Mira Z. Amiras, Ph.D., is professor of Comparative Religious Studies, and Coordinator of the Middle East Studies Program at San Jose State University. She received her Ph.D. in anthropology at U.C. Berkeley and has conducted fieldwork in North Africa and the Middle East over the past thirty-five years. She has served as president of the Society for the Anthropology of Consciousness and on the executive boards of the American Anthropological Association, the Association of Transpersonal Psychology, and the Fromer Fund. She is author of Development and Disenchantment in Rural Tunisia (Westview Press) and other works.

Phillip H. Duran, Ph.D.(cand.), has a Master’s degree in physics and computer science and has nearly completed a Ph.D. in theoretical physics. His tribal heritage is Ysleta del Sur Pueblo (Tigua Indians), a tribe located in the village of Ysleta in El Paso County, Texas, which was settled after the Pueblo Revolt of 1680. He has spent forty years in higher education as an administrator, faculty member, researcher, and systems analyst and five years at a tribal college where he directed an academic degree program in tribal natural resources management and served as dean of science and mathematics. He is currently an independent author, lecturer, and consultant with a special interest in exploring parallels between modern physics, Western science, and indigenous knowledge about the cosmos. As Vice President of Hamaatsa, a Native tax-exempt organization in New Mexico, he is also assisting in the establishment of an eco-retreat center and indigenous learning model whose purpose is to promote spiritual wholeness and healing systems from traditional cultures and to revive indigenous life-ways and sustainable land stewardship principles for restoring our world. His book, Bringing Back the Spirit, as well as published articles and essays tell of his long pilgrimage and convey an important message to the American conscience. He has also written poetry and other literary pieces that have been published in at least fifteen journals, some of them appearing in different languages, including French and Spanish. A collection of some of his poems was published in an anthology in Spain.

Stefan J. Kasian, Ph.D., is a real estate entrepreneur, author, and international public speaker. Kasian also serves as Professor of Psychology at Akamai University, in Hilo, Hawaii. He applies his studies of consciousness to real estate entrepreneurial endeavors, one example of which is his doctoral dissertation “Dream Homes: When Dreams Seem to Predict Real Estate Sales,” in which he interviewed ten individuals who claimed to experience precognitive dreams that enhanced their real estate acquisition experiences. He has published dozens of articles and several books, including Auction Fever: Winning Strategies to Buy, Sell, and Rent Real Estate which he co-authored with New York Times best-selling author Dr. Dolf de Roos.

Jeffery MacDonald, Ph.D., is the Associate Director of the Immigrant and Refugee Community Organization (IRCO) in Portland, Oregon. He has worked with refugees for the last 21 years in both research and applied situations. He received his M.A. with honors in anthropology from Western Washington University in 1982 and his Ph.D. in anthropology from the New School for Social Research in 1993. His doctoral research explored transnational issues and traditional religion of Iu-Mien refugees from Laos. At IRCO, MacDonald directs the development and delivery of culturally appropriate services and research projects that advance multiethnic integration and self-sufficiency for refugees and immigrants. In 1994, MacDonald helped found the Asian Family Center and recently assisted in the creation of Africa House Refugee Community Center in Portland. He also conducts community needs assessment research, provides multicultural diversity training, and teaches organizational workshops for ethnic community-based organizations. MacDonald was one of the founding members of the Society for the Anthropology of Consciousness (SAC) and has served as SAC’s President and Secretary/Treasurer. MacDonald’s books include Power, Ethics, and Human Rights: Anthropological Studies of Refugee Research and Action; Transnational Aspects of Iu-Mien Refugee Identity; and Selected Papers on Refugee Issues: III, as well as numerous articles and book chapters.

Avram Rubin, Ph.D., (in a former lifetime known as Alan B. Fletcher) holds a B.S. in Human Ecology (Rutgers University, 1979), an M.A. in Cultural Anthropology and Social Transformation (California Institute of Integral Studies, 2008), an M.A. in Clinical Psychology (John F. Kennedy University, 1983), and a Ph.D. in Human Sexuality (Institute for the Advanced Study of Human Sexuality, 1995). He is licensed as a Marriage and Family Psychotherapist, board certified in the areas of sexology and trauma. Rubin has served as Associate Professor of Psychology and Executive Clinical Director at John F. Kennedy University and taught at Stanford University’s PreHospital Care Program. He has worked in group and private practice settings including the Emergency Treatment Center at the Mental Research Institute, as a consultant to trauma centers, a mobile intensive care paramedic, and a quality assurance consultant. His publications include “Erotological Investigations of Male Homosexual Imagery in Contemporary Film: Ethnographic Approaches to a New Gay Male Sexuality” (Electronic Journal of Human Sexuality, 2006), and as coauthor of Basic Life Support: An Assessment Oriented Approach (Aspen Books, 1986) and “Have We Forgotten BLS?” (American Journal of Emergency Medicine, 1984).

Karen Ann Watson-Gegeo, Ph.D., is Professor in the School of Education, and member of the Graduate Faculty in the Ph.D. and M.A./M.S. programs of Anthropology, Linguistics, Human Development, and Community and Regional Development, University of California, Davis. She earned her Ph.D. in Anthropology at the University of Hawai‘i, Mānoa. Growing up in rural agricultural and manufacturing towns as a mixed ethnicity (Native American, white) child, she developed an early concern for social justice and issues of poverty and oppression. She embraced anthropology as a way to integrate her activist commitment with in-depth knowledge of cultures inside and outside the United States, first with Native Hawaiians, then—with David Welchman Gegeo—Kwara’ae people of Solomon Islands. She has also worked in working-class communities in rural and urban America. Since becoming disabled by an herbicide accident in 1994, she has continued to write and publish with David and with her students, teach full-time, mentor a large number of Ph.D. and M.S. students, and pursue art for social justice.

Michael Winkelman, Ph.D. (University of California-Irvine), M.P.H. (University of Arizona), is an Associate Professor in the School of Human Evolution and Social Change at Arizona State University. He served as President of the Anthropology of Consciousness section of the American Anthropological Association, and was the founding President of its Anthropology of Religion Section. His principal publications on shamanism include Shamans, Priests, and Witches (1992) and Shamanism (2000). He has also addressed the dynamics of healing in his co-edited books Divination and Healing (2004), Pilgrimage and Healing (2005), and Psychedelic Medicine (2007). He has provided an evolutionary view of shamanism, religion, and altered states of consciousness in his co-authored Supernatural as Natural A Biological Theory of Religion (2008). He has authored several textbooks that address cross-cultural development, including Cultural Awareness, Sensitivity, and Competence (2005); American Ethnic History (2006); and Culture and Health: Applying Medical Anthropology (2008).