Ruth Barton is Associate Professor in Film Studies and Head of School of Creative Arts at Trinity College Dublin. As well as her biography of Hedy Lamarr, Hedy Lamarr, The Most Beautiful Woman in Film (University Press of Kentucky, 2010), she has published widely on Irish cinema and the Irish diaspora. Her latest publication is Irish Cinema in the Twenty-First Century (Manchester University Press, 2019).

Ranen Omer-Sherman is The JHFE Endowed Chair in Judaic Studies at the University of Louisville. He is the author or editor of five books, including Diaspora and Zionism in Jewish American Literature: Lazarus, Syrkin, Reznikoff, Roth (2002), Israel in Exile: Jewish Writing and the Desert (2006), The Jewish Graphic Novel: Critical Approaches (2008), Narratives of Dissent: War in Contemporary Israeli Arts and Culture (2013), and Imagining Kibbutz: Visions of Utopia in Literature and Film (2015), as well as numerous essays.

Marcie Cohen Ferris is an emeritus professor in the Department of American Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where she serves as an editor for Southern Cultures, a quarterly journal of the history and cultures of the U.S. South. Ferris is the author of The Edible South:  The Power of Food and the Making of an American Region (UNC Press, 2014), Matzoh Ball Gumbo: Culinary Tales of the Jewish South (UNC Press, 2005; nominated for a James Beard Award, 2006), and co-editor of Jewish Roots in Southern Soil: A New History (Brandeis, 2006). Ferris’ scholarship addresses issues of regional identity, culture, history, and place. Her teaching examines the history of the Jewish South, American Food Studies, American Jewish women’s history, and the histories and cultures of the American South.

Rona Atlas has been part of the administrative and educational team at Pelech since 2010. She has a BA in Jewish history from the Hebrew University and a MA in Jewish education. Her teaching certificate is from Kerem Institute.

Beth Schenker is the host and executive producer of The Big Schmear, a podcast about the history and culture of Jewish food. She is a member of the Boston-based Jewish Arts Collaborative Think Tank. Schenker held the title of Associate Dean for Public and Noncredit Programs for over thirteen years at the Spertus Institute for Jewish Learning and Leadership in Chicago.

Tafat Hacohen-Bick wrote her doctoral dissertation on the subject of theology and poetics in the poetry of Pinchas Sadeh, Yona Wallach, and Zelda Schneerson, under the supervision of Dr. Hamutal Tsamir, in the Department of Hebrew Literature at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev. She is currently a postdoctoral fellow at Heksherim Institute in the department of Hebrew Literature in Ben-Gurion University and teaches at Achva college and at Ben-Gurion University in Eilat.

Elissa Gershowitz is executive editor of The Horn Book, Inc. She holds an MA from the Center for the Study of Children's Literature at Simmons University and a BA from Oberlin College. She has chaired the Boston Globe-Horn Book Award Committee and served on the Sydney Taylor Book Award Committee.

Dr. Miranda Crowdus is a research associate at the European Centre for Jewish Music at the Hanover University of Music, Drama and Media in Germany. Her main research areas are in Jewish Music Studies and Ethnomusicology in which she has authored many publications. She earned her doctorate at City University London (2016), focusing on Jewish identity, popular music, and cross-cultural encounters in South Tel Aviv. Her first book, Hip Hop in Urban Borderlands: Music-Making, Identity, and Intercultural Dynamics on the Margins of the Jewish State, was published at the end of 2018.

Ellie Ash is a doctoral student in the Graduate Program in Religion at Boston University. Her research focuses on relationships with Jewish law, religious authority, and liberal values among lay members of a partnership minyan community in the United States.

Elyce Rae Helford, PhD, is professor of English at Middle Tennessee State University, where she also directs the Jewish and Holocaust Studies minor. Her teaching and research center on film and cultural studies, with emphasis on issues of gender, ethnicity, and race. She is the author of What Price Hollywood? Gender and Sex in the Films of George Cukor (2020) and editor of The Woman Fantastic in Contemporary American Popular Culture (2016) and Fantasy Girls: Gender in the New Universe of Science Fiction and Fantasy Television (2000). She is currently co-editing the forthcoming collection World Cinema Through a Noir Lens for Edinburgh University Press. More at www.elycehelford.com. 

Ruth Panofsky, FRSC, is Professor of English at Ryerson University in Toronto, where she specializes in Canadian Literature. Her publications on Canadian Jewish women writers include The Force of Vocation: The Literary Career of Adele Wiseman (2006) and the award-winning two-volume Collected Poems of Miriam Waddington: A Critical Edition (2014). She is editor of The New Spice Box: Contemporary Jewish Writing (2020).

Debra Caplan is Associate Professor of Theater at Baruch College, City University of New York. Her book, Yiddish Empire: The Vilna Troupe, Jewish Theater, and the Art of Itinerancy (University of Michigan Press, 2018), won the George Freedley Memorial Award from the Theatre Library Association. Her work on Yiddish theater and performance has appeared in Theatre Survey, Theatre Journal, Modern Drama, Comparative Drama, Aschkenaz, Pakn Treger, In Geveb: A Journal of Jewish Studies, American Theatre Magazine, and New England Theatre Journal.

Liat Steir-Livny is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Culture at Sapir Academic College, as well as a tutor and course coordinator for the Cultural Studies MA program and the Department of Literature, Language, and the Arts at the Open University of Israel. Her research focuses on Holocaust commemoration in Israel from the 1940s until the present. It combines Holocaust Studies, Memory Studies, Cultural Studies, Trauma Studies, and Film Studies. She is the author of many articles and five books. She is the recipient of the 2019 Young Scholar Award given jointly by the Association for Israel Studies (AIS) and the Israel Institute. Website: www.liatsteirlivny.com.

Isabella Ginor, former Soviet/Russian affairs specialist for Ha’aretz newspaper, and Gideon Remez, former head of foreign news at Voice of Israel radio, have for more than twenty years been researching the political, military and intelligence involvement of the USSR and post-Soviet Russia in the Middle East. Their award-winning publications include Foxbats over Dimona: The Soviets’ Nuclear Gamble in the Six-Day War (Yale, 2007) and The Soviet-Israeli War, 1967-1973 (Hurst/Oxford, 2017).

Didi Goldenhar is a writer and strategist in the nonprofit sector. As Senior Program Consultant to AWP, she collaborated in all research and initiatives and is co-author of the AWP guidebook, Leveling the Playing Field: Advancing Women in Jewish Organizational Life. Her articles and reports have been published by the Stanford Social Innovation Review, Nathan Cummings Foundation, and Open Society Foundation, among many.

Ruth Cooper Reidbord was born in 1931 to immigrant parents who settled in a small mill town in Southwestern Pennsylvania. She attended public school in Leechburg and a tiny religious school. She met E.L. Konigsburg, then known as Elaine Lobl, at Carnegie Mellon University (then the Carnegie Institute of Technology). Reidbord later received a Masters Degree in Urban Planning and worked as City Planner for the Pittsburgh suburb of Mt. Leganon. She is a member of Temple Sinai in Pittsburgh and has pursued Jewish learning for most of her adult life.