The list of speakers may be amended according to the evolution of topics. They include faculty and other experts from a diverse range of disciplines and with signficant international experience, similar to the guest speakers from 2018, 2019, 2020 and 2021. They are listed below in the order that they will speak with the seminar.
- The Rev. Viktoria Parvin is a Lutheran pastor currently serving at Saint Mark Lutheran Church in Charlottesville VA. She was born in Budapest, Hungary, where she studied at the Lutheran Seminary at Budapest, participated and led youth camps, preached in small village churches. She received her Master of Arts and Master of Divinity degrees at the Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago. Her forming experiences were working with the Night Ministry and homeless in Chicago, chaplaincy at a nursing home in Upstate New York, completing many units of Clinical Pastoral Education and supervisory education and travelling back to Hungary to help Syrian refugees at the height of the crisis. This article St. Mark Lutheran’s new pastor fought the odds describes her unusual story: "St. Mark’s is one of only two Lutheran churches in Virginia that have the “reconciling in Christ” status, according to Marbury. “That means that we not only accept people from the LGBT community, but we affirm them. We’re not in the business of trying to change them, but we accept them for who they are. In looking for a new pastor, we needed someone who wholeheartedly believed in that mission. Viktória Parvin fit that bill.”
- Professor Jenny Roe, PhD is the first Mary Irene DeShong Professor of Design and Health and the Director of the Center of Design and Health with a multi-disciplinary background in design and environmental psychology. She is building new trans-disciplinary research collaborations between designers and public health professionals to address the global health challenges of the 21stcentury including obesity, cardiovascular disease and stress. She currently offers courses for the School in Healthy Cities and Environmental Psychology. Formerly, she was Senior Research Leader in Human Wellbeing and Behaviour Change for the Stockholm Environment Institute (SEI) where she worked with environmental scientists and health professionals to explore how best to build sustainable, resilient and healthy cities across the globe. Jenny is an Environmental Psychologist whom explores the interactions between people and their environment, from micro settings (i.e. a room or individual building scale or even submarines in the case of one recent project) through to neighbourhoods and macro settings that include cities, whole cultures and geographies.
- Professor of Landscape Architecture Reuben Rainey, PhD, has taught in the School of Architecture for 34 years and is a former chair of the Department of Landscape Architecture. His present courses focus on the design of various types of healthcare facilities. As Co-Director of the School of Architecture's Center for Design and Health he is also engaged in a number of research projects centering on the design of patient-centered medical facilities and healthy neighborhoods and cities. A former professor of religious studies at Columbia University and Middlebury College, he entered the field of landscape architecture in mid-career. His publications cover a wide range of topics, including Italian Renaissance Gardens, 19th and 20th century urban parks, and the work of 20th-century American landscape architects. His co-authored book on the garden of the Harlem Renaissance poet Anne Spencer received an honor award from the American Society of Landscape Architects. A documentary filmmaker as well, he co-produced the PBS seriesGardenStory, depicting the way gardens improve the lives of individuals and their communities. A recipient of five teaching awards, he is also a member of the Council of Fellows of the American Society of Landscape Architects. Having recently completed an essay on Lawrence Halprin's FDR Memorial, he is currently at work on a book on the modernist landscape architect Robert Royston and a study of the design features of an innovative cancer hospital at the University of Florida, Gainesville.
- Associate Professor of Architecture John Comazzi's teaching, research, and scholarship focus is on the following areas: mid-century Modern architecture and design; design theory and criticism; architecture photography; the design of active learning environments for PK-12 education; design for healthcare environments; and design-build practices for community development. He is the author a monograph on Balthazar Korab, one of the most prolific and celebrated architecture photographers of the Modern era (Balthazar Korab: Architect of Photography, Princeton Architectural Press, 2012), and is currently writing a monograph on the Miller House and Gardens in Columbus, IN (forthcoming from Princeton Architectural Press, 2019). Professor Comazzi joined the faculty in the School of Architecture at the University of Virginia in the Fall of 2017 as the Director of the Design Thinking Concentration. Hired as part of the University's "Cluster Hiring Initiative," Professor Comazzi has partial appointments in the School of Nursing and the Curry School of Education where he collaborates on interdisciplinary teaching, research, and curriculum development.
- Harriet Kuhr, Executive Director IRC (International Rescue Committee), Charlottesville, earned her BA in Anthropology and French from the University of Virginia. Kuhr joined the Peace Corps early in her career serving in the Congo (formerly Zaire). Prior to taking her present position in April 2010, she was the Manager of Resettlement Services with the IRC in Atlanta. Her previous professional experience includes more than 20 years working in the field of international cultural exchange.The International Rescue Committee provides opportunities for refugees, asylees, victims of human trafficking, survivors of torture, and other immigrants to thrive in America. Each year, thousands of people, forced to flee violence and persecution, are welcomed by the people of the United States into the safety and freedom of America. These individuals have survived against incredible odds. The IRC works with government bodies, civil society actors, and local volunteers to help them translate their past experiences into assets that are valuable to their new communities. In Charlottesville and other offices across the country, the IRC helps them rebuild their lives.
- Alex Miller, USAID, B. Arch, Masters in Development and Emergency Practice. Before joining USAID Alex Miller had already specialized in designing shelters for those affected by the ongoing migrant crisis, as well as civilians whose homes have been devastated by natural disasters. “Disaster exposes a weakness in a community’s resilience,” said Alex Miller, B. Arch ’09. “You become resilient with better design. Disasters, for me, were an opportunity to explore design and expose design that hadn’t been taken advantage of before.” From September 2009-2010, Miller traveled with the organization Wonder Grass to develop sustainable bamboo housing for families in Nagpur in central India. For three weeks in December 2016, Miller worked with a non-governmental organization called Catholic Relief Services in Bulgaria’s capital city Sofia. Miller’s post-disaster work has also taken him to locales devastated by natural disasters, such Nicaragua, the Philippines, and Haiti; and areas where the inhabitants are beset by poverty, including India and here in the United States. In June 2016, Miller graduated from Oxford Brookes University in the UK, where he received a master’s in development and emergency practice through their school of architecture. That summer, a university scholarship and a U.S. government grant from the USAID Settlement and Shelter Office sponsored Miller to research housing programs in Nepal, Haiti, and Lebanon. “You can count on your hand the architects that want to do post-disaster relief,” he said. “It’s a career that’s so different.”
- Phoebe Goodwin, Architect, Site Planner and Shelter Offices, UNHCR. This bio is taken from an article published on the https://www.unrefugees.org.au/our-stories web site. "Over the past six years, Australian architect Phoebe Goodwin has worked to shelter refugees and displaced people fleeing violence and conflict. Through her work as a Site Planner and Shelter Officer with UNHCR, Phoebe has seen the resilience and innovation of refugees who are determined to rebuild their lives. 'It never ceases to amaze me that in every humanitarian operation it is the refugees who spearhead improvements to their shelters,' Phoebe says “Especially in terms of their ability to construct improvised homes with such personalised design flair and ingenuity.” In Jordan's Za’atari refugee camp, home to around 80,000 Syrian refugees, families have modified their prefabricated containers to create homes. 'It never ceases to amaze me that in every humanitarian operation it is the refugees who spearhead improvements to their shelters' ... Today, Phoebe most recently worked for UNHCR in Mexico, where she was expanding shelter accommodation, conducting renovations and repairs and installing roof-mounted solar panels to reduce electricity costs. 'All people, not just humanitarians, can bring compassion and empathy to a crisis situation,' she says. 'I am passionate about encouraging and facilitating independence and fostering self-worth.' She now serving as Programme Manager and Support Office through the agency offices in Geneva, although will be speaking to us from her home in Sydney, Australia at an evening hour TBA.
- Ellen M. Bassett is Dean of Georgia Tech’s College of Design, a position she began on January 1, 2022. Previously, Bassett served as chair of the University of Virginia, School of Architecture’s Department of Urban and Environmental Planning, where she led the department through two reaccreditation processes, developed a real estate certificate program, and helmed curricular revision, according to the announcement of her deanship at Georgia Tech. She is also a past leader of UVA’s African Urbanism Humanities Lab, has served as a member of UVA Environmental Resilience Institute’s steering committee, and President of the UVA Faculty Senate,. Her areas of research interest and expertise are land use planning and law, climate change planning, health and the built environment, and international development. She is particularly interested in community decision-making around land and natural resources, including understanding how different societies and cultures create institutions (like property rights systems or policies) for their management. Her research focuses on access to land and housing for the urban poor and seeks to reform the planning framework for land and natural resources that perpetuates societal inequities and deleterious environmental outcomes.
- Logman Arja, Lecturer in Architecture, UC Berkeley. Arja’s research focuses on RURALISM and RURAL ARCHITECTURE. He is thoroughly examining responsive systems and disruptive approaches to re-valorize the rural economy. He introduces RURALISM not in opposition to URBANISIM, but rather an equivalent field that he believes is worthy of consideration and that is often overlooked in our architectural discourse. Arja is also working to advance earth architecture and ceramic production via additive manufacturing technology in rural communities and contexts. Currently, he is leading efforts to adopt the technology of additive manufacturing in Sub-Saharan Africa with a long-term goal of producing sustainable housing solutions and rural micro-infrastructures as well as low-tech solutions. Arja has won numerous awards for his scholarly and creative works, including the Design for Spatial Justice Fellowship and Visiting Faculty at the University of Oregon, the John K. Branner Traveling Fellowship, the MasterCard Foundation Scholarship at UC Berkeley, Rondine Cittadella della Pace Fellowship - Italy, and the Fulbright Scholarship. Logman earned a BSc. from the University of Juba, Sudan, an MSc. from CCNY, New York, and an M. Arch from UCBerkeley.
- Kory C. Russel is an Assistant Professor of Landscape Architecture and Environmental Studies at the University of Oregon. Kory teaches courses on sustainable and human-centered design, courses on water, sanitation and public health, as well as a course in Environmental Studies. His primary research focuses on planning, designing, and implementing sustainable water and sanitation (WASH) services in low- and middle-income countries. He currently services as the Chair of the Container Based Santiation Alliance (CBSA). He has conducted extensive research internationally including in Haiti and Mozambique. He also spent 3 years in Mozambique serving as a Peace Corps volunteer. Russel earned a BS, 2003; MES, 2005, Taylor University; MS, 2013, Ph.D.,2019, in Civil and Environmental Engineering, Stanford University. This bio is excerpted from his UO faculty web site.
- Professor Fern R. Hauck, MD, Fern R. Hauck, MD, MS, FAAFP is Spencer P. Bass, MD Twenty-First Century Professor of Family Medicine, Professor of Public Health Sciences, and Director of Research and Faculty Development and of International Family Medicine Clinics in the University of Virginia School of Medicine. Her expertise is global health and caring for refugees. She started the International Family Medicine Clinic in 2002, which serves the refugee population of Charlottesville. She also worked in Southeast Asia, Africa and the Carribian and held the position of refugee camp doctor for a year in Thailand for refugees fleeing Cambodia. Dr. Hauck's primary research focuses on sudden unexpected infant death, including sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS). She has studied risk factors for SIDS and other unexpected infant deaths, especially focusing on African-American and other minority communities. She has also studied bedsharing practices cross culturally and preventive strategies, such as pacifier use. An important theme of Dr. Hauck's research is eliminating disparities in health services and outcomes. She is a member of the American Academy of Pediatrics Task Force on SIDS and is an advisor to several other organizations and federal agencies that focus on infant health and safety. Dr. Hauck was recently profile in the Daily Progress, "Dozen: Dr. Hauck created a model for serving area's refugees", article by Katherine Knott, 2.2.2020.
* pending.
* Professor Hauck has spoken to the seminar for the last several years. However, at the time of this draft she is pending for 2022.