I am an educator (university faculty member) in the field on the environmental humanities. More specifically, I draw on philosophy and religion to promote biodiversity conservation and redress the anthropogenic causes of species loss and biodiversity decline. My research and teaching have practical aims: 1. To help people understand the interconnectedness and interdependence between people, planet, and animals; 2. To provide a context for students’ inner transformation through regenerative practices; and 3. To live regeneratively by applying these insights in the protection of species with the undestanding of mutual “co-evolving mutualism.” I am working on two writing projects that draw on regenerative principles (one more directly than the other), and I am very focused on getting this work completed and getting it out in the public realm. I also want it to inform my nonprofit work.

To effectively promote regenerative ideas, I must be committed and open to my own inner transformation. I work in virtue theory, which is premised on the principle that people become what they practice. I want to deepen my own regenerative practices, so that it changes the way I live, teach, and research. I also want to learn more about regenerative practices on the ground. I work with several nonprofits that address animal conservation in Africa, and I want to engage in more on-the-ground work that is guided by renerative practices.

I want to finish my writing projects, but I want them to be informed by own transformation and knowledge of regenerative ideas. I want to incorporate regenerative practices into my teaching. And finally, I want incorporate regenerative practices in my nonprofit projects. I serve on the board two nonprofits that promote harmonious co-existence between people and animals in Africa. I want to be engaged in more on-the-groun work.

Inner transformation that comes through practices. I want live less out of my head so that I can participate in practical work that helps heal the fractures between people, planet, and animals.

I want to finish my writing projects and use regenerative practices to inform my teaching.

I went through a major shift in my persona and professional focus more than a decade ago. I was a lifelong animal lover, but the protection of species was not the focus of my work as a philosopher of religion. In 2014, I learned about the crisis of ivory poaching in Africa and its role in the dangerous decline in elephant populations in Africa and Asia. I was both alarmed and deeply saddened, so I began researching and to my horror realized that we were (at that time) in the beginnings of a sixth mass animal extinction that was primarily driven by human behavior. This awareness changed everything for me. I couldn’t sit on the sidelines. I started a nonprofit run for imperiled species in Africa, and I joined the boards of the two organizations I mentioned in questions 1, 2, and 3. (I am currently the board president of one organization). And it changed my research/teaching trajectory. I immersed myself in the environmental humanities, solicited a seed donation for the creation of a graduate certificate in that field, and grew the certificate to an MA Specializtion in Environmental Studies. I have delivered multiple conference presentations (mostly in Africa) on the importance of the humanities in species conservation, and I am editing and contributing to a volume on religion and animal extinction and finalizing a paper on virtues and regenerative practices.

I work in philosophy and religion and more specifically in the environmental humanities, which draws on these fields to promote conservation. I have been deeply influenced by Aristotle, Ludwig Wittgenstein, J.L Austin, Freud, and Levinas, and numberous books on animal extinction including Elizabeth Kolbert. I was significanlty influences by Mang and Haggard’s book.

My cosmology begins with the understanding that human beings are part of nature and not separate from it. We are, as Brian Swimme wrote in The Journey of the Universe, “star dust.” Human beings are interconnected and interdepdent with the environment and nonhuman animals. What is good for humans is also good for animals and the environment. This does not mean that solutions to problems (e.g., between animals and people or the environment and people) are straghtforward, but it does mean that we must strive to solve problems in way that promotes the good of all.