2025 Event Coordinators
Melisa Cahnmann-Taylor ([email protected])
Co-Director
Dr. Cahnmann-Taylor is a Meigs Professor of Education in the Mary Frances Early College of Education’s Department of Language and Literacy Education. She is the author of “The Creative Ethnographer’s Notebook,” “Imperfect Tense,” and five other books on the arts of language and education. The recipient of numerous NEA Big Read Grants, a NEA Distinguished Fellowship, Hambidge Residency Award, and the Beckman Award, her poems, translations, and creative nonfiction have appeared in The Georgia Review, Bitter Southerner, Lilith, Poet Lore, Rattle, American Poetry Review, Barrow Street, Hadassah, Plume and elsewhere. Her website is www.melisacahnmanntaylor.com.
Mira Kallio-Tavin ([email protected])
Co-Director
Dr. Kallio-Tavin is a Distinguished Professor of Art at the Lamar Dodd School of Art, University of Georgia. Her research focuses on qualitative, post-qualitative and posthuman approaches to artistic and arts-based inquiry. Her artistic practice primarily involves video and painting. Her scholarship engages with critical disability studies as well as more-than-human perspectives in contemporary art practices and educational contexts. Dr. Kallio-Tavin has published extensively in international academic journals, with a total of 110 articles and book chapters, 60 of which are peer-reviewed.
Jennifer Whitehead
Assistant Director
Jennifer Leigh Whitehead is a first-year doctoral student in Theatre and Performance Studies at the University of Georgia and a research assistant with the UGA Arts Collaborative. Her work focuses on mediated performance, collective embodiment and affect across the Americas. Her current interests include ritual, subcultural practices and popular spectacle, such as rave and sport. She is also a multimedia performer and is committed to advancing social justice and educational equity.
2025 Competition Jurors
Llewellyn J. Cornelius
Dr. Llewellyn J. Cornelius is the Donald Lee Hollowell Distinguished Professor of Civil Rights and Social Justice Studies Director at the Center for Social Justice, Human, and Civil Rights at the University of Georgia. His research focuses on developing community-responsive, culturally appropriate educational, attitudinal and behavioral change interventions as well as examining the barriers to the adoption of successful interventions by individuals, practitioners and communities. In 2019, Dr. Cornelius received the Carl A. Scott Memorial Lecturer Award from the Council on Social Work Education in recognition of his lifetime achievements in social and economic justice.
Lynn Sanders-Bustle
Dr. Lynn Sanders-Bustle is an associate professor of art education in the Lamar Dodd School of Art. She is the editor of the book, “Image, Inquiry, and Transformative Practice: Engaging Learners in Creative and Critical Inquiry Through Visual Representation.” Sanders-Bustle’s work has been published in professional journals such as the International Journal of Art and Design Education, Studies in Art Education, the Canadian Review of Art Education, the Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy and the International Journal of Education. Her research and creative projects focus on socially engaged art, community-based art education, service-learning and teacher preparation.
Anne Shaffer
Dr. Anne Shaffer serves as associate dean of the Graduate School, where she oversees general operations and supports strategic initiatives to advance graduate education at UGA. She is a professor in the Department of Psychology, where she mentors doctoral students and maintains an active program of research in clinical and developmental psychology. Her research focuses on risk, resilience, and development in the family context, with an emphasis on emotion regulation and communication. She has published over 60 peer-reviewed articles.
Rebecca Gose
Rebecca Gose, MFA, was a principal dancer with Garth Fagan Dance where she toured the U.S., Europe, South America, New Zealand and Israel. As an associate professor in the Department of Dance, she teaches contemporary modern technique, dance science and dance pedagogy. Her scholarly work interrogates the traditional dance class culture through motor learning and somatic frameworks and has been published in such journals as The Journal of Dance Education, Brain Sciences and the International Journal of Education & the Arts. As a choreographer, she explores personal and historical narratives from trauma and war to social comparison to illuminate universal psychological themes.
Vale Prosper, Isabella Tallman-Jones, Adah Bennion, and Keren Sahar
