Speakers

Rebecca Martusewicz is Emeritus Professor at Eastern Michigan University and has been honored to hold the position of docent at TAU. In 2015, a Fulbright Fellowship allowed her to spend a semester teaching, doing research and enjoying terrific friendships and colleagues in Tampere which now feels like a second home. Rebecca was Editor-in-Chief of Educational Studies: Journal of the American Educational Studies Association for 16 years. She is author of several books including A Pedagogy of Responsibility: Wendell Berry for EcoJustice Education (2019), Art, EcoJustice and Education (2019) co-edited with Raisa Foster and Jussi Mäkelä, and EcoJustice Education: Toward Diverse, Democratic and Sustainable Communities (2015) co-authored with Jeff Edmundson and Johnny Lupinnacci, currently in production for a third edition.  Rebecca taught for 31 years in the Social Foundations and Community Education program at EMU, as well as helping to create and teach in the Educational Studies PhD program. She currently resides in Francestown, NH with her husband Gary, 4 dogs, 2 cats, and 2 horses. Life is good!

Finland based multidisciplinary artist and scholar, Dr. Raisa Foster (b. 1976), has been focusing on the questions of eco-social justice in the past several years. Originally a dance practitioner, Foster combines her expertise in body and movement with novel possibilities of digital media, creating accessible but conceptually stimulating total works of art. After completing her Ph.D. at the University of Tampere in 2012, Foster strived even more into her artistic research, which involved studying the topic of otherness, including gender identity, (dis)ability, and interspecies empathy. Both public and private funders have extensively supported Foster’s artistic research over the last 15 years. In 2015–2017 Foster was leading the Art-Eco research project on empathetic-ecological humanity, which was funded by Kone Foundation. Her performances and media works have been exhibited in Finland, Iceland, Australia, Italy, Mexico, Hungary, Austria, Denmark, the Netherlands, and the USA. Foster’s film Sounds of Grey (2016) was an official selection of the Loikka on Tour program in 2018—2019, and her video work Lupina (2016) is in the collection of Tampere Art Museum. Foster has written several academic articles from the topics of recognition, contemporary art, dance, and ecosocial education. She lives and works in Tampere, surrounded by the thousands of lakes and forests of Finland.

Derek has taught meditation in Nunavut, BC, Ontario, Quebec and New Zealand for over 20 years. He is a resident teacher at the Morin Heights Dharma House in Quebec. He mixes meditation with activism, ecology, art, and humor. He helped to found and the Alliance for NonViolent Action (ANVA) and the first East Timor solidarity group in Canada. For the past 20 years, he has worked with Inuit organizations in Nunavut.