Celebrating Faculty Excellence

Dr. Azim’s current research centers around women’s reproductive health, agency, and rights in the United States, and specifically on pelvic health and experiences of painful sexual intercourse. Her most recent empirical work focuses on how women's experiences of sexuality and health are influenced by the medical, religious, educational, and other institutions. 

For the past decade, Dr. Aurora has developed the field of integral feminist education and feminist spiritual activism, working alongside sister scholars to offer a transdisciplinary and socially engaged approach to the study of gender, spirituality, and religion. 

Philosopher, theologian, and religious studies scholar Dr. Sherman is the author of Partakers of the Divine: Contemplation and the Practice of Philosophy, and editor of The Participatory Turn: Spirituality, Mysticism, Religious Studies. He is the Program Chair of Philosophy, Cosmology, and Consciousness.

Dr. Markle is dedicated to multi-theoretical and multi-level approaches to individual and community health and healing. Her research has focused on social support, social capital, and social sustainability in the context of intentional community.

As a queer, Indian-American educator, Dr. Swamy specializes in culturally responsive pedagogy, scholarship, and supervision. Through her research with Indian adults, she developed Culturally Centered Music and Imagery (CCMI), the first music therapy framework for minoritized clients to access the wisdom and power of the cultural unconscious.

Dr. Walling's clinical interests survey the fields of somatic psychotherapy, relational psychoanalysis, human sexuality, and trauma psychology. Recently, he hosted the United States Association for Body Psychotherapy's 2023 Somatic Conference at CIIS.

Dr. Adeeba D. Deterville is the Founder of the Black Psychology Project and Founding Director of the Center for Black & Indigenous Praxis. Dr. Dee's work is guided by her dissertation, Sankofa Praxis – An Africentric Meta-Theory of Sankofa and Jegnaship as a Reclamation of Africentric Episteme, Psychology, Spiritness and Personhood: A Scholarly Personal Narrative of Cultural Retrieval, Alignment and Actualization. 

Best known for her groundbreaking work in Neurodiversity Studies and Neuroqueer Theory, Nick Walker is an author, educator, and futurist whose work explores the edges and intersections of embodiment, spirituality, queerness, and creative transformation. She is the author of the influential essay collection Neuroqueer Heresies, and senior aikido instructor at the Aiki Arts Center in Berkeley.

Working with arts and sciences in community, Sáenz's creative collaborations question dominant narratives to build collective knowledges towards greater socioecological health and reciprocity.