Kimberlee Pérez: "Rubbing Up Against Difference: On the Complex Erotics of Audiencing as Queer Worldmaking"

Kimberlee Pérez is a scholar-performer interested in narrative performance that gets at constructions and embodiments of identity and relations. Her performance scholarship can be found in Text and Performance Quarterly, QED: A Journal of Queer Worldmaking, Journal of International and Intercultural Communication, and in several edited volumes. Perez was part of an author team that published Queer Praxis: Questions for LGBT Worldmaking. Her current projects include a performance piece about desire and queer relations and a book monograph on queer intimacy.

Ventura Perez: "The Biocultural Approaches to the Study of Violence"

Ventura Perez studies bio-archaeology with a primary area of interest in interpersonal and institutional forms of violence. His work focuses on cultural representations of violence using an interdisciplinary inquiry that includes social science and behavioral and biological research (specifically skeletal trauma), along with the analysis of artifacts and ethnohistoric research. Perez views the use of violence as a cultural performance and argues that in order to understand its use we must strive to recognize the culturally specific circumstances under which it is produced and maintained. Other areas of interest include skeletal biology, taphonomy, forensic anthropology, paleopathology, and the etiology of diseases affecting the human skeleton. Perez’ research is currently based in Zacatecas, Mexico at the site of La Quemada (AD 900) and in the greater Southwest.

Jamie Rowen: "Using Law for Political Ends: Veterans and War Criminals"

Jamie Rowen's research focuses on transitional justice, international criminal law, social movements, and international and comparative methods. Dr. Rowen's current projects examine the confluence of domestic immigration and international criminal law within the Department of Homeland Security, as well as the experience of U.S. veterans in the criminal justice system.

Mwangi wa Gĩthĩnji: "Land Grabs, Smallholders and Regional Food Security: An exploration"

Mwangi wa Gĩthĩnji's work is primarily focused on the areas of Development, Environment and Political Economy with particular attention to Africa. He is most interested in issues of class, gender and income distribution in relation to agrarian transition. He is the author of Ten Millionaires and Ten Million Beggars (Ashgate Press) which examines issues of income distribution, class and gender in Kenya; in addition he has published journal articles and book chapters on economic development in Africa. Mwangi has consulted widely for UN agencies on economic issues in African countries and the region as a whole.