an M.Div. from Vanderbilt University. Dr. Chitwood’s research, which is multidisciplinary in nature, has concentrated on the study of the patterns and consequences of the misuse of drugs, and he has published extensively in the areas of drug misuse, HIV/AIDS, and health services research. He has been investigating drug abuse for the past 25 years and since 1986 has been examining the relationship between HIV/AIDS and illicit drug use. Currently he is principal investigator of a five-year grant from the National Institute on Drug Abuse to assess the effectiveness of two behavioral interventions in reducing HIV risk behavior and preventing persons who sniff heroin from progressing to injection drug use. His research has begun to examine the role of spirituality among persons recovering from drug abuse, and it is within this context that he proposes to develop his work on spiritual transformation.

Brenda Cole

Harold D. Delaney

Harold D. Delaney, Ph.D., is Professor of Psychology at the University of New Mexico, where he has served on the faculty since 1975. Most of his scholarship has been in the areas of research methodology and applied statistics, with his best known work being the graduate text Designing Experiments and Analyzing Data, co-authored with Scott Maxwell of the University of Notre Dame. He is the recipient of numerous awards, including a Fulbright Award to lecture in Budapest, Hungary for the 1991-92 academic year, being named Outstanding Graduate Teacher of the Year at the University of New Mexico, and a Templeton Foundation Science & Religion course award. He regularly offers an undergraduate course on the relationship between scientific psychology and Christian theism. Delaney has collaborated on more than ten federally funded research projects, most having to do with the treatment of substance abuse. Currently, with colleague William R. Miller, he is coordinating the national psychology panel for a multi-disciplinary project on the nature of the human person funded by the Pew Charitable Trusts. As one aspect of this project, he is co-editing a volume on Human nature, motivation and change: Judeo-Christian perspectives on psychology to be published by the American Psychological Association.

Al Dueck

Dr. Dueck is Evelyn and Frank Freed chair for integrative dialogue between theology and psychology at Fuller Theological Seminary’s School of Psychology. He is also active in the Travis Research Institute at Fuller. He completed his doctoral studies at Stanford University in the area of cognitive psychology and education. He studied theology at Associated Mennonite Biblical Seminary, University of Notre Dame, Yale University and Cambridge University Divinity School. His research interests include religious transformation in psychotherapy and computational analysis of meaning. He presented the Integration Lectures at Fuller Theological Seminary in 1986 and were published as “Between Jerusalem and Athens: Ethical Perspectives on Culture, Religion and Psychotherapy” (Baker, 1995). He enjoys hiking, reading novels, browsing used bookstores, art museums and ceramics. He is married to Anne, a Social Worker with Alzheimer’s Adults. His two children are Kevin, a math teacher in an inner city school in Fresno, California and Cheryl, a Marriage and Family therapist living in Pasadena, California. Both are married and Al is the grandfather of four boys.

Robert A. Emmons

Dr. Emmons is Professor of Psychology at the University of California, Davis. He received his Ph.D. degree in Personality and Social Ecology from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and his Bachelor’s degree from the University of Southern Maine. He is the author of nearly 70 original publications in peer reviewed journals or chapters in edited volumes, including the books The Psychology of Ultimate Concerns: Motivation and Spirituality in Personality (Guilford Press) and Words of Gratitude for the Body, Mind, and Soul (Templeton Foundation Press). He is a member of the American Psychological Association, the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion, the American Psychological Society, the International Network for Personal Meaning, and a Fellow of the International Society for Quality of Life Studies. He is President-Elect of APA’s Division 36, The Psychology of Religion. Professor Emmons is an Associate Editor for the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology and the International Journal for the Psychology of Religion. His research focuses on personal goals, spirituality, the psychology of gratitude and thankfulness, and subjective wellbeing. He has received research funding from the National Institute of Mental Health, the John M. Templeton Foundation, and the National Institute for Disability Research and Rehabilitation (U.S. Department of Education).

Julie Exline

Dr. Exline received her Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology from SUNY Stony Brook in 1997. She is starting her third year as an Assistant Professor of Clinical Psychology at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland. Dr. Exline uses techniques from social and clinical psychology to study questions related to religion and virtue. She is committed to the cross-fertilization of basic and applied research, aiming to do work that is theoretically driven but with clear practical implications. Over the past five years Dr. Exline has focused on topics such as forgiveness, humility, and sources of strain in religious life. She is particularly interested in rifts that can occur in people’s relationships with God, including feelings of anger toward God that arise in the wake of negative life events. During the last two years she has collected data on anger at God from homeless men, bereaved persons, and students coping with the aftermath of September 11. A crucial next step is to go beyond data collection to try to help those facing spiritual struggles. The proposed research, with its focus on hearing from God and experiencing God’s love, should facilitate not only basic scientific knowledge but also the development of interventions.

David L. Felten

Dr. Felten. is an internationally known researcher whose contributions helped to establish the field of psychoneuroimmunology and lay the foundations for the physiological understanding of complementary and integrative medicine. Dr. Felten first demonstrated a direct connection between nerve fibers of the sympathetic nervous system and cells of the immune system in several organs, including the spleen, lymph nodes, thymus, and bone marrow. These nerves are major participants in stress responses. Dr. Felten has shown that these nerve connections can influence the onset and course of cancer, infectious diseases, and age-related decline in immune responses. He currently serves as the Executive Director of the Susan Samueli Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine, and Professor of Anatomy & Neurobiology at the University of California, Irvine, College of Medicine in Irvine, CA.

Dr. Felten previously served for 3 ½ years as the founding Director of the Center for Neuroimmunology at Loma Linda University School of Medicine in Loma Linda, CA. From 1983 to 1997, he served at the University of Rochester, first as Professor, and then as the Kilian J. and Caroline F. Schmitt Professor and Chair of the Department of Neurobiology & Anatomy, and as Director of the Markey Charitable Trust Institute for Neurobiology. Recently, Dr. Felten and colleagues have expanded the scope of their studies to encompass many disease models in cancer, aging, and infectious disease and to identify the physiological changes in stress hormones, inflammatory mediators, and immune responses that are induced by interventions such as humor and laughter, music therapy, guided imagery, aerobic exercise, antioxidants, and other approaches.

Dr. Felten received the prestigious John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Prize Fellowship, sometimes called the “genius award" by the press. He was twice nominated for a Lasker Prize. Dr. Felten received two 10-year, peer review-based MERIT awards from two separate Institutes at the National Institutes of Health. The John E. Fetzer Institute has honored Dr. Felten’s with the Norman Cousins Award in Mind-Body Medicine in 1995.

Dr. David Felten is co-author of the definitive scholarly text in the field, Psychoneuroimmunology (Academic Press, 3rd edition, 2001), and was the founding co-editor of the major journal in the field, Brain, Behavior and Immunity, with Drs. Robert Ader and Nicholas Cohen of the University of Rochester. Dr. Felten is the author of over 210 peer-reviewed journals and reviews and has given more than 100 major addresses and presentations, including many prestigious named lectureships. Dr. Felten was featured in Bill Moyer’s PBS series and book, Healing and the Mind, a feature on 20/20, BBC’s “Worried Sick”, and many other programs on US, Canadian, Australian, and German National Public Television. He has been a guest on several National Public Radio programs, such as “Science Friday” and “Mind-Body Matters”, and has been featured in many magazine articles. Dr. Felten's continuing goal is to investigate the scientific foundations for the physiological benefits of many life style, mind/body, and complementary interventions, helping to fully integrate these approaches into conventional medicine for an integrative approach that provides for “whole person care.”

George Fitchett

Dr. Fitchett is an Associate Professor and the Director of Research, Department of Religion, Health and Human Values, Rush-Presbyterian-St. Luke's Medical Center, Chicago, IL, where he has worked for over twenty years. He is a Supervisor in the Association for Clinical Pastoral Education and a Board Certified Chaplain in the Association of Professional Chaplains. He received his Doctor of Ministry degree from the Divinity School of the University of Chicago. Dr. Fitchett is an expert on spiritual assessment and spiritual screening. He has conducted workshops on spiritual assessment and spiritual screening in five countries on three continents. Among his writings are two books on spiritual assessment, Assessing Spiritual Needs: A Guide for Caregivers, (Augsburg, 1993), and Spiritual Assessment in Pastoral Care: A Guide to Selected Resources, (Decatur, GA: Journal of Pastoral Care Publications, 1993). His research has examined the relationship between religion and health in a variety of clinical samples, including cancer patients, medical rehabilitation patients, psychiatric patients, and diabetes patients, as well as large scale community samples. His research has been published in pastoral, medical, and psychological journals and has been recognized with awards from the Association for Clinical Pastoral Education and the Congress on Ministry in Specialized Settings.

George Gallup, Jr.

Mr. Gallup is Chairman of The George H. Gallup International Institute, and Senior Scientist and member of the Council of GIREC (Gallup International Research and Education Center). He has been in the field of polling for half a century, serving as President of The Gallup Poll for many years, as well as Co-Chairman of The Gallup Organization, Inc.

The focus of much of Mr. Gallup’s work over the years has been on religion and spirituality. He has been the project director on more than 100 special surveys in these areas. He believes that the new frontier of survey research is the “inner life” and that many discoveries in this area lie ahead.

Mr. Gallup is a Trustee of the Templeton Foundation, the National Fatherhood Initiative, The Living Pulpit, and the Trinity Episcopal School for Ministry. He is on the board of advisors of the Center for Research on Religion and Urban Society, and of Marriage Savers. He received his BA degree from Princeton University, Department of Religion in 1954. He holds seven honorary degrees.

Mr. Gallup is author of numerous books, the most recent of which are: The Gallup Guide – Reality Check for Churches in the 21st Century; Surveying the Religious Landscape; The Next American Spirituality; Growing up Scared in America, and The Saints Among Us.

Norman Giesbrecht

Dr. Giesbrecht is an Honorary Research Associate in the Psychology Department at the University of British Columbia. Norman teaches courses in the areas of human development (adult, child, social and personality), research methods and statistics, and educational psychology. His research explores the relationships among psychosocial, moral, and spiritual development, and the influence of culture of development. Representative publications include. “Ego development and the construction of a moral self” (Giesbrecht & Walker, 2000) and “Towards a multicultural psychology of human development: Implications for education” (Giesbrecht, 2001 in R. Nata, Progress in education Vol. 2). Current research projects include:
* ‘Altruistic love and compassionate care in L’Arche’ (funded by the Fetzer Institute) which utilizes a multi-modal methodology to identify psychological, motivational, relational, and socio-cultural factors that nurture the expression of compassionate care in L’Arche, a relationship-centered health-care organization for people with developmental disabilities.
* ‘Existential / moral reasoning and theological worldview’ which explores existential / moral reasoning as a function of ego development and theological worldview among a sample of 140 spiritual exemplars from mainline, Catholic, evangelical, and Unitarian traditions, and a longitudinal sample of Catholic and Evangelical college students.
* ‘Ideal vs. actual selves and attachment relationships in socio-cultural context’ which explores ideal vs. actual self-conceptualization and male-female attachment relationships in a sample of 120 Caucasian students and Chinese-born Asian students.

Peggy C. Giordano

Dr. Giordano is Distinguished Research Professor of Sociology at Bowling Green State University. Her research has traditionally focused on causal processes associated with delinquency involvement during the adolescent period. More recently she has conducted a series of long-term follow-ups of normative and delinquent samples of youth as they have matured adulthood. These studies necessarily focus on variations in adult criminal involvement and functioning and factors associated with more successful outcomes, including the role of religion in effective life changes. She has published her work in journals such as the American Journal of Sociology, Criminology, Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency, and Journal of Health and Social Behavior.

Bruce Greyson

Dr. Greyson is the Carlson Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Virginia and Director of the Division of Personality Studies. A graduate of Cornell University and the State University of New York Upstate Medical School, Dr. Greyson completed his residency in psychiatry at the University of Virginia. He served on the faculties of the University of Michigan and the University of Connecticut before returning to the University of Virginia as Professor of Psychiatry and Family Medicine. He was the Bonner-Lowry Professor in the Division of Personality Studies before being appointed Carlson Professor of Psychiatry in 2002.

One of the first researchers to gather empirical data on near-death experiences using accepted scientific methods, Dr. Greyson has investigated the profound psychospiritual changes that often take place following recovery from severe, life-threatening illness or injury. He has written widely on the aftereffects of near-death experiences and on therapeutic strategies for helping patients readjust to life after such occurrences. He has been the principal investigator on 9 research grants, and has published more than 60 articles in peer-reviewed scholarly journals, more than 20 invited book chapters, and one book. He is the long-time editor of the Journal for Near-Death Studies.

Todd W. Hall

Dr. Hall is currently Associate Professor of Psychology and Director of the Institute for Research on Psychology and Spirituality at Rosemead School of Psychology, Biola University. He is also the Associate Editor for the Journal of Psychology and Theology.

Dr. Hall is Principal research interests include relational approaches to spirituality and the longitudinal course of marriage. Dr. Hall and his colleague, Dr. Keith Edwards, developed the Spiritual Assessment Inventory, an instrument designed for research and clinical use. They continue their research on spiritual assessment, currently focusing on developing clinically useful methods for assessing spiritual health. Dr. Hall is a co-investigator on a national study, funded by the Templeton Foundation, investigating spiritual development across the college years. His current writing project invovles developing a relational model of spirituality that explores the interface between object relations and attachment theories, emotional information processing, and interpersonal neurobiology. Dr. Hall is currently pursuing a Ph.D. degree in Measurement and Psychometrics at UCLA, where he is working on a five-year NIMH-funded study of marital and parent-child relationships.

Dr. Hall's clinical interests include psychoanalytic psychotherapy, marital therapy and prevention of marital dysfunction, personality assessment, and clinical supervision.

Samuel Heilman

Dr. Heilman holds the Harold Proshansky Professorship in Jewish Studies and Sociology at the City University of New York. He has also been Drobny Professor of Jewish Studies at the University of Illinois at Chicago, Scheinbrun Visiting Professor of Sociology at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, visiting professor of social anthropology at Tel Aviv University, and a Fulbright visiting professor at the Universities of New South Wales and Melbourne in Australia and a visiting fellow at Connecticut College.

A graduate from Brandeis University (BA.), New School University (MA) and the University of  Pennsylvania (Ph.D.), Heilman is the author of numerous articles and reviews as well as eight books: Synagogue Life, The People of the Book, The Gate Behind the Wall, A Walker in Jerusalem, Cosmopolitans and Parochials: Modern Orthodox Jews in America (co-authored with Steven M. Cohen) Defenders of the Faith: Inside Ultra-Orthodox Jewry published in a new revised edition by The University of California Press.. His Stroum Lectures at the University of Washington have been published University's Press in 1996 as: Portrait of American Jewry: The Last Half of the 20th Century. A number of these books are recently reissued and all are currently in print.  In May 2001, The University of California Press published When a Jew Dies, an anthropological analysis of Jewish death, bereavement and mourning.

His latest book, When A Jew Dies (due out in paper November 2002) is the winner of the 2001 Koret Foundation Book Award in Jewish Thought. The Gate Behind the Wall was honored with the Present Tense Magazine Literary Award for the best book of 1984 in the "Religious Thought" category. A Walker in Jerusalem received the National Jewish Book Award for 1987 and Defenders of the Faith was a finalist for the National Jewish Book Award for 1992. Portrait of American Jewry: The Last Half of the 20th Century was honored with the 1996 [first] Gratz College Tuttleman Library Centennial Award. Heilman is also recipient of fellowships from the National Science Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the American Council of Learned Societies, the Memorial Foundation for Jewish Culture, and the Mellon Foundation. He received a Distinguished Faculty Award from the City University of New York in 1985 and 1987. He is listed in Who's Who in the East, Contemporary Authors and Who's Who in World Jewry. He has been a member of the board of the Association for Jewish Studies and the YIVO Annual and the Max Weinreich Center.

Peter Hill

Dr. Hill (Ph.D., Social Psychology, 1979, University of Houston) is Professor of Psychology at the Rosemead School of Psychology on the campus of Biola University in La Mirada, CA. His primary research interests are in the psychology of religion with a special focus on the role of affect in religious/spiritual experience, measurement of religious/spiritual experience, and religiousness/spirituality in relation to addiction. He also does research in the psychology of forgiveness. He is currently funded as a PI or Co-I by A Campaign for Forgiveness Research and by the NIAAA. He has also received funding by The John Templeton Foundation to complete the 1999 publication Measures of Religiosity (co-edited with Ralph Hood). Peter is a Fellow of the American Psychological Association and is a past President of Division 36 (Psychology of Religion). His presidential address to the division was on the topic of spiritual transformation. He is under contract to complete a book with Guilford Publications in 2003 (co-authored with Ralph Hood and Paul Williamson) on the psychology of fundamentalism.

A.A. Howsepian

I am a board certified Staff Psychiatrist and the Director of Electroconvulsive Therapy at the Veterans Administration Central California Health Care System in Fresno, California and an Assistant Adjunct Professor of Psychiatry and the Director of the Center for the Study of Consciousness, Spirituality, and Culture at the University of California, San Francisco – Fresno Medical Education Program (UCSF-FMEP). I completed medical school at the University of California (Davis) School of Medicine and residency training in Psychiatry at the UCSF-FMEP. My Ph.D. is in Philosophy from the University of Notre Dame. My concentrations in Philosophy were in ethics, philosophy of religion, metaphysics, philosophy of mind, and the history of philosophy. I am also an Assistant Professor of Bioethics at Trinity International University in Santa Ana, California, where I have taught graduate seminars in Bioethics and Ethical Theory. I have published essays and letters in bioethics, philosophy, and psychiatry journals, including Journal of the American Medical Association, International Journal for Philosophy and Religion, American Journal of Psychiatry, Religious Studies, and Issues in Law and Medicine. My current psychiatric research interests are in movement disorders, schizophrenia, PTSD, and psychiatry and spirituality. My philosophical and bioethical research interests include the nature of consciousness, human embryology, the metaphysics of free will, philosophical theology, human sexuality, psychoanalytical theory, and the philosophy of logic. I also supervise psychiatry residents and teach courses in electroconvulsive therapy, psychiatric ethics, forensic psychiatry, and psychopharmacology. Finally, I am a private consultant in forensic psychiatry. My hobbies include reading fiction, playing ping-pong and chess, cooking, and poetry writing. I am married to psychologist, Barbara A. Howsepian, Ph.D., and we are expecting our first child in November 2002.

Leonard M. Hummel

Dr. Hummel is an assistant professor at Vanderbilt University in Religion and Personality of the Graduate Department of Religion, and in Pastoral Theology at the Divinity School. In the Department of Human Organization and Development at Peabody College of Vanderbilt, he is adjunct professor in the Community Research and Action Program. He is the Director of Research for Religion and Spirituality in the Pain and Symptom Management Program, Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center. He teaches on religion and health, coping and religion, and community religious beliefs and practices. He is published on European Pietism, religious traditions in religious coping, community and cultural psychology, and about the disciplines of practical and pastoral theology. His forthcoming book Clothed in Nothingness: Consolation for Suffering in Lutheran Tradition and Lived Religion (Fortress Press, in press for Spring, 2003), discusse how members of a particular religious tradition are informed by that tradition and how they reform it through their practices. He is currently engaged in two book projects: A Thing That Cannot and Can Be Changed: A Practical Theology of Cancer surveys various phenomenon associated with cancer from oncogenes to health-care dollars, and then offers religious and philosophical perspectives on those phenomena. Pragmatics of Religious Coping examines current research in religion and coping, analyzes its roots in classical pragmatism, and offers neo-pragmatic proposals for its future.

Jeremy P. Hunter

Dr. Hunter is Research Director of the Quality of Life Research Center and Adjunct Professor at the Peter F. Drucker School of Management both located at Claremont Graduate University. In 1999, he co-founded the Center with Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi and Jeanne Nakamura. Hunter graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Wittenberg University with a B.A. in East Asian Studies. He also holds a Master of Public Policy from the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University and a Ph.D. from the University of Chicago. He received a Positive Psychology Post-Doctoral Fellowship and is active in the Positive Psychology movement. He is engaged with several projects that examine the relationship between quality of experience and “the good life.” He is interested in optimal human functioning and has conducted research on the role of the experience of interest in fostering adolescent development. Hunter currently works in collaboration with Howard Gardner at Harvard University studying the lives of long-term mindfulness meditation practitioners. He is also developing methodologies to improve an individual’s quality of life by cultivating attentional and emotional skills. Hunter has served as a consultant to NASA, E-Lab Design Consultancy (later, Sapient), The Meikle Files of Australia and McKinsey & Co.

Gail Ironson

Dr. Ironson is Professor of Psychology and Psychiatry at the University of Miami. Dr. Ironson specializes in Behavioral Medicine and served as the President of the Academy of Behavioral Medicine Research this past year. After receiving her doctorate in quantitative psychology from the University of Wisconsin she pursued her medical degree from the University of Miami, with a psychiatry residency at Stanford University.

As a recognized expert in her field, she is a Fellow in the Society of Behavioral Medicine and Academy of Behavioral Medicine Research, as well as sitting on the Editorial Boards of four journals for the past several years. As a result of her extensive research in the areas of behavioral medicine with HIV, cancer, and cardiac patients, she has published over 100 articles and chapters in peer-reviewed publications.

Sung Joon Jang

Dr. Jang received his B.A. in Public Administration from Yonsei University, Seoul, Korea, and M.A. and Ph.D. in Sociology from University at Albany, State University of New York. He taught for eight years as an Assistant Professor of Sociology at Ohio State University before assuming a position as Associate Professor of Sociology at Louisiana State University in 2000. His research focuses on the effects of family, school, peers, religion, and community on deviance and crime, especially juvenile delinquency. His latest research applies a developmental approach to the etiology of delinquency and adolescent drug use based on multilevel modeling. It also examines racial/ethnic differences in adolescent deviance with an emphasis on Asian American adolescents. He is currently conducting a series of studies, investigating the effects of individual religiosity on crime and deviance.

Dr. Jang has published refereed articles in such journals as American Sociological Review, Criminology, Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology, Justice Quarterly, Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency, Journal of Quantitative Criminology, Criminal Justice and Behavior, Sociological Forum, Sociological Perspective, Social Science Quarterly, Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, American Journal of Community Psychology, Journal of Youth and Adolescence, and Social Work Research.

Jerome Kagan

Dr. Kagan is currently Research Professor of Psychology at Harvard University. He received his Ph.D. in Psychology from Yale University in 1954. After a stint in the U.S. army and seven years at the Fels Research Institute in Yellow Springs, Ohio, he assumed a professorship at Harvard in 1964. During the last 38 years he has studied cognitive and emotional development in children, the development of morality, the effect of surrogate care on infants and the role of temperament on social and personality development. He is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Science and a member of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences. He has received the Distinguished Scientist Award from the American Psychological Association and the Society for Research in Child Development, and the Hofheimer Prize for Research from the American Psychiatric Association. He is the author of many books and chapters and has served on both government and private advisory and philanthropic groups.

Dacher Keltner

Dr. Keltner received his BA from UC Santa Barbara in 1984, his PhD from Stanford University in 1989, and for three years was a post-doctoral fellow at UC San Francisco. After 4 years as an assistant professor at UW Madison, he moved to the Psychology Department at UC Berkeley, where he currently is an Associate Professor, Vice-Chair, and Director of the Berkeley Center for the Development of Peace and Well-being.

Dacher's research interests focus on three broad questions. A first pertains to the determinants and consequences of power and status. A second focuses on how individual differences in emotion, say the tendency towards compassion or awe, shape the individual's relationships life course. A final interest has to do with characterizing the forms and functions of the different positive emotions, including awe, love, gratitude, compassion. The study of spiritual transformation represents a synthesis of these latter two interests, in that the proposed study will examine how awe proneness increased the likelihood and content of spiritual transformation.

Dacher has published approximately 60 papers, and for his teaching and research has been awarded the Templeton prize for research excellence (2000), the Outstanding research award for the Western Psychology Association (2002), and two university wide teaching awards, among other awards.

Robert F. Kraus

Dr. Kraus is a graduate of the Medical College of Wisconsin. Subsequently, he received psychiatric training at Eastern Pennsylvania Psychiatric Institute where he also completed a research fellowship. During and after his psychiatric training, he undertook graduate training in Anthropology at the University of Pennsylvania. He has pursued an academic career in a series of medical schools. This has involved a number of academic and clinical appointments among them Acting Chairman of the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at the University of Washington and Chairman of the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Kentucky. His clinical interests and experience are broad with a particular interest in the long-term psychotherapy of adults. His teaching career has involved a wide range of students and includes service as a Director of Residency Training. The focus of his research has been the relationship between Culture and Psychiatry with particular reference to the Arctic and Sub Arctic culture areas. He has traveled extensively and conducted fieldwork in the Circumpolar Countries. This has resulted in numerous publications, presentations, and research grants. Currently, Dr. Kraus is Professor of Psychiatry and Anthropology at the University of Kentucky.

Jean L. Kristeller

Dr. Kristellar received her doctorate in clinical and health psychology from Yale University in 1983, and her M.S. from the University of Wisconsin in psychophysiology and clinical psychology in 1978. She is currently Professor of Psychology at Indiana State University and adjunct Assoc. Professor at the Indiana University School of Medicine. Previous appointments have been at the Univ. of Massachusetts Medical School and Harvard University Medical School. Her recent research in the area of spirituality includes an evaluation of physicians’ attitudes toward addressing spiritual issues and development of a scale to assess perceived barriers to doing so. Another study has investigated the viability and effectiveness of a brief physician-delivered spirituality intervention, demonstrating high physician and patient acceptance, and subsequent improved quality of life in cancer patients. A parallel study is investigating the use of this intervention approach by nurses in a multi-modality intervention study of palliative care issues in late-stage cancer patients. Other areas of research have been the use of meditation as a therapeutic modality, and the role of the physician in addressing a range of psychosocial issues, including smoking and obesity. She currently has funding through the NIH Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine for a study of the use of mindfulness meditation in treating binge eating disorder.

Sandra Lane

Dr. Lane is Research Associate Professor in the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology at SUNY Upstate Medical University. She holds a Ph.D. in medical anthropology (University of California, San Francisco and Berkeley, 1988) and a MPH in epidemiology (University of California, Berkeley, 1988).

Lane’s research focuses on gender and racial/ethnic disparities in health. Her research includes work on rural Egyptian women’s access to health care, traditional female genital surgeries, and disproportionate mortality females in Egypt and African Americans in Syracuse, New York.

Lane’s work has been funded by the federal Health Resources and Services Administration, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, New York State grants and private foundations. She has written more than 25 articles and book chapters. At Case Western University in 1996, she won both the Carle F. Wittke Distinguished Undergraduate Teaching and the John S. Diekhoff Distinguished Graduate Teaching awards.

From 1988-92, Lane was the Ford Foundation Reproductive Program Officer for the Middle East. She has been a member of the World Health Organization steering committee on Operations Research for Tuberculosis, an Expert Consultant to the UNFPA on Rapid Methods in program evaluation, and currently serves on the Onondaga County Child Death Review Committee.

Ting Lei

Dr. Lei initiated his longitudinal study on moral/spiritual development when he was a senior student at the National Taiwan University in 1979. In 1981, he wrote his thesis on social development and obtained a M. A. degree from the University of Minnesota. Then Harvard University awarded him a scholarship to study human development with psychologist Lawrence Kohlberg and anthropologist Robert LeVine. After completing his doctoral course work at Harvard in 1983, Lei worked as a research fellow at the Institute of Ethnology in Academia Sinica for nine years. During his tenure there, Lei expanded his longitudinal study from 53 to 212 participants. In addition, he was also involved in interdisciplinary research projects, including studies on the spiritual transformation of Taiwanese and aborigines.

Lei accepted a visiting scholarship to Stanford University in 1993 and 1994, during which he lived in the Ananda Community of Self-realization Spiritual Fellowship, an environment that promoted syncretism. Since late 1994, Lei has been teaching psychology at the City University of New York, where he also conducts scientific research and chairs the Institutional Review Board. Lei’s diverse research works are reflected in his 80+ publications/presentations, and some documentaries.

Lois Ann Lorentzen

Dr. Lorentzen is Professor of Social Ethics, Principal Investigator of the Religion and Immigration Project, and Associate Director of the Center for the Studies of Latinos in the Americas at the University of San Francisco. Books she has authored and edited include Religions and Globalization: Theories and Cases; The Women and War Reader: Ecofeminism and Globalization: Culture, Context and Religion; La Etica Ambiental (Environmental Ethics); Liberation Theologies, Postmodernity and the Americas: The Gendered New World Order: Environment, Militarism, Development.

Michael E. McCullough

Dr. McCullough is associate professor of Psychology at the University of Miami in Coral Gables, Florida. In 1995 he was awarded the Ph.D. in Psychology from Virginia Commonwealth University and the Bachelor of Science degree from The University of Florida in 1990. His scholarly work focuses on religion, spirituality, and the virtues, how these aspects of people’s lives unfold, and how they are linked to health and well-being. In 2000 he was awarded the Margaret Gorman Early Career Award from Division 36 (Psychology of Religion) of the American Psychological Association, and in 2001 received third prize in the American Psychological Association/John Templeton Foundation award program for research in Positive Psychology. Dr. McCullough has written over 70 peer-reviewed journal articles and book chapters. He has also authored or edited four books, including Forgiveness: Theory Research and Practice (Guilford Press, 2000), Handbook of Religion and Health (Oxford Press, 2001) and an upcoming volume on the psychology of gratitude (Oxford Press). His work has been funded by a variety of private foundations.

Lewis Mehl-Madrona

Dr. Mehl-Madrona is currently the Coordinator for Integrative Psychiatry and Systems Medicine for the University of Arizona's Program in Integrative Medicine. He is a faculty member in the Department of Medicine of the College of Medicine. Dr. Mehl-Madrona is a graduate of Stanford University School of Medicine and completed residencies in family practice and in psychiatry at the University of Vermont. He is board-certified in those specialties and in geriatrics. His interest in spiritual transformation and the role of spirituality in health care arises from his Native American upbringing and his interest in providing scientific validation and understanding to the insights of the traditional healing elders of his tribe. He has been affiliated with the Native American Research and Training Center of the University of Arizona, and lectures for Native American groups and the Indian Health Service on integration of traditional healers into modern medical practice. Dr. Mehl-Madrona is currently the principle investigator for a project studying synergy in the treatment of asthma between craniosacral therapy and acupuncture. He is the author of Coyote Medicine: Lessons for Healing from Native America. He is also contributing a chapter on Integrative Psychiatry to Sadock and Sadock's Comprehensive Textbook of Psychiatry.

S. Krishna Menon

Dr. Menon is research fellow at the Solomon Asch Center for the Study of Ethnopolitical Conflict, University of Pennsylvania. A civil servant by profession, he has had wide experience of handling situations of ethnopolitical conflict as a magistrate and regional administrator in India. He received a Master’s degree in Economics from Patna University in India in 1968. Later in 1983 he was at the Birmingham University in UK and received a diploma in development finance. As a fellow at the Asch Center, his research work examines the differences in cross-cultural understandings of forgiveness and how they factor into the process of reconciliation and resolution of communal conflicts. His research sites are Meerut in India and Grays Ferry in Philadelphia, both riven by endemic ethnopolitical violence for decades. Besides studying the differences in the cross-cultural understandings of forgiveness, he is also interested in the way religions influence these notions, the spiritual experience of forgiving and the intra- psychic process that leads to forgiveness. His research interests include religious conflicts in India, the institutional framework for conflict resolution and the development of civic society to prevent ethnopolitical violence.

Usha Menon

Dr. Menon is assistant professor of anthropology in the Department of Culture and Communication at Drexel University. She received her Ph.D in human development from the University of Chicago in 1995. Her research sites have been the temple town of Bhubaneswar in Orissa, eastern India, the north Indian city of Meerut, and Bombay. She writes on Hindu morality, on popular understandings of the goddess Kali, on family dynamics and gender relations in Oriya Hindu society, on Hindu-Muslim relations in contemporary India and on Hindu-Muslim riots in places like Meerut. She has written extensively on these subjects. Her publications include “ Kali's Tongue: Cultural Psychology and the Power of ‘Shame’ in Orissa, India” (with Richard A. Shweder) and “Mahadevi as Mother: The Oriya Hindu Vision of Reality”. One of her more recent essays, entitled “Does Feminism have Universal Meanings? The Challenges Posed by Oriya Hindu Family Practices” was published in the October 2000 issue of Daedalus. She is currently working on a book that examines the rise to national prominence enjoyed by nationalist political parties like the Bharatiya Janata Party and its allies, the state of Hindu-Muslim relations in India today, as well as India’s future as a secular nation state.

Donald E. Miller

Dr. Miller, Firestone Professor of Religion at the University of Southern California, is the Executive Director of the Center for Religion and Civic Culture at USC as well as a professor of religion and sociology. He is a third generation native of Southern California and has been teaching courses in the sociology of religion at USC since 1975. He is the author/editor of seven books, including Portraits of Survival and Hope (University of California Press, forthcoming in 2003), GenX Religion (Routledge, 2000), Reinventing American Protestantism (University of California Press, 1997), Survivors: An Oral History of the Armenian Genocide (University of California Press, 1993), Homeless Families: The Struggle for Dignity (University of Illinois Press, 1993), Writing and Research in Religious Studies (Prentice Hall, 1992), and The Case for Liberal Christianity (Harper & Row, 1981). He has had major grants from the Lilly Endowment, The Pew Charitable Trusts, the Ford Foundation, The James Irvine Foundation, Haynes Foundation, California Council for the Humanities, and Fieldstead Company. He is currently writing a book on global Pentecostalism, based on interviews and observations in twenty developing countries (to be published by the University of California Press). Donald Miller is married to Lorna Miller, Director of the Office for Creative Connections at All Saints Episcopal Church in Pasadena. They have two children, Arpi who is a graduate student in sociology at UCLA and Shont who is an attorney practicing in Los Angeles.

Kristen Renwick Monroe

Dr. Monroe is Professor of Political Science and Philosophy at the University of California at Irvine, where she serves as Associate Director of the Program in Political Psychology and as head of the Informal Center for the Study of Morality. She is perhaps best known for The Heart of Altruism (Princeton 1996), nominated for the Pulitzer Prize and winner of the American Political Science Association's 1997 Best Book Award in Political Psychology. Monroe's work on altruism has been the subject of a special APSA panel in 1998, and featured in a BBC documentary. Monroe is currently Vice President of the American Political Science Association (APSA) and the President of its Organized Section on Political Psychology. She has served as Vice-President of the Midwest Political Science Association and on the Council of APSA, the Midwest and the International Society of Political Psychology. A leading political psychologist, Monroe has lectured widely in North America and Europe and serves on the Board of the European Summer Institute Program in Political Psychology and on the editorial boards of several journals. Her most recent work is a forthcoming book on moral choice during the Holocaust.

James Alan Neff

Dr. Neff is currently a Professor and Director of a National Institute of Drug Abuse funded Substance Abuse Research Development Program (R24-DA 13579) at the University of Texas at Austin School of Social Work. He has most recently held academic appointments as Professor of Psychiatry at Meharry Medical College in Nashville and Associate Professor and Research Coordinator at the University of Tennessee College of Social Work. Dr. Neff has long standing interests in socioeconomic factors, minority status, and substance abuse and mental health outcomes. Dr. Neff was previously on faculty of the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio where he was Principal Investigator on an NIAAA-funded prospective study (AA-06723) of racial/ethnic differences in drinking patterns and alcohol-related problems among adult male and female Anglo, Black, and Mexican American regular drinkers. A subsequent study examined AIDS knowledge, drinking patterns, and AIDS risk behaviors in this study group. Dr. Neff has published over 50 articles in professional journals and has served as a history of federal funding experience with research grants from NIDA, NIMH, NIAAA, SAMHSA/CSAT, and SAMHSA/CMHS Most recently, Dr. Neff has been developing a research agenda to explore spiritual change in faith-based substance abuse treatment programs.

Carol Nemeroff

Dr. Nemeroff was raised in French Catholic Quebec, completed her first two years of college at secular and religious universities in Israel, then returned to earn her B.A. from McGill University in 1980. Completing M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in Clinical Psychology at the University of Pennsylvania, she began researching the nature and impact of magical thinking about contagion in everyday life, comparing lay models of contagion with expert models such as biomedical germ theory. This work led into the domain of morality, inasmuch as magical contagion thinking involves conflation of physical and moral realms, and is closely related to the causal notion of immanent justice. Dr. Nemeroff is currently Associate Professor of Psychology at Arizona State University, where her work focuses on both deleterious and enriching aspects of magico-moral thinking. Her publications range from Jewish Folklore and Ethnology Review, and Ethos, Journal of the Society for Psychological Anthropology, to Health Psychology, and The Encyclopedia of the Cognitive Sciences. In keeping with her increasing focus on ethics, she is Chair Elect of ASU’s IRB. Having recently watched her husband transform from a pagan biker anthropologist into a nearly-Jewish lawyer, she has become passionately interested in the process of spiritual transformation and growth.

Doug Oman

Dr. Oman is on the faculty of the School of Public Health of the University of California, Berkeley. His research and professional publications involve theoretical, observational and experimental studies of spirituality, religion and health, including epidemiologic studies of religious involvement and mortality, the application of social cognitive theory to religion and spirituality, and studies of effects on health professionals from receiving training in a comprehensive nonsectarian spiritual toolkit. Dr. Oman obtained his doctorate in Biostatistics from U.C. Berkeley, where he subsequently undertook postdoctoral work studying relationships between spirituality, religion and health. He was principal investigator on a grant from the National Institute of Aging to examine the positive effects of volunteer work on physical health, and is currently principal investigator on a grant from Fetzer Institute to conduct a randomized wait-list controlled study of a nonsectarian spiritual toolkit usable for integrating spirituality into patient care and the training of health professionals. He has advised faith-based healthcare organizations and made presentations at medical education conferences regarding how to integrate spirituality into health promotion and healthcare. Dr. Oman also serves as lecturer and research advisor in the Division of Maternal and Child Health, School of Public Health, University of California, Berkeley.

Fritz K. Oser

I was born in Switzerland, on July 15, 1937. After receiving a diploma as a teacher and in Music performance, I started studying philosophy, pedagogy and linguistics at the University of Basel, and then philosophy, French literature and musical science at the Sorbonne (University of Paris). After receiving a diploma as a High School teacher, I studied Educational Psychology and Developmental Psychology at the University of Zurich, which I completed 1973 with the Lizentiat (M.A.). In 1975 I completed my doctoral thesis ("Developing moral consciousness; problems of intentional concepts of moral education"), served as a research associate at the pedagogical institute of the University of Zurich, worked on a research project with international scholars, and then began an academic position at the University of Fribourg (Switzerland). After my habilitation in 1979, I became a full professor of education at the University of Fribourg, and have held the chair for Pedagogy and Educational Psychology since 1989. Since then, I have followed several major research interests in the field of the psychology of religion, general pedagogy, educational psychology and political education and published widely on these issues.

Stephen W. Porges

Dr. Porges is Professor, Department of Psychiatry and Director of the Brain-Body Center, in the College of Medicine at the University of Illinois at Chicago. He served as Chair of the Department of Human Development and Director of the Institute for Child Study at the University of Maryland from 1998-2001. He is the current President of the Federation of Behavioral, Psychological and Social Sciences and a former President of the Society for Psychophysiological Research. From 1975-1985 he was a recipient of a NIMH Research Scientist Development Award. At the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (1972-1985) he held appointments in the Department of Psychology, Institute of Aviation, Children's Research Center,and the School of Medicine. His research has been continuously funded since 1970. He is a developmental psychophysiologist, with particular expertise in understanding the autonomic nervous system and the evolution of emotion. He has extensive research experience in human development, but, as illustrated in his list of more than 150 peer-reviewed publications, he also collaborates with scientists in such diverse disciplines as anesthesiology, critical care medicine, gerontology, neurology, obstetrics, pediatrics, psychiatry, neurology, and drug abuse. He is especially knowledgeable about methodologies for measuring human physiology, which can be applied to understanding social behavior.

Lobsang Rapgay

Dr. Rapgay is the Director of the UCLA Behavioral Medicine Clinic and Program as well as Coordinator of the Harvard's Research Progam in Advanced Meditation. He was born in Tibet, and as a monk studied Buddhist dialectics and philosophy in Tibetan monastic institutions for many years and later served as the Translator and Deputy Secretary in the Office of His Holiness the Dalai Lama. As a clinical and health psychologist he specializes in the application of psychoanalytical , cognitive behavioral, EMG and EEG Biofeedback, clinical hypnosis, EMDR and positive psychology for a wide range of psychiatric and psychophysiological disorders. He has written articles in major journals on mind body medicine, and meditation and its clinical application. He is currently conducting research in the use of EEG biofeedback for fibromyalgia and chronic pain as well as exploring ways to incorporate the application of positive emotions with conventional psychotherapy. He is currently involved in starting a school for underprivileged Tibetan children in one of the poorest areas of central Tibet.

Mark Regnerus

Dr. Regnerus is Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of Texas. He received his Ph.D. from the University of North Carolina in 2000. Prior to joining the faculty at UT, he was director of the Center for Social Research at Calvin College (2001-02). Regnerus’ current research interest concerns the influence of religion on adolescent behavior. His work offers a developmental, intergenerational way of looking at how religion plays a significant role in the socialization of youth. His research on religious influences on youth behavior has been featured recently in the USA Today, Washington Post, and Time Magazine. Additionally, Professor Regnerus has also conducted research on peer effects on adolescent delinquency, religious influences on parent/child communication about sex, and the role of adolescents’ social context in the development of religious behavior. His recent work has been published in such journals as Social Forces, Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, and Social Psychology Quarterly. He is also a collaborator on a Lilly Endowment funded study of the religious practices of American adolescents. His published work has garnered both the 1999 and the 2001 Best Article Award from the American Sociological Association Section on the Sociology of Religion.

Elizabeth A. R. Robinson

Dr. Robinsonis an Assistant Research Scientist at the Addiction Research Center in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Michigan. She is currently investigating spiritual and religious changes in early recovery from alcohol problems, through funding from the Fetzer Institute and the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA). During an NIAAA fellowship at the Addiction Research Center, she initiated a research program on spirituality’s role in recovery, carrying out surveys of treatment center staff, clients, and alumni, and obtaining the Fetzer-NIAAA grant. Dr. Robinson received her Ph.D. in 1990 in Psychology and Social Work from the University of Michigan, then took faculty positions in schools of social work at Case Western Reserve University and SUNY-Buffalo. Her research converges on how interactions between mind, body and spirit support healthy functioning. Prior publications include gender differences and sleep problems among substance abuse treatment seekers, family stress and coping with severe mental illness, particularly the impact of causal attributions and gendered family roles on family functioning, and the effect of supportive health education. Personal influences include growing up in the Congo with parents who were educational missionaries, and practicing yoga and Buddhist meditation.

Jeffrey Samuels

Dr. Samuels received M.A. degrees from the University of Colorado (1995) and the University of Virginia (1999) in comparative religion and history of religions respectively. More recently, Jeffrey received a doctoral degree from the University of Virginia and has since been teaching Asian religions as an Assistant Professor at Western Kentucky University. Jeffrey's primary area of focus is Buddhism, particularly the Theravada traditions of Sri Lanka and Thailand. His doctoral research, conducted under the auspices of a Fulbright Fellowship, focused on Buddhist education, the processes by which monastic identity is formed, and understandings of monastic roles and service amongst novice monks associated with a new monastic training institution established in Sri Lanka during the mid-1990s. Beyond his dissertation, Jeffrey has published articles on contemporary conceptions of social service in Sri Lankan Buddhism, the monastic/laity opposition in Theravada Buddhism, the bodhisattva concept as depicted in the Theravada Buddhist canon, and a general article on Buddhist monasticism.

Steven J. Sandage

Dr. Sandage is currently Associate Professor of Marriage and Family Studies at Bethel Seminary in St. Paul, MN. He is also a Licensed Psychologist in outpatient clinical practice with Arden Woods Psychological Associates.

Sandage received his Ph.D. in Counseling Psychology in 1998 from Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, VA. His primary area of psychological research has been interpersonal forgiveness with a focus on seeking forgiveness from others and group interventions to facilitate forgiving others. He co-authored the book To Forgive is Human (InterVarsity Press) with Michael McCullough and Everett Worthington, Jr. Presently, he is investigating empirical connections between forgiveness and other psychological virtues, and working toward understanding the cultural psychology of forgiveness. This latter effort involves a grant to study forgiveness in the Hmong community in the Twin Cities area. His forthcoming interdisciplinary book, The Faces of Forgiveness (Baker Academic), is co-authored with theologian F. LeRon Shults.

Dr. Sandage's second main area of research involves religious and spiritual change. He is Principal Investigator of a longitudinal study of psychological health and spiritual formation among seminary students funded by the Lilly Endowment. He has also published on spirituality and religiosity in the psychotherapy process.

Roberta G. Sands

Dr. Sands is an associate professor at the University of Pennsylvania School of Social Work, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, where she teaches courses in advanced social work practice, mental health, human behavior theory, and qualitative research. She began her career as a clinical social worker and practiced primarily in mental health settings. Her research has focused on interprofessional communication, mental health, and intergenerational family relations. Recent and ongoing research is on grandparents who are raising their grandchildren and the impact of religious intensification on mother-daughter relationships. She has been studying the impact of the return to Orthodox Judaism on the part of adult daughters on family relations in South Africa, Israel, and the United States. Roberta Sands is the author of Clinical Social Work Practice in Community Mental Health (Merrill/Macmillan/Allyn and Bacon, 1991) and Clinical Social Work Practice in Behavioral Mental Health: A Postmodern Approach to Practice (2nd edition, Allyn and Bacon, 2001) and co-author of Interprofessional and Family Discourses: Voices, Knowledge, and Practice (with M. McClelland, Hampton Press, 2002). In addition to these books, she has written over 50 articles and book reviews that have been published in social work and other social science journals, and several book chapters.

Benny Shanon

Born 1948 in Tel Aviv (Israel). Dr. Shannon serves as Professor of psychology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He earned a B.A. in philosophy and linguistics (Tel Aviv University, 1971), M.A. in linguistics (Stanford University, 1974), and a Ph.D. in experimental cognitive psychology (Stanford University, 1974). Has also taught at MIT, Cornell University and Swarthmore College and held visitor positions at Princeton University, Harvard and the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro. In addition, he has been a fellow at the Center for Interdisciplinary Research (ZiF) at the University of Bielefeld (Germany), the Rockefeller Study and Research Center in Bellagio (Italy) and the Netherlands Institute of Advanced Study, as well as in the National Institute for Medical Reseach (INSERM) and the Center for Research on Autonomy and Epistemology (CREA) in Paris. Over the years conducted research in psycho- and neuro-linguistics, the semantics and pragmatics of natural language, thought processes and creativity, the philosophy of psychology, and the phenomenology of human consciousness, both ordinary and non-ordinary. Currently, his work is primarily concerned with the psychological investigation of the special state of mine induced by the amazonian brew Ayahuasca, with the development of a general theory of human consciousness, and with the theoretical foundations of cognitive science. In addition to numerous papers published in scientific journals in cognitive psychology, philosophy, linguistics and neuropsychology he has written two books. The Representational and the Presentational (Harvester and Wheatsheaf/Prentice Hall, 1973) presents a comprehensive critique of the representational-computational paradigm in cognitive science and proposes an alternative framework for the study of mind; The Antipodes of the Mind (Oxford University Press, 2002) is the first systematic psychological study of the Ayahuasca experience.

Phillip Shaver

Dr. Shaver, a social/personality psychologist, received his PhD from the University of Michigan in 1970 and is Professor and Chair in the Psychology Department at the University of California, Davis. Between 1970 and his move to UC Davis in 1992, he served on the faculties of Columbia University, New York University, University of Denver, and SUNY/Buffalo. He is associate editor of Attachment & Human Development, a member of the editorial boards of Personal Relationships and Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, and a veteran study section member for NIH and NSF. He has published several books, including Measures of Personality and Social Psychological Attitudes and Handbook of Attachment: Theory, Research, and Clinical Applications, and more than 150 scholarly articles and chapters. His current research focuses on emotions and close relationships, especially as viewed through the lens of attachment theory, and he is collaborating with Mario Mikulincer, of Bar-Ilan University (Israel), on survey and experimental studies of attachment security, compassion, and altruism. He has made influential contributions to the psychology of religion (two of his articles are reprinted in Spilka & McIntosh’s, 1997, Psychology of Religion: Theoretical Approaches). In 2002, Shaver received the Distinguished Career Award from the International Association for Relationship Research.

Thomas W. Smith

Dr. Smith is a nationally recognized expert in survey research specializing in the study of social change and survey methodology. Since 1980 he has been co-principal investigator of the National Data Program for the Social Sciences and director of its General Social Survey (GSS). He is also co-founder and Secretary General (1997-2003) of the International Social Survey Program (ISSP). The ISSP is the largest cross-national collaboration in the social sciences. Smith has authored over 400 scholarly papers. His work in the social change area includes both wide ranging studies that integrate trends across many different topics and specialized studies on such matters as public attitudes towards the most important national problem, family structure and family values, inter-group relations, religious change, and sexual behavior. He has also written on virtually every aspect of survey methods including non-response, question wording, nonattitudes, order and context, respondent understanding, and test/retest reliability. Smith has taught at Purdue University, Northwestern University, the University of Chicago, and Tel Aviv University. Smith has served on the National Academy of Sciences' Panel on Survey Measurement of Subjective Phenomena, the Board of Directors of the Roper Center for Public Opinion Research, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Subcommittee on Monitoring the AIDS Epidemic. He was awarded the 1994 Worcester Prize by the World Association for Public Opinion Research (WAPOR) for the best article on public opinion, the 2000 Innovators Award of the American Association for Public Opinion Research (AAPOR), and the 2002 AAPOR Award for Exceptionally Distinguished Achievement.

Jane M. Thibault

Dr. Thibault is a clinical gerontologist and associate professor of Family and Community Medicine, Division of Geriatrics, at the University of Louisville School of Medicine. She also serves as an adjunct assistant professor in the School of Social Work. She received her Ph.D. from the University of Chicago and also holds both an MA in counseling psychology and an MSSW in social work.

At U of L, Dr. Thibault is involved in teaching geriatrics and gerontology to medical students, residents, geriatrics fellows and social work students. Her clinical work includes coordination of a Geriatric Evaluation and Treatment Unit and counseling of elders and their families.

Dr. Thibault spends much of her research and community service time in the promotion of spiritual development among older adults. She serves on the board and of the Center for Aging, Religion, and Spirituality (CARS) located at Luther Seminary in St. Paul, Minnesota and serves as faculty for CARS’ summer program in geriatric pastoral care.

Her first book, now in its fourth printing, is entitled A Deepening Love Affair, The Gift of God in Later Life and deals with the inner work which she believes is the spiritual life task of older adults. With Ellor and Netting she has written a text entitled Understanding Religious and Spiritual Aspects of Human Service Practice.

She consults with a number of religious orders regarding issues related to aging and spirituality and has been a counselor at the Abbey of Gethsemani since 1995. She has designed a restraint-free chair for the elderly and is president of the company that manufactures them, Eld-Arondak, Inc.

Douglas S. Wakefield

Dr. Wakefield is professor and Head of the Department of Health Management and Policy at the University of Iowa. Dr. Wakefield currently also serves as the Director of the University of Iowa Center for Health Policy and Research---an interdisciplinary resource designed to serve health services across the campus. His research interests are in quality assessment and enhancement in healthcare organizations and in end-of-life care services, patient safety, and health workforce issues. Dr. Wakefield’s research has been funded from a variety of sources including, AHCPR, HRSA, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, Northwest Area Foundation, John Deere Health Foundation, and the Veterans Administration. His current funding includes serving as PI on a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation grant to improve end-of-life care in Iowa, PI on a CDC funded grant to evaluate the effect of implementing the Leapfrog Group patient safety standards on a state-wide basis, and as a co-investigator on a VA HSR&D funded study to assess the potential for outsourcing services.

James K. Wellman

Dr. Wellman is an assistant professor in Western Christian Traditions for the Comparative Religion Program in the Jackson School of International Studies at the University of Washington. He has published two books, The Gold Coast Church and the Ghetto: Christ and Culture in Mainline Protestantism (Illinois 1999). It won the Francis Makemie Award for 2001 for best book in Reformed history from the Presbyterian Historical Society. He also co-edited a volume The Power of Religious Publics: Staking Claims in American Religion (Praeger 1999). Recent research has focused on liberal urban congregations on the West Coast. An article, entitled Religion without a Net: Strictness in the Religious Practices of West Coast Urban Liberal Christian Congregations, will be published soon. Most recently he is researching evangelical and entrepreneurial religion in the Coastal Northwest and writing a chapter for the Pew book series on Religion by Region. He and his spouse, Annette Moser-Wellman, also head The Legacy Project that works with corporate executives on the integration of their personal and professional lives. Their clients include Red Lobster, Starbucks and Coca-Cola. His present scholarly interests include global evangelicalism and spirituality in corporate settings. He received his Ph.D in Religion and the Social Sciences at the University of Chicago in 1995.

W. Bradford Wilcox

Dr. Wilcox is assistant professor of sociology at the University of Virginia. He earned his Ph.D. at Princeton University under Robert Wuthnow, Sara McLanahan, and Paul DiMaggio. Prior to coming to the University of Virginia, he held research fellowships at Princeton University and Yale University.

Wilcox’s research focuses on the influence of religious belief and practice, as well as spiritual transformation, on marriage, cohabitation, parenting, and fatherhood. He has published articles on religion, fatherhood and parenting in The American Sociological Review, Social Forces and the Journal of Marriage and Family. His first book, Soft Patriarchs and New Men: Religion, Ideology, and Male Familial Involvement, is under contract with the University of Chicago Press. This summer, the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life will issue his report on religion and the marriage movement, entitled Sacred Vows, Public Purposes: Religion, the Marriage Movement, and Public Policy.

Professor Wilcox has received the following two awards from the American Sociological Association Religion Section: the Best Graduate Paper Award and the Best Article Award. His research has also been featured in The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, CBS News, and numerous NPR stations.