Marijosephie ‘Mija’ BradfordMarijosephie Bradford: Bio
Marijosephie ‘Mija’ Bradford LPC, is an Intuitive Counselor and Spiritual Developer in the Chicago area, affiliated with Life Stance Counseling. One aspect of her practice is helping women who feel called to become a healer, a spiritual guide or teacher. She specializes in Akashic Record reading, Reiki, Aura Cleansing, Tantra and Oracular Healing. Her work draws on indigenous African spiritual traditions and the positive spiritual nature of Vudou. Mija has a corporate background prior to fulfilling her soul’s calling and is a wife and mother of two children. thesoulascending.com, |
Robin Carhart-HarrisRobin Carhart-Harris Bio
Robin Carhart-Harris PhD: (VIRTUAL) British psychopharmacologist, University of California, San Francisco. Studies of psychedelic and psychoactive drugs such as LSD, psilocybin, MDMA, and DMT, and research into their therapeutic use in treating psychiatric disorders such as depression. In 2020, The Times named him one of the world's top 31 medical scientists. |
Andrew DavisAndrew Davis Bio
Andrew Davis PhD is an American process philosopher, theologian, and scholar of cosmological wonder. He is research and academic director for the Center for Process Studies, https://ctr4process.org/about/team/, where he researches, writes, teaches, and organizes conferences on various aspects of process-relational thought. He is author, editor, and co-editor of books including Mind, Value, and Cosmos: On the Relational Nature of Ultimacy; Process Cosmology: New Integrations in Science and Philosophy; and Metaphysics of Eco-Life: Toward a Constructive Whiteheadian Cosmotheology. |
Kathy DuffyKathy Duffy Bio
Kathleen Duffy, SSJ, PhD, President of the American Teilhard Association, is Professor Emerita of Physics at Chestnut Hill College where she directs the Institute for Religion and Science. She is former editor of Teilhard Studies and serves on the Advisory Board of Cosmos and Creation. She has published Teilhard’s Mysticism: Seeing the Inner Face of Evolution (Orbis, 2014), Teilhard’s Struggle: Embracing the Work of Evolution (Orbis, 2019), an edited volume of essays entitled Rediscovering Teilhard’s Fire (St. Joseph’s University Press, 2010), as well as several book chapters and articles that deal with connections between Teilhard’s religious essays and modern science. Kathleen also guides evening, weekend, and week-long retreats on topics related to Teilhard’s life and work. |
Ashok GangadeanAshok Gangadean Bio
Ashok Gangadean is a world renowned global philosopher, author and spiritual activist. He is the Margaret Gest Professor of Global Philosophy at Haverford College where he has taught for the past fifty years. He is author of several books, including Meditations of Global First Philosophy: Quest for the Missing Code of Logos and the audio book- Awakening The Global Mind: A New Philosophy for Healing Ourselves and Our World (with Sounds True). Ashok is also the Founder-Director of the ((Global Dialogue Institute)) which introduced the Seven Stages of Deep Dialogue – innovative technology of Deep Dialogue between worlds in the art of being an awakened Human. Ashok’s current book in progress – Awakening Global Enlightenment: The Maturation of our Species – reaches out to the widest possible global audience and is also being drafted as a potential feature movie script revealing the “greatest ((story)) never told” – quest for the missing Source Code of codes. Ashok just released a double CD audio presenting this project – as a “movie trailer”. www.unumbeing.com He completed his Ph.D. in Philosophy at Brandeis University and his early work focused on Logic (Science of Thought) and Ontology (Science of Being). Throughout his career he has been in quest of the primal integral logic at the heart of human reason, and in bringing to the fore the deep dynamics of communication and dialogue between diverse worldviews. In this quest over four decades to clarify and excavate the common ground across and between widely diverse worlds, cultures, ideologies and disciplines he has emerged as a pioneer of the new frontier of global reason, global ethics and global wisdom. His courses range over Philosophy of Logic and Language, Global Ontology, Global Ethics, Hindu, Buddhist and Zen Thought in Global Context and Global Wisdom. |
Daniel IngramDaniel Ingram Bio
ER physician, mostly working in major trauma centers, MSPH is in epidemiology. He is founder and acting CEO and Board Chair of Emergence Benefactors, a charity dedicated to supporting the EPRC (Emergent Phenomena Research Consortium). Will present overview of what emergent phenomena are—including spiritual experience, and relation to psychic phenomena, and update about research |
Kurt JohnsonKurt Johnson Bio
Kurt Johnson PhD: (VIRTUAL) Author of book Interspirituality, has worked in professional science and comparative religion for over 40 years and serves on many international committees, particularly at the United Nations. Leadeer of UNITY EARTH and the Interspiritual Dialogue Network he co-edits two magazines: The Convergence and Light on Light, and cohosts the Convergence series on VoiceAmerica. |
Sarbmeet KanwalSarbmeet Kanwal Bio
Sarbmeet Kanwal has a PhD in Theoretical Physics from Caltech, He teaches Quantum Physics and Astronomy at Brookdale Community College where he was recognized for instructional innovation. He also teaches courses at Deeptime Networks, an organization that believes in science as a source of human spirituality. Sarbmeet is a practicing Sikh who feels that Sikhism provides a pragmatic approach to cultivating a spiritual life based on selfless service and contemplative meditation. Outside academics, Sarbmeet leads an award-winning interfaith youth program called MOSAIC that helps build understanding between followers of different faiths. He is a sought-after speaker on topics that lie at the intersection of science and spirituality and is the author of two TEDx talks. |
Julia MossbridgeJulia Mossbridge Bio
Julia Mossbridge PhD: American cognitive neuroscientist, author and educator worked on parapsychological studies, notably on precognition and presentiment effects. Affiliate Professor in the Department of Biophysics and Physics at University of San Diego, a fellow at the Institute of Noetic Sciences, and principal consultant for the Blue Sky Task Force at California Institute for Integral Studies. |
Roberta PugheRoberta Pughe Bio
Roberta Pughe PhD, LMFT: Clinical Director, The Center for Relationship, LLC, Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist, a psychotherapist trained as a modern shamanista with a clinical practice. Author of Resurrecting Eve: Women of Faith Challenge the Fundamentalist Agenda 2007, Body as Sanctuary for Soul: An Embodied Enlightenment Practice, 2015. |
Harriet RosettoHarriet Rossetto Bio
Harriet Rossetto LCSW: MSW degree from the University of Minnesota, and is a trainer for the National Association of Social Workers, author of the book Sacred Housekeeping: A Spiritual Memoir. She has developed and directed for 40 years a center providing a Jewish foundation spiritual recovery for Jewish criminals in California. |
Michael WinkelmanMichael Winkelman Bio
Michael Winkelman MPH from University of Arizona, PhD from the University of California-Irvine. He is retired from the School of Human Evolution and Social Change at Arizona State University. Winkelman engages cross-cultural and interdisciplinary research on shamanism and its biological bases in Shamans, Priests and Witches (1992) and Shamanism: A Biopsychosocial Paradigm of Consciousness and Healing (2010). He addressed the therapeutic applications of psychedelics in his co-edited Advances in Psychedelic Medicine (2019). Winkelman examined the intersection of psychedelics and the evolutionary origins of religion and explored the applications of shamanism and psychedelics to the treatment of addiction. He currently resides in central Brazil where he lives as a gentleman farmer practicing permaculture and continuing his research. |
Rt. Rev. Br. Mark D’AlessioChaplain
Mark D’Alessio Bio
Rt. Rev. Br. Mark D’Alessio is a Franciscan friar, Christian bishop and priest, ordained lay Buddhist, spiritual director, chaplain and retreat leader, author, and past president and executive director of the Psychotherapy & Spirituality Institute. A long-time seeker and practitioner of spiritual wisdom, he is ordained into multiple spiritual lineages, both East (Buddhist) and West (Christian), with a teaching ministry that affirms the Christian Wisdom tradition within a wider interspiritual framework. Br. Mark lives on Long Island, is on the faculty of All Faiths Seminary International, NYC, and serves as a crisis counselor at an emergency shelter with outreach services for men and women who are homeless; and, as a chaplain at an school and orphanage for children with developmental and mental health disabilities. |
Calvin ChatlosProgram Co-Chair
Calvin Chatlos Bio
Calvin Chatlos is Professor of Psychiatry at Rutgers University, New Jersey, USA, Board Certified in Child & Adolescent and Addiction Psychiatry where he incorporates spiritual principles in recovery from addiction and trauma. He is a graduate of the Humanist Institute, NYC, long-time member of the Society for Ethical Culture and a board member of the URI Cooperation Circle with the Monmouth Center for World Religions and Ethical Thought (MCWRET), and a recent member of IRAS. He is developer of the “Human Faith Project” focused on the role of self-worth and dignity as part of a “Framework of Spirituality” to open a universal core of religious/spiritual experience and its empowerment of creativity. |
Barbara Whittaker-JohnsProgram Co-Chair
Barbara Whittaker-Johns Bio
Rev. Dr. Barbara Whittaker-Johns is a Unitarian Universalist minister who has served almost four decades in leadership positions in IRAS, including a recent five-year stint as President, seven as VP Summer Conferences, Co-Chair/occasional presenter for six conferences, and on five occasions offering the morning Chapel Talks. Currently she serves IRAS as an Honorary Vice President. She grew up in Maine, in the environs of Bangor Theological Seminary. After medical studies/practice in nursing, she abandoned her first effort at graduate work in theology to put her first husband through his doctoral studies; simultaneously, she completed a Master’s program at Yeshiva University, NYC, and began a sixteen-year teaching career, with a focus on the neurodiversity associated with learning disabilities in youngsters. In 1984 she completed the MDiv program at Harvard, began what is now a long career in UU parish ministry, and later completed a DMin program in theology, focusing on the power of personal stories, for both adults and youngsters, to ground spiritual development in a scientific world view. Her spiritual practices are varied, and besides reading/writing, include scratching quahogs and digging clams on Cape Cod; driving her truck off-road in Maine; dancing to rock n roll; playing her violin. And her most significant spiritual experiences as an adult, have, directly or indirectly, evolved in concert with this beloved community of IRAS. Since the late 80s she often has been accompanied to the IRAS week by her spouse, Frank Toppa, a musician, and her now adult son Isaac Toppa. |