Jack Traphagan is an anthropologist in the Interplanetary Initiative at ASU, Professor Emeritus in the Program in Human Dimensions of Organizations at the University of Texas at Austin, and adjunct professor of political science at the University of Massachusetts Lowell. His research focuses on the relationship between science and culture and falls into two streams: medical anthropology focused on rural Japan and the culture and ethics of space exploration. He has published numerous scientific papers and several books, including Science, Culture, and the Search for Life on Other Worlds (Springer, 2016) and Cosmopolitan Rurality, Depopulation, and Entrepreneurial Ecosystems in 21st Century Japan (Cambria Press, 2020). His work has also appeared in journals such as Space Policy, Acta Astronautica, Journal of the British Interplanetary Society, and The International Journal of Astrobiology.

Dr. Traphagan holds a Ph.D. in cultural anthropology from the University of Pittsburgh, an M.A.R in ethics from Yale, and a B.A. in political science from the University of Massachusetts Lowell.

Ken Wisian, Ph.D., Major General USAF (retired), is Associate Director, Environmental Division, of the Bureau of Economic Geology, Jackson School of Geoscience, The University of Texas at Austin. He also holds appointments in the Center for Space Research and in the Aerospace and Engineering Mechanics Department, Cockrell School of Engineering, is a charter member of the Center for Planetary Systems Habitability at UT Austin and is a Fellow of the British Interplanetary Society.

Dr. Wisian is a geophysicist whose main research is geothermal systems for electricity generation. Other research interests include; infrastructure resiliency, disasters, autonomy/drones, applied gravity, planetary geology/space exploration and international relations. Dr. Wisian has published/presented work in subjects as diverse as geophysics, defense, artificial intelligence, crisis leadership and deep space exploration. Dr. Wisian holds a Ph.D. in Geophysics from Southern Methodist University, an M.S. in Strategic Studies from the US Army War College, an M.S. in Geology from Centenary College, and a B.A. in Physics from the University of Texas at Austin. He teaches or has taught; environmental geology, military history, leadership and currently teaches “Life in the Universe”.

Militarily, General Wisian, a navigator/bombardier, flew bombers, transports and fighters, is a graduate of the USAF Test Pilot School and commanded the 147th Reconnaissance Wing flying the MQ-1 Predator. General Wisian participated or lead military disaster response efforts for the Shuttle Columbia crash and multiple hurricanes. Ken is a graduate of the US Air Force Test Pilot School and has more than 70 hours of medium and high-risk test flights. General Wisian has combat time in Iraq, Afghanistan and the Balkans, and his medals include the Bronze Star and Air Medal.

Linda Billings is a research professor at the George Washington University School of Media and Public Affairs in Washington, D.C. She does communication research for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s (NASA’s) astrobiology program in the Science Mission Directorate. She also advises NASA’s Senior Scientist for Mars Exploration and Planetary Protection Officer on communications.

Dr. Billings earned her Ph.D. in mass communication from the Indiana University School of Journalism, M.A. in international transactions from George Mason University, and B.A. in social sciences from the State University of New York at Binghamton (now Binghamton University).

Her research interests and expertise include mass communication, science communication, risk communication, rhetorical analysis, journalism studies, and social studies of science. Her research has focused on the role that journalists play in constructing the cultural authority of scientists, the rhetorical strategies that scientists and journalists employ in communicating about science, and the rhetoric of space exploration.

Lance Gharavi is an experimental artist and scholar, professor in the School of Music, Dance and Theatre, and Associate Director of ASU's Interplanetary Initiative.

An early pioneer in the field of digital performance, his work focuses on points of intersection between performance, technology, science, and religion. He specializes in leading transdisciplinary teams of artists, scientists, designers, and engineers to create compelling experiences and advance research.

Gharavi's scholarship on religion, technology, and performance has been published around the world and in several languages. His work appears in journals including Theatre Topics, Modern Drama, Text and Performance Quarterly, Ecumenica, The Journal of Dramatic Theory and Criticism, PAJ, Esoterica, and Performance Matters. He is the author of "Western Esotericism in Russian Silver Age Drama" (New Grail 2008), editor of the anthology "Religion, Theatre, and Performance: Acts of Faith (Routledge 2012), and the translator for the special 100-year anniversary edition of Aleksandr Blok's symbolist masterpiece, "Roza I Krest" (Tsentr Knigi Rudomino 2013), published in Moscow.

Current projects include Port of Mars, an NSF-funded game-based platform for social science experiments to help future human space communities thrive; Mission: Interplanetary, a podcast about space exploration; and GHOST Lab, a DoD-funded laboratory/art installation for research into robotics and AI. He is the director of St. Bird, an art/science collective, the director of Ars Robotica, an initiative to advance research in robotics and AI through the arts, and the Executive Director of the Centre for Applied Eschatology, a conceptual art project about endings and our relations to them.

Jenia Gorbanenko is a PhD candidate (ABD) in anthropology at University College London, specializing in the study of religion and outer space. She is a researcher on the ETHNO-ISS team - a project funded by the European Research Council to undertake a multi-sited ethnography of the terrestrial communities that shape the life of the International Space Station.

Her ongoing doctoral research interrogates the Russian Orthodox Christian perspective on space exploration. Prior to joining the ETHNO-ISS team, Jenia‘s academic research focused on the post-Soviet religious revival in Russia. She is also an ethnographic consultant and researcher with more than five years of experience in applied commercial contexts beyond academia.

James Miller is the inaugural Professor of Humanities at Duke Kunshan University, Chair of the Faculty Assembly, and co-director of the DKU Humanities Research Center. Prior to his appointment at Duke Kunshan, Dr. Miller served as the director of the interdisciplinary graduate program in cultural studies, and as the director of the School of Religion, at Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario, Canada.

Dr. Miller's research is based in the study of Chinese philosophy, theology, and religion, with an emphasis on philosophy of nature, environmental ethics, and the intersection of religion and ecology in China. He is known worldwide as a scholar of Daoism, China's indigenous religion, and especially its relation to ecology. He has published seven books including, most notably, China's Green Religion: Daoism and the Quest for a Sustainable Future (Columbia 2017).

Dr. Miller serves as the editor-in-chief of the peer-reviewed journal Worldviews: Global Cultures, Religion, and Ecology, published by Brill.

Dr. Bekus’ research interests are in the Soviet and Post-Soviet studies of nationalism, memory and identity, the international history of heritage protection, postcolonial history of outer space, history of systemic transformation after the end of communism.

She published a monograph (Struggle Over Identity: The Official and Alternative Belarusianness) (CEU Press) in 2010, co-authored Orthodoxy Versus Post-communism? Belarus, Serbia, Ukraine and the Russkiy Mir. Cambridge: Cambridge Scholar Publishing, (2016), and co-edited a special issue of International Journal of Heritage Studies ‘Heritage, Socialism and Internationalism’ (2020). Her works are published in the Theory and Society, Slavic Review, International Journal of Heritage Studies, Nationalities Papers and others.

Asif Siddiqi is a Professor in the History Department at Fordham University in New York City where he teaches and writes on the history of science and technology.

He received his Ph.D. in History from Carnegie Mellon University in 2004, and after a year as a postdoc at Harvard University, joined Fordham’s History Department. Since then, he’s taken up visiting positions at MIT (2008-09), the Smithsonian’s National Air & Space Museum (2013-14), Caltech (2015-16), and Princeton University (2021-22).

Dr. Sidiqqi was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2016 and is series co-editor of the “Studies in the History of Science and Technology” monograph series at the Johns Hopkins University Press.

Deana Weibel, PhD (UC San Diego, 2001) is a cultural anthropologist whose work focuses primarily on religion, especially the topics of pilgrimage, sacred space, the mutual influence of scientific and religious ideas on each other, and religion and space exploration. Her early fieldwork took place in France at pilgrimage sites (sometimes understood by pilgrims as “energy” sites) like Rocamadour and Montségur.

She has also conducted research at the pilgrimage center of Chimayó, New Mexico. More recent work focuses on religion as a motivation for and influence on space travel and outer space-based sciences, with field visits taking place at "space sites" throughout the U.S., including the Johnson and Kennedy Space Centers, the Mojave Air and Spaceport, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, the JHU Applied Physics Lab, and Spaceport America. Weibel spent a month in 2019 at the Vatican Observatory, studying "the Pope's Astronomers." She has also studied the history of anthropology, particularly the overlap of her own family’s role and the role of anthropology in the exhibition of Philippine Igorot people in fairs and expositions during the early 1900s.

She is the co-founder and co-organizer of Roger That! A Celebration of Space Exploration in Honor of Roger B. Chaffee, a two-day conference that has been an annual Grand Rapids, Michigan event since 2017.

Namrata Goswami is an Independent Scholar on Space Policy and Great Power Politics. Recently, she has been invited to teach at the Thunderbird School of Global Management, Arizona State University for its Executive Masters in Global Management, Space course.

Dr. Gaswami is a consultant for Space Fund Intelligence and a guest lecturer at the seminar on India Today: Economics, Politics, Innovation & Sustainability, Emory University. She was subject matter expert in international affairs with Futures Laboratory, Alabama and has worked as Research Fellow at MP-Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses, New Delhi.

She is working on two academic book projects, one on China’s Grand Strategy and Notions of Territoriality and the other on Spacepower Theory and Practice: Case Studies of U.S. China, India, Russia and Japan

R. Lincoln Hines am an Assistant Professor in the Sam Nunn School of International Affairs at the Georgia Institute of Technology. Prior to this, he was an Assistant Professor for the West Space Seminar at the US Air War College. He received my doctorate in Government from Cornell University in 2021.

Dr. Hines’ research focuses on Chinese foreign policy and security, the politics of outer space, and issues of prestige and nationalism in world politics. He is a security fellow with the Truman National Security Project, and was previously a Guggenheim predoctoral fellow at the National Air and Space Museum, a visiting researcher at Peking University’s School of International Studies, and a Nonresident WSD-Handa Fellow at the Pacific Forum.

His research has been published in Research & Politics and Space Policy. I have also written in The Washington Quarterly, the Washington Post’s Monkey Cage blog, World Politics Review, the Conversation, the Modern War Institute, East Asia Forum, the Diplomat, the Carter Center’s US-China Perception Monitor, and the Strategic Studies Institute of the U.S. Army War College. He has been interviewed by MIT Technology Review, BBC Newsnight, Bloomberg, CBC, The World/NPR, The Wire China, Al-Jazeera, Euronews, Wired, Australian Defence Magazine, Financial Times, the South China Morning Post, Nikkei Asia, and The Diplomat Magazine.

Ben Van Overmeire is an Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at Duke Kunshan University. He is working on a book on how modern autobiographical narratives of Zen life incorporate koan, medieval Zen riddles such as “What is the sound of one hand clapping?” or “What was your name before you were born?” His work has appeared in Religions, Contemporary Buddhism, The Journal of the Buddhist-Christian Studies Society, The Journal of Popular Cultureand other publications.

Tony Milligan is a Research Fellow in Philosophy of Ethic at King’s College London. Current research, as part of the KCL (China) team and the University of Manchester (Russia) team within the Cosmological Visionaries project, takes in the ethical aspects of dialogue building between local scientists, indigenous peoples and national minorities in Russia and China in the face of climate change. The key theme uniting my broader areas of research is otherness and our shared future. This works its way into various publications on Space (other places), philosophy of love (other people), and animals (other creatures). Tony is also an Affiliate of the Lau China Institute.