Eden Blackwell

Eden Blackwell is a PhD Candidate in biocultural medical anthropology at the University of Alabama. Her research investigates the biocultural impacts of climate change among Indigenous farmers in Northern Thailand, with a focus on how worldview and nature‑relatedness shape wellbeing in shifting environments. Drawing on professional experience in health policy and rural healthcare, she brings an applied, interdisciplinary perspective to questions of human–environment interactions.

Abhishek Khan

Abhishek Khan is a multi-disciplinary designer from Mumbai, India working at the intersection of participatory frameworks, environmental justice and systems thinking. With an MFA in Design for Sustainability from the Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD), his work is grounded in deep time, seven-generation stewardship and pluriversal epistemologies. By embedding community knowledge into decision-making, his paper advocates for a shift from short-term, technocratic policy cycles to long-term approaches that center Indigenous ways of knowing. He is committed to understanding lived experiences and developing policies that are ethical, relational, and create a safe and just future for both–our communities and our planet.

Kaitlyn Glavee

Kaitlyn Glavee is a PhD student studying Anthropology at Wayne State University. She received her M.S. In human biology from the University of Indianapolis. Her research interests include ethical behavior and practice in forensic anthropology and osteology, and humanitarian action in anthropology.

Delaney O’Connell

Delaney O’Connell is a citizen of the Cherokee Nation and a third-year PhD student in the Indigenous Studies Department at the University at Buffalo. Her doctoral research examines cultural property rights and repatriation as sites of Indigenous sovereignty, bringing political philosophy into conversation with critical Indigenous studies, museum studies, and legal studies. She holds a bachelor’s and master’s degree in philosophy which continues to inform her analysis of rights, value, and institutional – especially as these shape the politic of preservation. She has interned at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian in the repatriation department, where she deepened her commitment to pairing hands-on collections work with scholarship grounded in accountability to Indigenous Nations. As a Western New York Prosperity Fellow, she enjoys mentoring undergraduate and early-stage PhD students. Delaney hopes to pursue a career in academia after graduation where she can teach and mentor students while producing community-responsive research that advances Indigenous sovereignty and ethical approaches to cultural property and repatriation.

Ruth Otaigboria

Ruth Otaigboria is a master’s student in Anthropology at Northern Illinois University and a Teaching Assistant. Her research focuses on linguistic, cognitive and cultural anthropology, with a particular interest in health communication and advocacy. She examines how people use language, narratives, and shared cultural knowledge to interpret illness, make health decisions, and navigate care, especially in contexts where migration, identity, and structural inequality shape everyday experience. Her current work explores cultural models of long COVID, centering how Nigerian diaspora communities in the United States describe symptoms, explain causes, and pursue healing and support. She is especially attentive to the meanings embedded in everyday speech, how metaphors and keywords reveal uncertainty and lived realities, and how these communicative practices can affect patient-provider interactions. By highlighting the cultural logics behind illness explanations, her research aims to support more patient-centered, culturally responsive healthcare communication and to reduce barriers that immigrant and minoritized communities may face in clinical settings. Ruth’s broader goal is to build an interdisciplinary career at the intersection of anthropology, public health, and advocacy. She is committed to producing research that is not only theoretically grounded but also practically useful, translating ethnographic insights into tools, messaging strategies, and community-informed approaches that strengthen wellbeing and improve health outcomes for diverse populations.

Nina Wilson

Nina Wilson is a third year PhD Student in anthropology at Ohio State University. Her master’s research critically examines ethnographic methodologies and proposes a more accountable, collaborative research framework. Through an analysis of ethnographies and methodological guides, her work identifies recurring themes and practices in ethnographic writing and reimagines procedural approaches to the method itself. Her dissertation research builds on this foundation by evaluating ethnographic methods within a study focused on the discursive dimensions of LGBTQ+ kinship maintenance. Alongside her research, Wilson has worked as an interdisciplinary activist-scholar within sexual and domestic violence prevention and community engagement. After receiving her PhD, she hopes to apply this work to support marginalized students of color like herself.