Stephen J. Flusberg is an Assistant Professor of Cognitive Science at Vassar College. His research examines how people communicate and think about complex issues like the economy, climate change, and mental illness, with an emphasis on how public discourse both reflects and shapes attitudes and reasoning. He has published multiple influential articles on the relationship between metaphor and cognition and the mechanisms that contribute to linguistic framing effects. He is an Associate Editor of the journal Metaphor and Symbol and was the recipient of the 2022 SUNY Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Teaching.
Kevin J. Holmes is an Associate Professor of Psychology at Reed College. His research examines the structure of human knowledge, focusing on how language reflects and shapes thinking and reasoning. His work has been supported by the James McKeen Cattell Fund, the National Science Foundation, and the American Psychological Association. Over the past decade as a faculty member at small liberal arts colleges, he has published more than a dozen articles with undergraduate co-authors.
Paul H. Thibodeau is an independent scholar with more than 15 years of experience researching the psychology of metaphor. He completed a PhD in cognitive science at Stanford University and was a professor of psychology at Trinity University in Texas (2012-13) and Oberlin College in Ohio (2013-2023). His dissertation work on the role of metaphor in reasoning, conducted in collaboration with Lera Boroditsky, has received thousands of citations. Paul recently decided to explore a career change and is working as a data scientist for a technology company.
Robin L. Nabi is a professor of Communication at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Her research focuses on the role of emotion in media processes and effects, with particular emphasis on the persuasive effect of emotion-based messages. She has served as a managing editor of the journal Media Psychology and is a co-editor of the SAGE Handbook of Media Processes and Effects and the Oxford volume Emotions in the Digital World. She is the inaugural recipient of the Innovation in Theory Award from the International Communication Association’s Mass Communication Division for her work on emotional framing and is a 2017 inductee as an ICA Fellow.
Teenie Matlock is Professor Emeritus of Cognitive Science and former McClatchy Chair in Communications at the University of California, Merced. Her research focuses on how everyday language, especially metaphor, influences reasoning about serious societal challenges, including climate change, cancer, and wildfire. She was the Associate Editor of Cognitive Linguistics and served on various editorial boards, such as Cognitive Science and Environmental Communication, and was a standing member of LCOM, the National Institutes of Health Language and Communications study section. She is the recipient of numerous awards for academic achievement, including the Jeffrey L. Elman Prize for Scientific Achievement and Community Building, the EDGE in Tech Athena Award for Academic Leadership, and the University of California Senate Award for Excellence in Faculty Mentorship, and is the former Vice Chair of the American Indian Council of Mariposa County.
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James Walsh is a behavioral development economist at The Agency Fund. His research focuses on leveraging theory from psychology and economics to improve intervention design in areas such as parenting, education, livelihoods, and health. He has conducted 20+ online, field, and lab-in-the-field experiments, mostly in the global south and in collaboration with governments and nonprofits. He was a part of the research team that wrote the World Development Report 2015: Mind, Society, and Behavior. He holds a masters from Harvard and a DPhil from Oxford.
Maia Szalavitz is the author, most recently, of Undoing Drugs: The Untold Story of Harm Reduction and the Future of Addiction, which is the first history of the movement aimed at focusing drug policy on minimizing harms, not highs. Her previous New York Times bestseller, Unbroken Brain: A Revolutionary New Way of Understanding Addiction, won the 2018 media award from the National Institute on Drug Abuse. She is a contributing opinion writer for the New York Times and has written for numerous other publications including TIME, Wired, Elle, the Nation and Scientific American. She has also authored or co-authored six other books, including the classic on child trauma, The Boy Who Was Raised as a Dog, with Dr. Bruce D. Perry.
