September 12, 2025
Reitz Union Rion Ballroom
8 AM – 4 PM
Discover a diverse array of sustainability projects at UF, join thought-provoking conversations, and learn more about AI’s role from the keynote speaker, Amelia Winger-Bearskin, Banks Preeminence Chair Associate Professor of Al and the Arts, an artist who innovates with artificial intelligence in ways that make a positive impact on our community and the environment.
The Summit is free and open to the public. Advance registration is not required but is recommended. To register, follow this link.
Summit Agenda
8:00 am | Check-in with Coffee
8:30 am | Welcome
Terry Harpold and Colleen Rua
9:00 am | Artistic Practice as/is Sustainability
Terry Harpold (moderator), Gabriele Belletti, Katerie Gladdys, Amy Richard
10:00 am | Folk Art and Music: Cultural Sustainability
Genesis Leonard (moderator), Steve Head, Porchia Moore, Tim Murray, Brandon Telg
11:00 am | Keynote
Amelia Winger-Bearskin
12:00 pm | Lunch Break
12:30 pm | Student Performance
1:00 pm | Storytelling and Social Sustainability
Jenny Hill (moderator), Laura Dallman Jillian Rogers, Jashodhara Sen, Manuel Simons
2:00 pm | Sustainable Careers
Jennifer Dasher (moderator), Andres Colmenares, Errol Nelson, Eric Segal, Lindsey Telg
3:00 pm | Food is Medicine
Oṣubi Craig (moderator), Katerie Gladdys, Dina Liebowitz, Karla Shelnutt
About the Speakers
Adegbola Adesogan is Associate Vice President and Director of UF’s Global Food Systems Institute.
Gabriele Belletti is a poet, Assistant Professor of Italian and French at UF, and Editor-in-Chief of Delos. A Journal of Translation World Literature. His research interests encompass environmental humanities, 20th and 21st-century poetics, migration studies, and the literary connections between Italy and France. He has published numerous articles and books on contemporary poetics, including his recent volume Objet et Sujet dans les Miroirs de la Poésie. His poems and translations have appeared in various journals, including Alfabeta2, Quaderna, and Atelier. His poetry collection Krill, addressing the environmental disaster of the Deepwater Horizon explosion in the Gulf of Mexico, was recently adapted into a theatrical production for the European Green Poetry Festival.
Andres Colmenares is the Graduate Programs Marketing and Recruitment Specialist for the UF Center for Arts in Medicine. He holds a Bachelor of Arts in English from UF with a minor in Mass Communications and is currently pursuing a Master of Arts in Mass Communication with a specialization in Digital Strategy and Marketing. Andres is committed to clear, inclusive communication that supports student success, including non-traditional and underrepresented student populations. He combines creative strategy, technology, and community-centered storytelling to promote meaningful work in arts in health.
Oṣubi Craig is an arts administrator, artist and engineer possessing comprehensive experience as a higher education administrator, ensemble director, performing artist, presenter, arts center director, arts integration advocate, and education facilitator. Oṣubi brings a great deal of experience and energy to his role as the inaugural director of the recently launched Center for Arts, Migration, and Entrepreneurship (CAME) in the UF College of the Arts. His current work focuses on the intersections of arts, science, technology, entrepreneurship, and diasporic communities. This includes the creative economy space and directly supporting Artists’ and Creatives’ entrepreneurial efforts in their communities with a view towards global impact. As the director of CAME, he brings together faculty, artists, and community organizers from around the world to more broadly connect, collaborate, and create.
Laura Dallman is an Assistant Professor in the UF School of Music. She is a musicologist with research interests in American symphonic music, the symphony as an institution, music and tourism, soundwalking, and music history pedagogy. Her research addresses issues of representation and accessibility, often as they relate to symphonic sound and attitudes of access within symphonic institutions. In this vein, she examines works by Aaron Copland, Michael Daugherty, and Jennifer Higdon, composers who are often labeled “accessible” by critics and listeners. Her other projects consider intersections in the fields of musicology and tourism studies, as well as soundwalking as a pedagogical tool.
Jennifer Dasher is a collaborative designer whose creative vision elevates and shapes the storytelling of high-profile, innovative live entertainment. Her portfolio spans global tours for superstars including Beyoncé (“Formation”), Madonna (“Rebel Heart”), and Taylor Swift (1989, The Eras Tour). She has worked with companies including Cirque du Soleil, Disney, and Tait where her sense of aesthetics, performance flow, and technical execution transform the imagery audiences remember. Jen co-authored “Bringing Set and Costume Designs to Fruition, Made by Teams,” presenting processes for collaboration across a spectrum of live entertainment venues that recognize human sustainability. As Associate Professor and Assistant Director of Theatre + Dance at UF, she also leads the Graduate Design Program, blending design theory with industry expertise.
Katerie Gladdys is a transdisciplinary artist who thinks about place, marginalized landscapes, sustainability, mapping, consumption, food, agriculture, and disability. She creates installations, interactive, sculpture, video, and relational performances. Her creative work has been exhibited in national and international juried venues, including in the UK, Canada, Germany, Spain, and Croatia. She is currently a professor in Studio Art specializing in Art and Technology in the School of Art and Art History at the University of Florida. Past partners in collaboration include Working Food, UF’s School of Forest Resources and Wildlife Conservation and Office of Sustainability, the Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences’ Center for Public Issues and Education, and the Gainesville community.
Terry Harpold is Associate Professor of English, the founder and Director of UF’s Imagining Climate Change initiative, and Assistant Director for Humanities Research of UF’s Astraeus Space Institute. His research and teaching are focused on the poetics and ethics of environmental transformation and climate change, with an emphasis on intersectional (human) and interspecies (more than human) approaches to environmental justice, equity, and resilience. He is also a scholar of science fiction literature and film from the mid-nineteenth century through to the contemporary era. Among his current writing projects are a collection of essays co-edited with M. Elizabeth Ginway, Latin America Writes Back: Political and Ecological Crisis in Science Fiction, and a single-author monograph, Beware the Blob, on the poetics of “unquiet matter” in contemporary environmental fiction, poetry, and film.
Jenny Hill is the Research Administration Manager for the UF College of the Arts, supporting faculty in finding and securing grant funding and forming collaborative partnerships to further their creative arts research. She provides trainings on grant seeking, project and budget planning, proposal writing, and 1:1 support in preparing a grant application. Her career includes work in legal research, HR management, and education, including instruction in theater, dance, language arts, and yoga. She holds a BA in drama with a minor in dance from Duke University and an MEd from the University of Florida.
Steve Head handles business development and artist relations at Pulp Arts, Gainesville. He interfaces with artists, record labels, managers, nonprofits, and brands to create compelling recording residencies, unique content, and live concert experiences. He strives to share the creative energy on the Pulp Campus through intentional outreach via dynamic partnerships. His roots are in independent radio, music blogging, and DIY music promotions. He builds creative partnerships in Gainesville and across the country.
Genesis Leonard is a third year Museum Studies graduate student at the University of Florida. She has previously served as a docent at the Freedom Rides Museum, located in her hometown, Montgomery, Alabama. Genesis is passionate about directing her own art museum and cultural center tailored towards underserved BIPOC communities. Her research is centered on implementing culturally relevant narratives and themes into exhibition practices.
Dina Liebowitz is an ecologist and the Director of the Plant Science Program at the University of Florida. She brings a deep interest in supporting experiential learning in sustainable food systems and natural resources, and loves the amazing connections, curiosities, and conversations that form around growing food and community.
Tim Murray is an Adjunct Lecturer for the UF Center for Undergraduate Research, an ethnomusicologist, and a dedicated musician. His academic pursuits traverse the realms of Arctic ethnomusicology and anthropology, where he places a strong theoretical emphasis on musical soundscapes, phenomenology, and the semiotics of music and emotion. He has investigated communal soundscapes of Connecticut’s Ancient fife and drum community and, more recently, the impacts of Inuit drum dancing on the psychosocial well-being of Inuit residents in Ulukhaktok, an Inuit community in the Canadian Arctic in a recently published monograph, The Effects of Inuit Drum Dancing on Psychosocial Well-Being and Resilience. His educational journey includes earning a PhD and an MA in ethnomusicology from UF, complemented by a BA in English Literature from the University of North Texas.
Porchia Moore is an Associate Professor in Museum Studies at the UF School of Art and Art History and the Associate Director of the Center for Arts, Migration and Entrepreneurship. Her research examines the intersections of race, digital technologies, and cultural heritage institutions. She was the consulting curator for the exhibition Between Heaven & Earth: The Paintings of Alyne Harris at the Historic Thomas Center. The exhibition explored the work of celebrated Gainesville folk artist Alyne Harris. Moore is what the Digital Library Federation calls a “cross-pollinator.” Cross-pollinators recognize the inherent benefits of fusing the trainings of each profession (libraries and museums) to maximize opportunities for strengthening the cultural heritage sector.
Errol Nelson is a museum professional and art historian. As the Student Engagement Manager at the Samuel P. Harn Museum of Art, he coordinates adult museum programming that fosters artist, student, and community collaborations. He is a scholar and change-maker with a keen interest in the art histories of the United States during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. His geographical research focuses on material culture and visual arts of the Southern United States, particularly objects made by self-liberated and enslaved persons. His recent scholarship examines the legacy of James A. Porter, the pioneering Howard University professor whose advocacy for Black artists and art education continues to resonate in higher education today.
Amy Richard is a Gainesville artist. Her connection with the natural environment began at an early age, exploring the shallow coastal waters near her home in South Miami. Many years later, this translated into a career as a visual artist, illustrator and science writer, interpreting research about aquatic ecology for the non-scientific public. In 2013, a fascination with paper as a sustainable creative medium led her to study at the University of Iowa, Center for the Book where she completed an MFA in Paper and Book Arts with a focus on Asian-style papermaking, as well as the spiritual and healing aspects of the practice. Richard makes much of her work using bast fiber from paper mulberry saplings growing in her front yard (which grow back every year). Her work can be found in numerous private and public collections including the Smithsonian Art and Portrait Gallery Library, and the Newberry Library in Chicago among others.
Dr. Jillian Rogers is Assistant Professor of Musicology in UF’s College of the Arts. She studies relationships between music, sound, and trauma in various historical, cultural, and contemporary contexts. Rogers is the author of Resonant Recoveries: French Music and Trauma Between the World Wars (OUP 2021), and her work on music and trauma, sound studies, and French music has appeared or is forthcoming in Transposition, Nineteenth-Century Music Review, Music & Letters, Journal of the American Musicological Society, Music & Politics, and Journal of the Royal Musical Association. She is a co-editor of The Oxford Handbook of Music, Sound, and Trauma Studies and a co-founder of the Sonic Histories of Cork City (SHOCC) Project.
Colleen Rua is the Acting Associate Dean of Research and Strategic Initiatives for the UF College of the Arts and Associate Professor of Theatre Studies in the School of Theatre and Dance. She is also an affiliate faculty in the Center for Latin American Studies, the Center for Arts in Medicine, and the Center for Arts, Migration, and Entrepreneurship. Her research interests include Latinx Theatre/Contemporary Puerto Rican Theatre, Immersive Theatre, the American Musical, and Theatre for Youth. Her book, Performance, Trauma, and Puerto Rico in Musical Theatre, puts commercial theatre in conversation with community-engaged practice in Puerto Rico, and considers the Y no había luz theatre collective as “performers of care,” as they mobilize joy and belonging in response to natural disaster, trauma and healing.
Eric Segal is the Director of Education and Curator of Academic Programs at the Samuel P. Harn Museum of Art. He is responsible for designing Harn programs that engage faculty and students at the University of Florida, Santa Fe College and other area colleges. In this capacity he works with students and student groups directly. He also works extensively with faculty to incorporate museum resources into the curriculum of all disciplines. Prior to assuming his current position at the Harn, he taught Art History at UF, including undergraduate and graduate courses in the history of American and African American art, illustration, and museum history and theory. He has published on nineteenth and twentieth century American art and illustration, and he lectures nationally and internationally at museums and universities on American art and museum education.
Dr. Jashodhara Sen is a theatre and performance studies historian, director, and dramaturg specializing in South Asian theatre. Her research focuses on the evolution of Bengali performance, Jatra, as a cultural enterprise and a provocative form of theatre, both socially and politically charged, to support grassroots engagement. Her research and reviews have appeared in the Journal of Dramatic Theory and Criticism, Ecumenica, Asian Theatre Journal, New England Theatre Journal, and Texas Theatre Journal. Her work bridges theatre history, postcolonial and subaltern studies, and autoethnography, with a commitment to cultural sustainability through both scholarship and practice. Her current book project, Intersectionality in ‘Folk’ Performance through Identity and Expression (in production), focuses on the culturally specific performance form of jatra and its various modalities, centering on class and gender dynamics.
Karla Shelnutt is Professor and Associate Dean for Extension Engagement in UF’s Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences (IFAS).
Manuel Simons is an Assistant Professor of Acting and Performance in the UF School of Theatre and Dance. Throughout an extensive career as a professional director, actor, educator, and researcher, Manuel has approached arts practice and education as analytically engaged mediums that intersect with civic, social, cultural, and historical issues and events in local and global contexts. Manuel’s research focuses on the development of evidence-based theatre arts pedagogies that foster excellence and opportunity for all learners. Manuel received the American Association of Theatre and Education’s Distinguished Dissertation Award for doctoral research on theater teaching artists’ approaches to individuating instruction to successfully teach all learners.
Brandon Telg is an Academic Program Specialist in the UF Center for Arts in Medicine and a social entrepreneur who strives to help people grow through understanding and developing their personal stories. He combines his experience in communication with a hands-on mentoring approach to work with people and organizations to achieve their goals. He holds a Master’s Degree in Leadership Development from UF, specializing in the study of Organizational Narrative. Active in the music industry, he is an artist manager and co-founded MusicGNV, Gainesville’s premiere nonprofit program supporting independent musicians. He also works with independent record labels supporting a wide range of musicians.
Lindsey Telg is a Clinical Lecturer in UF’s Department of Occupational Therapy, College of Public Health and Health Professions. She received her Bachelor of Science in Health Sciences at Florida International University, her Masters in Occupational Therapy from the University of Florida, and her Post-Professional Doctorate of Occupational Therapy from Marymount University. As an Occupational Therapist, she has worked in adult inpatient rehabilitation, adult outpatient, and outpatient pediatrics. She specializes in care for clients with traumatic brain injury, executive function challenges, pediatric feeding delays, and trauma-based concerns.
Amelia Winger-Bearskin (Seneca-Cayuga Nation of Oklahoma) is an artist who uses Artificial Intelligence as a creative medium and conceptual framework. Her practice addresses urgent global issues, from climate justice to homelessness, while revealing the moral codes that shape communities. She is the Banks Family Preeminence Endowed Chair and Associate Professor of Artificial Intelligence and the Arts in UF’s Digital Worlds Institute. She is also the founder of the AI Climate Justice Lab, the Talk To Me About Water Collective, and the Stupid Hackathon. Her work combines immersive storytelling and ethical AI to address climate change, housing, and the design of Indigenous-led systems of care and kinship. She is the creator of Wampum Codes and a former fellow of Stanford, Mozilla, and MIT’s Co-Creation Studio. Her projects have been featured at the Sundance Film Festival, the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), and the Whitney Museum. Through art, code, and collaboration, she builds new tools for justice and imagination.
“Sustainability Summit 2025” is sponsored by the Center for Humanities and the Public Sphere, the Imagining Climate Change initiative, and the College of the Arts Creative B Summer Program in partnership with the UF Office of the Provost.