Author Biographies

Maha Bali – American University in Cairo

Maha Bali is Professor of Practice at the Center for Learning and Teaching at the American University in Cairo. She has a PhD in Education from the University of Sheffield, UK. She is co-founder of virtuallyconnecting.org (a grassroots movement that challenges academic gatekeeping at conferences) and co-facilitator of Equity Unbound (an equity-focused, open, connected intercultural learning curriculum, which has also branched into academic community activities Continuity with Care and Socially Just Academia, and a collaboration with OneHE: Community-building Resources. Most recently, she co-organized the Mid-Year Festival (MYFest) via Equity Unbound, a way of re-imagining professional learning online as nourishing, equitable, emergent, communal, creative and agentic. She writes and speaks frequently about social justice, critical pedagogy, and open and online education. She blogs regularly at http://blog.mahabali.me and tweets @bali_maha

Kya Bezanson

I have fetal alcohol syndrome disorder. I originally came from a family of 10 kids. I am on the Board of Directors for Inclusion BC, an organization that advocates for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities. I am also a co-chair of Inclusion BC’s Self-Advocate Committee. I graduated from Kwantlen Polytechnic University (KPU) with my Certificate of Arts. I love to draw and hope to be able to come back to KPU and start my degree in visual arts.

Martha Fay Burtis – Plymouth State University

Martha Fay Burtis, is the associate director and learning developer at the Open Learning and Teaching Collaborative at Plymouth State University. In this role, she supports faculty with instructional design and pedagogical innovation. Prior to coming to PSU, she was the founding director of the Digital Knowledge Center at the University of Mary Washington. At UMW, she also administered faculty and student development projects, including the Online Learning Initiative and Domain of One’s Own. She has particular expertise and interest in digital literacy and pedagogy; student-centered teaching and learning; and critical instructional design.

Catherine J. Denial – Knox College

Cate Denial is the Bright Distinguished Professor of American History, Chair of the History department, and Director of the Bright Institute at Knox College in Galesburg, Illinois. A Distinguished Lecturer for the Organization of American Historians, Cate is the winner of the American Historical Association’s 2018 Eugene Asher Distinguished Teaching award, and a former member of the Digital Public Library of America‘s Educational Advisory Board.  Cate currently sits on the boards of the Western Historical Quarterly and Commonplace: A Journal of Early American Life. Cate is at work on a new book, A Pedagogy of Kindness, under contract with West Virginia University Press.  Her historical research has examined the early nineteenth-century experience of pregnancy, childbirth and child-rearing in Upper Midwestern Ojibwe and missionary cultures, research that grew from Cate’s previous book, Making Marriage: Husbands, Wives, and the American State in Dakota and Ojibwe Country(2013). In summer 2018, Cate was an Andrew W. Mellon Fellow at the American Philosophical Society in Philadelphia, PA.

Rossel-Joyce Garcia – University of California, San Diego

Rossel-Joyce Garcia is a class of 2021 graduate from UC San Diego, where she received undergraduate degrees in Ethnic Studies and History.

Logan Gorkov – University of California, San Diego

Logan Gorkov is a recent graduate from UC San Diego with a BA in History & Studio Art. He is particularly interested in indigenous histories, decolonization, and the end of capitalism. He has a love-hate relationship with academia but believes everyone should have access to education. Outside of the formal academic sphere (for now), he is working a corporate 9-5 with Ajna.com writing about bias, hiring practices, and the state of the world at work (and slightly irresponsibly treats their social media like his own).

Jennifer Hardwick

Jen Hardwick is a dyslexic educator, a settler scholar, and a collaborator for both Including All Citizens and Transforming Accessibility Services projects. She is Chair of the Policy Studies program and a faculty member (cross-appointed) in the Department of English at Kwantlen Polytechnic University on unceded Coast Salish Territories. Jen’s interdisciplinary research focuses on settler colonial policy, inclusive education in policy and practice, and Indigenous literary, media, and performance arts. She tweets sporadically at @Jen_Hardwick

Surita Jhangiani – University of British Columbia

Surita Jhangiani is an assistant professor in the Faculty of Education at the University of British Columbia, Point Grey Campus, which is situated on the traditional, ancestral, unceded territory of the Musqueam people. She primarily teaches in the Bachelor of Education program and also teaches upper level graduate courses in the area of Human Development, Learning and Culture. Her research interests include scholarship related to open education, alternative grading, pedagogy of care and mental health. Her work is informed by a post-colonial, diversity and gender lens.

Andrew David King – UC Berkeley

Andrew (andy) David King is a doctoral student in English at UC Berkeley, where they focus on poetry, philosophy, disability studies, and the history and theory of creative writing pedagogy. They hold an MA in Philosophy from Central European University, where they completed a thesis on accessibility, aesthetics, and public arts funding and served as the student representative on the Committee on Students with Disabilities. They also hold an MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, where they were a Teaching-Writing Fellow, and served in 2019 and 2020 as Provost’s Visiting Writer and Visiting Assistant Professor at the University of Iowa Department of English and Research Assistant at the Walt Whitman Archives. Their critical and creative work has appeared or will appear in The Routledge Handbook of Ecofeminism and Literature (Routledge, 2022), A Field Guide to the Poetry of Theodore Roethke (Swallow Press/Ohio University Press, 2020), The Scholarship of Creative Writing Practice: Beyond Craft, Pedagogy, and the Academy (Bloomsbury, forthcoming), Best New Poets 2018 and 2020 (University of Virginia Press), and a forthcoming volume on pedagogy and the book arts.

Mary Klann – University of California, San Diego 

Mary Klann is an adjunct lecturer in San Diego, where she teaches courses in Native American History, Digital History, Women’s History, and US History at UC San Diego and San Diego Miramar College. Her first book, Wardship and the Welfare State: Native Americans and the Formation of First-Class Citizenship in Mid-Twentieth-Century America, is under contract with University of Nebraska Press. Her writing has also appeared in the Journal of Women’s History, Women and Social Movements, Smithsonian Magazine, Contingent Magazine, and Crowdsourcing Ungrading. In addition to teaching and research, she also enjoys working with faculty to facilitate conversations about inclusive pedagogy and online teaching. She tweets occasionally at @mcklann, mostly about issues relating to Native history, ungrading, and adjuncting.

Pat Lockley hopes you enjoy reading his chapter and is sorry if you don’t.

Anju Miller

My biological name is Katie, and online I’m known as Sarafine but my preferred name is Anju. I’m a graduate of Kwantlen Polytechnic University and the Including All Citizens and am currently pursuing a creative writing bachelor’s degree. I love writing and creating characters and new laws and landscapes for them to live in. Currently, I work at Toys R Us and have been with the company for eight years. All my life I have been told by several critical people in my life “You can’t do___because you have a disability” but I am determined to help educate the people who think like that and show them not to put limitations on a person because of their disability. My goal is to increase an understanding around the disability community across Canada first then eventually the world. Together we are strong but being segregated brings weakness.

Jessica O’Reilly is human, like you.

Nicolas Armando Parés

Nicolas Parés is an instructional designer and teaches courses in the Colorado community college system. He serves on the State of Colorado’s Open Educational Resources (OER) Council and focuses his research on reducing barriers to education for culturally and linguistically diverse learners and adult learners.

Jerod Quinn – Wake Forest University

Jerod Quinn is an instructional designer at Wake Forest University in the Office of Online Education. He’s been an ID for well over a decade helping instructors create online classes they are excited to teach and that learners are excited to take. He has a Master’s Degree in Learning Systems Design and Development and is a dissertation away from a PhD in Educational Psychology with an emphasis in Quantitative Measurement from the University of Missouri. His work bubbles out of the tension of holding the pragmatic (what can actually be done) in one hand while holding the ideal (what should be done) in the other. His first book, The Learner Centered Instructional Designer, came out in 2021 through Stylus Publishing. You can find him tweeting about teaching, learning, instructional design, guitars, and nature at @jerodq.

Benjamin D. Remillard – University of New Hampshire

Ben is a PhD Candidate at the University of New Hampshire. In addition to writing about digital pedagogy, his research focuses on the lives of the American Revolution’s veterans of color and their experiences in the early republic. He lives in Massachusetts with his wife, daughter, and hedgehog.

Emma Sawatzky

I was diagnosed with ADHD when I was eight years old. After I graduated from high-school, I enrolled in Kwantlen Polytechnic University’s (KPU) Adult Special Education employment-based program, Access Program for People with Disabilities. Because of this program I met Fiona and I joined her film club, The Bodies of Film Club. We watch movies that have characters with disabilities, and we wrote a chapter for the Routledge Companion to Disability and Media. I am now a graduate of KPU and Including All Citizens. It is here where I met my two closest friends. My goal is to go back to school for Early Childhood Education so that I can be a preschool teacher.

Mandi Singleton – University of Denver

Mandi Singleton is a teaching and learning specialist and adjunct faculty at University College. She holds a certificate in Educational Leadership and Policy and was a middle school dean, instructional coach, and math and science teacher for 15 years. She has taught problem-based learning (STEM) education in Shanghai, China, and participated in the Colorado BioScience Institute Research Experience for Teachers on the Anschutz Medical Campus with Sharklet Technologies and Dr. Chelsea Magin. While there, she became a contributor on a science publication and was named Educator of the Year in 2015. You can find her at the Anschutz Health and Wellness Center gym picking things up and putting them down while training for powerlifting or advocating for more teacher development focus in the higher education course delivery space.

Laurel Staab

Laurel Staab is a learning designer and practitioner-based researcher committed to educational justice. She works as a Senior Learning Designer at Multiverse, an education startup that provides professional apprenticeships as an alternative to higher education. She previously worked as the Director of Innovative Learning and Pedagogy at African Leadership University where she was a founding faculty member in Mauritius and led the founding faculty team in Rwanda. She is passionate about finding and creating collaborative spaces where learners have autonomy over their own experiences. She tweets occasionally @lastaab about education, pic abolition, politics, and bad movies.

Martin Wairimu

Martin Wairimu is an educator passionate about learning design and decolonizing education.  He has a BA(hons) in Global Challenges from the African Leadership University (ALU), Rwanda. He is currently working with the United Nations Institute of Training and Research (UNITAR), in the learning solutions team, developing modules on gender and inclusivity for trainers of trainers improving UNITAR’s quality of training and projects under the division for peace. Martin has previously worked at the office of the Director of Innovative Learning and Pedagogy at ALU, where he designed curriculum and learning experiences that leverage innovative, hands-on and student centered methodologies. Additionally, they reviewed curriculum and learning objectives for a US Department of Defense-funded four-week program titled ‘Securing the State – Building Institutions for National Security,” and most recently provided administration and logistical support for the African Union Staff Officer Course (AUSOC) in support of a US-AFRICOM Justified Accord 22 Exercise in Nairobi. Martin is joining UNITAR as a trainee to support the Learning Solutions team within the Division for Peace.

Fiona Whittington-Walsh – Kwantlen Polytechnic University 

I am an instructor in the sociology department and director of the Including All Citizens at Kwantlen Polytechnic University (KPU) in British Columbia, Canada. I am also KPU’s Lead Advisor on Disability, Accessibility, and Inclusion. My current research projects include disability and film, inclusive pedagogy, and transforming post-secondary services for students with disabilities. A key aspect to my work is creating strong connections with the community. I sit on several provincial and national Boards of Directors for non-profit organizations that advocate for the full inclusion of people with intellectual and/or developmental disabilities. These include Inclusion BC, Inclusion Canada, and the Institute for Research and Development on Inclusion and Society (IRIS).

Mia Zamora – Kean University

Mia Zamora, Ph. D. is Professor of English, Director of the MA in Writing Studies & the Kean University Writing Project in Union, NJ, USA.  A recent recipient of Kean University’s “Professor of the Year” Award, Zamora is a scholar of Electronic Literature. Dr. Zamora’s commitment to equity, digital literacies, care, and intercultural understanding is clear in both her public scholarship and leadership work. As a leading voice for the practice of open networked education, she has founded several global learning networks including Equity Unbound (#unboundeq) and Networked Narratives (#netnarr).  She currently is co-organizing #MYFest22 – a Mid-Year Festival “recharge and renewal experience” exploring open educational practices, open publishing, socially just education, community building reflection, and wellbeing/joy.