Nancy Gerber, Ph.D, ATR-BC  currently is Teaching Faculty at Florida State University in the Art Therapy Program. She is also  Associate Clinical Professor Emerita at Drexel University where she was the  founding and former director of the Ph.D Program in Creative Arts Therapies and the former Director of the Graduate Program in Art Therapy. Dr. Gerber has presented and published on doctoral education for art therapists, mixed methods research, aesthetic intersubjective worldview in research and practice, arts-based research, and the mechanisms of change in the creative arts therapies.   In the American Art Therapy Association, Dr. Gerber  currently chairs the Doctoral Education Subcommittee and was the first recipient of the Distinguished Educator’s Award from the association. Her interests include advocating for paradigmatic shifts to imaginative and arts-based worldviews and pluralistic methodologies to reflect the holistic inclusive  human experience. To that end Dr. Gerber, co-facilitates  the Arts-Based Research SIG at the International Congress of Qualitative Research and  co-created the Arts-Based Research Global Consortium to advance socially responsible arts-based research.

Richard Siegesmund is a Professor of Art+Design Education retired from Northern Illinois University. His scholarship deals with arts-based research methodology, aesthetics as a philosophy of care and sustainable political community. He co-edited Arts-Based Research in Education: Foundations for Practice published by Routledge. A second edition of this book was released

in 2018.

He holds a Ph.D. in Art Education from Stanford University, where he studied under Elliot Eisner. An elected Distinguished Fellow of the National Art Education Association (NAEA), he is also is a recipient of the organization's Manuel Barkan Memorial Award 

for significant published research.  He has received Fulbright awards to Ireland and Belgium, as well as fellowships from the Getty Education Institute for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Arts. He has led public school elementary art education instruction in both Italy and Costa Rica.

Karin Hannes is professor at the Faculty of Social Sciences, KU Leuven and coordinator of the research group Social, Methodological and Theoretical Innovation. The group pushes towards the development of methods for positive change. Prof. Hannes evaluates and improves existing methods and techniques generated in fields such as urban development, public art, design and technology, community-based research practice and sustainable development. Where necessary, she develops her own innovative approach to respond to emerging societal challenges. Her perspective is multimodal combining numerical, textual and sensory data. She specializes in arts-based, place-based and multisensory designs as well as qualitative evidence synthesis as a meta-review technique. Her group works from an inclusive, academic activism perspective and contributes to theoretical discussions on quality assessment of research, the role of qualitative research in an evidence-based discourse and the potential of creative research dissemination in a citizen science context.

​

​

Jacelyn Biondo, Ph.D., BC-DMT, LPC loves exploring the psyche/soma connection, the relationship between dance/movement therapy and schizophrenia, the concept of seeing and being seen, and the role of community within each of these areas. Her research, clinical work, and life experiences have piqued her interest in the concepts of community, intimacy, and belonging particularly as they relate to communities which are often underrepresented and dehumanized.  Dr. Biondo currently works as a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at Drexel University.  She sits on the National Board of Directors of the American Dance Therapy Association and the Pennsylvania Chapter of the American Dance Therapy Association. Dr. Biondo is an adjunct faculty member at Drexel University and has guest lectured nationally and internationally. Her future will most certainly include dancing with people with schizophrenia, conducting research, traveling, learning, eating delicious food, and advocating for art, arts therapies, equality, and a kinder humanity.  

Marco Gemignani is associate professor of psychology at the Universidad Loyola Andalucía, Seville, Spain. From 2005 to 2016, he was a professor at Duquesne University (Pittsburgh, PA), where he founded the Psychological Services for Spanish-Speakers. He served as President of APA Div. 5’s Society Qualitative for Qualitative Inquiry in Psychology, in 2014. He was among the founders of the Association for European Qualitative Researchers in Psychology and the Qualitative Inquiry in Psychology Group at the International Congress of Qualitative Inquiry. He specializes in qualitative research performed through critical, constructionist, discursive, neo-material, and relational epistemologies and ontologies. His inquiry concerns the intersection of discourses, narratives, and experiences related to the acculturation and integration of migrants. Working mostly with participatory and community-based methodologies in the fields of cultural studies, psychosocial studies, and critical psychology, Dr. Gemignani analyzes psychosocial processes and practices that create specific possibilities, subjectivities, and ontologies for migrants and minorities.

Elisabetta Biffi,Ph.D  is an Associate Professor at the “Riccardo Massa” Department of Human Sciences and Education - University of Milano-Bicocca, Italy. She teaches “Narrative Theory and Practice” as part of the Master’s Degree Course in Education. She  has participated in Italian and European research projects in childhood protection and children’s rights; educator and teacher professional development; pedagogical documentation; narrative methods and arts-based methods for educational research. She is on the editorial boards  and scientific networks including: EERA, Representative of SIPED; EECERA and  co-convenor

for the SIG Transforming Assessment, Evaluation and Documentation in Early Childhood Pedagogy; AERA; ESREA, EAPRI. Currently, she is responsible for the project “Education for Social Justice” funded by University of Milano-Bicocca  She is the scientific coordinator of  the Italian network “VIOLE-LAB. Laboratorio Pedagogico sulla Violenza ai minori” in collaboration with the  University of Firenze, University of Bologna, Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, University of Roma-Tre, University of Sassari, University of Bari, University of Salerno.