Advisory Board

Riham Alieldin is a physician and a medical educator. Her expertise entails the design and implementation of constructive learning experiences for health professionals as well as the evaluation of medical education programs to produce healthcare providers who are prepared to serve the fundamental purposes of medicine and patient care. She also has experience in teaching and investigating diversity, equity, and inclusion issues in health professionals' education and patient care with a desire to build educational and health systems that provide equity and inclusion for all. Alieldin obtained her Ph.D. in health professionals’ education at the University of Rochester in 2022 and is currently an adjunct faculty at the same university. Her current research examines the use of innovative technology like simulation and extended reality (AR/VR) in medical education with a specific focus on empathy and empathic communication training.

Bryan Carter received his Ph.D. at the University of Missouri-Columbia and is currently the director of the Center for Digital Humanities and an associate professor in Africana Studies at the University of Arizona. He specializes in African American literature of the 20th Century with a primary focus on the Harlem Renaissance. His research also focuses on digital humanities/Africana studies. He has published numerous articles on his doctoral project, “Virtual Harlem,” an immersive representation of a portion of Harlem, New York, as it existed during the 1920s Jazz Age and Harlem Renaissance. Carter’s research centers on how the use of traditional and advanced interactive and immersive technologies changes the dynamic within the learning space. Carter has completed his first book entitled “Digital Humanities: Current Perspectives, Practice and Research through Emerald Publishing,” and has just completed his second manuscript through Routledge Press, entitled: “AfroFuturism: Experiencing Culture Through Technology” (June 2022). His current work has also led to exploring the African American, and expatriate experience through immersive and augmented technologies using handheld devices and wearable technologies.

Damon Davis is an award-winning post-disciplinary artist who works and resides in St. Louis, Missouri. His work spans a spectrum of media to tell stories that explore how identity is informed by power and mythology. Davis is well known for his body of work, “Darker Gods,” which explores Afro-surrealist manifestations of Black culture. He is co-director of the critically acclaimed documentary “Whose Streets?,” chronicling the Ferguson rebellion, which premiered at the 2017 Sundance Film Festival. Davis was named one of Filmmaker Magazine's Twenty Five New Faces of Independent Film and Independent Magazine's 10 Filmmakers to Watch. Davis’s work is featured in the permanent collection of the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture. He is a Firelight Media, Sundance Labs, TED, and Kennedy Center Citizen Artist Fellow.

Al Evangelista is an assistant professor of dance at Oberlin College. He is a multidisciplinary artist whose creative process engages with social justice and performance studies. His research identifies ways in which theatre and dance provoke and create change. Evangelista choreographed works at Steppenwolf Garage, Links Hall, American Theatre Company, Chicago’s Night Out in the Parks, the University of Chicago, Moss Arts Center, Virginia Tech, the University of Michigan Museum of Modern Art, and Hill Auditorium. Al also acted and performed at Steppenwolf Theatre Company, Adventure Stage Chicago, Haven Theatre Company, Chicago Opera Theatre, Moss Arts Center, as well as, danced in works for Dance Exchange, the Chicago Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago’s Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events, The Inconvenience, Links Hall, among others. Hetrained with the Steppenwolf West program, American Conservatory Theater, and is a graduate of UC San Diego and the University of Michigan.

Ashley Shew is an associate professor in Science, Technology, and Society at Virginia Tech, where she participates in the S.T.S. Ph.D, program, the Medicine & Society minor, the disability studies minor, and integrative graduate education program on regenerative medicine. Her current research is about disabled expertise and disability-led narratives about technologies (in contrast to the tropey stories we usually get). Shew is co-editor-in-chief of Techne, the journal of the Society for Philosophy and Technology. She’s working on open educational resources on technology and disability with Hanna Herdegen, Damien Williams, and a team of undergraduate researchers, made possible through an NSF Grant #1750260 (2018-2023). She believes in cross-disciplinary, cross-disability, and public-facing scholarship: she has written for IEEE Technology & Society, Nursing Clio, Nature, the Chronicle of Higher Education, and Inside Higher Ed. She is a grateful participant with her local disability advocacy and activist communities in the Disability Alliance and Caucus at Virginia Tech and the New River Valley Disability Resource Center. Her book Against Technoableism comes out as part of a popular series with Norton in Fall 2023.