Participants

• Sophie Auger is an artist, designer, and professor at École de Design at the University of Quebec in Montréal. Her practice centers on speculative design, hybrid forms of publishing, creative coding, circuit bending, and video installations. She holds an MFA in Interdisciplinary Design from Mason Gross School of the Arts (2022) and has been an artist-in-residence at VU Photo and La Chambre Blanche (Québec), Can Serrat (Catalonia), and Vermont Studio Center. Her work has been presented at ELEKTRA (Montréal), Index Space (New York), Vox Populi (Philadelphia), Nuisance Gallery (New Jersey), and the MUU Contemporary Art Center (Helsinki). She is the author of Spiral Engineering (Quickbooks, 2024), distributed by Unnameable Books, 192 Books, and Draw Down Books.

  After teaching experimental technology courses at Rutgers University, Parsons School of Design, University of Pennsylvania, School of Visual Arts, and Index Space, and serving as a visiting critic and lecturer at Columbia GSAPP, Bard, Pratt, and Drew University, she is currently a visiting professor at the University of Quebec in Montreal.

• Gitanjaly Chhabra is an Assistant Professor at University Canada West (UCW), Vancouver, Canada. She is a certified Posthuman Educator, an academic, philosopher, and writer. She has published articles in prestigious journals and presented her work at prominent conferences. Her current research work focuses on philosophy of artificial intelligence (AI), posthuman philosophy (consciousness and applied linguistics), technology mediation, decolonization and green education. She believes in the ‘phenomenological immersion in infinite unity’ - exploring the boundaries of self and beyond. She loves coffee and travelling.

• Denise Gawley As an artist and a professor at Hunter College in New York City, I approach my work with recognition of the human limits of knowledge, language, and perception. My teaching frequently engages questions surrounding transcendence, symbolic imagination, mortality, ritual, and the psychological dimensions of encounters with that which resists rational comprehension. Scholars and traditions concerned with absence, negation, death, and unknowability have shaped my understanding of how individuals and traditions respond to the limits of experience. As an artist, rather than illustrating these ideas directly, my work attends to moments where perception and interpretation fail to fully coincide.

• Annie Hogan

• Natalie Koenn is an undergraduate student studying Studio Art and Media & Communications at Drew University and is originally from the Ann Arbor area of Michigan. While at Drew, she has helped co-direct a student-made short documentary called Twenty, was honorably mentioned for Excellence in Art, is a recipient of the Wavefield Experiential Learning Award, and is a member of the National Society of Leadership and Success. Her work primarily centers on her loved ones through digital media such as photos and videos. Working with archival materials from herself and family members, along with new material, she finds that her work allows her to both experience and share her memories with others.

• Julia McMillan is a master’s student, writer, and researcher whose work explores the intersections of chronic illness, ethics, spirituality, and language. She graduated with a BA in English and BS in Public Health from Rutgers University, New Brunswick in 2021 and currently works in healthcare communications. When she is not working or in class, Julia enjoys cycling, learning astrology, reading books that make her head spin, and raging against the limits of her body. Her writing has previously appeared in The Mighty, Body Fluids, and Rutgers Writers House Review.

• Lei-Ann Mosby I am a Licentiate currently pursuing a Master of Divinity (M.Div.) at Drew University Theological School. I have more than 30 years of experience in education and have been nominated twice for Who’s Who Among America’s Teachers. Throughout my career as a middle school educator, I have taught Social Studies, Humanities, Digital Media, Podcasting, Cosmetology, and other creative and interdisciplinary learning experiences. While I do not have a formal background in art, creativity has always been an essential part of my approach to teaching. I believe creative expression provides students and adults with meaningful ways to communicate ideas, tell stories, explore identity, and understand the world from multiple perspectives.

  My ministry and educational experiences have further expanded my understanding of creativity and its role in community. I am a Missionary, and Christian Education director for the NY Conference of the AME church. I am also a professor at Kingdom Life Bible Institute (KAGM), where I teach The Art of Effective Teaching with Kingdom Principles. I also serve as a co-creator of the “Wonderfully Made,” Ministry which is a monthly worship service in Port Washington, New York, designed to welcome families and individuals of differing abilities such as autism or dementia into worship and communion. This ministry is grounded in the belief that everyone has a place at the table, regardless of special need or ability. We are ALL WONDERFULLY MADE.

  I am taking this art course as a learner and beginner, eager to explore how artistic expression can intersect with education, faith, ministry, culture, and human experience. I look forward to expanding my understanding of art and discovering new ways creativity can inform both my academic and ministry journey.

• Diana Rojas is an artist and researcher investigating human attempts to engage with the invisible and immense through the creation of encounters between sensing and knowing. Informed by her interests in philosophy, history, physics, and material science, she approaches the role of technology in art making as the catalyst for larger conversations of existence, consciousness, and metaphysics. Her work has been exhibited, screened, and published nationally and internationally in spaces such as: Czong Institute of Contemporary Art, Fiesp Cultural Center, Dallas Contemporary, Chapel of Santa Maria dei Carcarati, Canyon Flats Video Wall, Rockport Center for the Arts, Texas Theater, the Yale Theater, and more. She is the recipient of several OER Grants from the Oklahoma State Regents for Higher Education, the 2023 Arch and Anne Giles Kimbrough Fund Award, 2022 Judson-Morrisey Excellence in New Media Award and the Arrowmont Windgate University Fellowship. Diana was born in Mexico, received her MFA from the University of North Texas, and is an Assistant Professor of Sound Art at the University of Texas at Dallas.

• Alex Beth Schapiro is a chaplain working at the intersection of spiritual care and population health. They trained in palliative care chaplaincy at Mount Sinai and Columbia, and in relational psychoanalytic theory at the Stephen Mitchell Relational Study Center. Alex directs a digital Spiritual Health program within the Accountable Care Organizations at Atlantic Health in Northern New Jersey—launched in 2022 with support from a John Templeton Foundation initiative and the George Washington Institute of Spirituality and Health, now an ongoing model for ambulatory spiritual care. They co-convene the Population Health & Digital Spiritual Care Network through Transforming Chaplaincy and the Telechaplaincy Community of Practice in partnership with the University of Zurich.

  Their work centers on care for the spiritually unaffiliated, the integration of psychodynamic approaches within long-term relationships of care, peer supervision, and how healthcare workers might attend to their own grief.