Forgiveness and Reconciliation - PAX 563

Dr. Hizkias Assefa is Professor of the Practice at CJP (SPI only) at Eastern Mennonite
University and is an active peacebuilding practitioner and trainer in many parts of the world.
Operating out of Nairobi, Kenya, he has worked as a mediator and facilitator of reconciliation
processes at political and community levels in a number of civil wars in Africa, Latin America,
and Asia including Rwanda, Sierra Leone, Senegal, Sri Lanka, Israel/Palestine, and Guatemala.
In Kenya he worked with the African Union and United Nations at mediating between the
government and the opposition parties involved in the 2007 election-sparked violence. This work
led to the power-sharing government that governed the country between 2008 and 2013.
Thereafter, he mediated the conflict between the Government of South Sudan and the South
Sudan Democratic Army/Movement that led to the peace agreement of May 9, 2014. Recently,
he has been engaged in peacebuilding in the Christian-Muslim conflict areas of Nigeria as well
as in various inter-ethnic reconciliation processes in Ethiopia. He was appointed to Ethiopia’s
National Reconciliation Commission in 2019. Dr. Assefa has served as a consultant on
peacemaking under situations of humanitarian crisis to the United Nations, the European Union,
and several international and national Non-governmental organizations (NGOs). He holds a
Master of Laws from Northwestern University, MS in economics, MPA in public management
and a PhD in public and international affairs from the University of Pittsburgh.

Music and Peacebuilding - PAX  691

Benjamin Bergey is assistant professor of music at EMU, where he directs the choirs and orchestra, and teaches courses on music and peacebuilding, music theory, and conducting. He is an active musician who currently serves as assistant conductor for the Shenandoah Valley Bach Festival, and he also conducts the Rapidan Orchestra in Orange, VA.

He completed his doctorate and masters at James Madison University in Orchestral Conducting. His doctoral research focused on how ensemble music can be a tool in peacebuilding by bringing diverse people together for building empathy and dialogue, using two groups in Israel and Palestine as examples. He then started and now advises a new major at EMU called Music and Peacebuilding.

Additionally, Bergey is a prominent music leader in the Mennonite Church, having recently served as Director of Music at Harrisonburg Mennonite Church for six years, and notably as Music Editor for Voices Together, the hymnal for Mennonite Church USA and Mennonite Church Canada, as well as compiler and editor for the hymnal's Accompaniment Edition. He regularly leads worship and resourcing events at assemblies, workshops, and conferences, and was the music planner for the 2022 Mennonite World Conference Assembly music and songbook.

Strategies for Trauma Awareness and Resilience (STAR), Level 2 - PAX 640

Gun Violence, Restorative Justice, and Community Healing - PAX 686

Dr. Ram Bhagat is a longtime educator, arts innovator, and peacemaker. Ram is committed to healing trauma in classrooms, communities, and consciousness. He is the visionary behind the Richmond Youth Peace Project (RYPP), a dynamic program that promotes a culture of nonviolence to the city’s youth,
through innovative, youth-led peacemaking initiatives. He also serves on the board of The Conciliation Project (TCP), which uses active and challenging dramatic works to promote open and honest dialogue about racism and oppression in America in order to repair its damaging legacy.
Dr. Bhagat received his doctorate in Educational Leadership from VCU. He earned a Master’s of
Education in School and Community Counseling from Virginia State University and his Bachelor of
Science in Microbiology from Virginia State. His post-doctoral work is in the areas of Restorative Justice,
Trauma Healing, Social Emotional Learning, and Culturally Responsive Mindfulness practices.  
Dr. Bhagat is the newly hired Manager of School Climate and Culture Strategy for Richmond Public
Schools. His primary role is to envision, design, and connect trauma informed practices and restorative practices to schools and communities throughout the division. He intends to help lead RPS and its partners, like VCU, in the creation of a sustainable and transformative model of equitable and just learning environments for all students.
Dr. Bhagat is actively involved in healing the effects of racial trauma within communities of color as a
leader of Emotional Emancipation Circles in Virginia. Ram was an inaugural member of the International Healing and Rebuilding Our Communities training for trainers in Burundi, East Africa, held in August 2011. This transformative program facilitates healing community trauma, particularly trauma caused by violence, war, and genocide. Ram began teaching Strategies for Trauma Awareness and Resilience (STAR) in 2017, after extensive coursework, training, and a supervised apprenticeship with Elaine Zook-Barge.
In the early 1990s, Ram co-founded Drums No Guns (DNG) world percussion ensemble to engage youth in “healing community with rhythm.” More than two decades later, the DNG Foundation continues to work with youth traumatized by gun violence around the country, using drumming, dance, and other culturally responsive contemplative practices.
Dr. Bhagat uses the drum to unite people of all ages, of all races. This award winning science teacher
created a series of innovative curricula for Yale University, through the National initiative to Strengthen Public School Teaching. His 3D curriculum is based on the principles of Aesthetic Education and Arts Integration, which infuses drumming, dance, and drama into the Chemistry curriculum.
His approach to Trauma Sensitive Restorative Justice in Education is rooted in the science of yoga and
indigenous mindfulness practices. He has been studying various forms of yoga with Dr. Janeshwar
Upadyay since 1975 and completed Integral Yoga teacher training in 2001.
A native son of New Haven, Conn., Ram lives with his blended family in Richmond, VA. He is an adjunct
faculty member with Eastern Mennonite University’s Graduate Teacher Education program and the
Center for Justice and Peacebuilding.

Analysis: Understanding Conflict - PAX 533 

Joe Cole is an Associate Professor in the Center for Justice and Peacebuilding at Eastern Mennonite University. Joe graduated with a Ph.D. in Philosophy from Duke University. His research and teaching interests include restorative justice and restorative practices, nonviolent social change, racial equity and social justice, and ecovillages and sustainable communities. In addition to his teaching, Joe is a facilitator who supports communities in developing cooperative skills, collaborative governance, and conflict transformation. He is the author of “Skill Building for a Culture of Collaboration,” Communities magazine #181; “Ecovillages, Sustainability, and Social and Environmental Healing,” in Rinker & Lawler (Eds.), Realizing Nonviolent Resilience (Peter Lang, 2020); “Photography, Healing, and Justice in Appalachia,” in the Journal of Transdisciplinary Peace Praxis, (Vol. 3, No. 1, 2021); and “What’s in a Name? Connecting Sustainable Community and Racial Justice,” in Ruiz (Ed.), Comunidades Intencionales: Utopias Concretas en la Historia, (Autonomous University of Madrid, 2023).

Lisa Y. Collins is an Assistant Professor in the Educational Leadership Department at Lewis and Clark College in Portland, Oregon. Her scholarship focuses on racial healing through a personal analysis of racialized trauma. Her recent work analyzes her experiences as a Black female educator in three predominantly white educational organizations in Oregon, integrating Black Feminist Thought, organizational learning and development, Strategies for Trauma Awareness and Resilience (STAR), interpersonal neurobiology, and traumatic stress and trauma. She provides healing frameworks to a world in need using STAR as a modality for racial healing, the Developmental Individual Relationship Model (DIR) as an intervention for educational access, and Life Coaching as an interruption to racialized organizational culture. Dr. Collins takes her scholarship outside the academy through multiple venues. Her TEDx Talk chronicles the healing modalities that resulted for herself and others from her research. Her newly released book, Love of Light: A Guide to Peace and Oneness, guides consciousness, boosts self-awareness, and provides tools for living in peace, and her podcast focuses on positive examples of healing practices in the world. As a playwright, she has produced works in New York and Portland, and her popular festival-accepted short film, Be Careful What You Ask For, serves as a platform for racial discussions.

Global Challenges, Local Struggles, Transnational Solidarities - PAX 635

Paula Ditzel Facci has recently joined EMU as assistant professor of peacebuilding at the Center for Justice and Peacebuilding. She holds a PhD in Peace and Conflict Studies from the University Jaume I (Spain). She was a visiting research fellow at the Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies, University of Notre Dame, and a visiting scholar at CJP, EMU (USA).

Paula has taught at the Unit for Peace and Conflict Studies, University of Innsbruck (Austria), the Academy for Conflict Transformation (Germany), and the Instituto Paz e Mente (Brazil). She has also facilitated workshops on creative approaches for conflict transformation with focus on dance and movement for students, peacebuilders and communities.

Paula is the author of Dancing Conflicts, Unfolding Peaces (2020), and On Human Potential: Peace and Conflict Transformation Fostered Through Dance (2011). She published a Practitioner’s Toolkit: Gender in Peace and Conflict (2020), and co-edited the special issue “Transrational Perspectives in Peace Education”, of the Journal of Peace Education (2019). She authored chapters in culture of peace for educators and youth and worked as a consultant in Reports on Human Rights Education of the InterAmerican Institute of Human Rights, Costa Rica. Previously, Paula worked for five years with social and educational projects in Brazil, her native country.

Unsettling Antiracism - PAX 693

David Evans is Associate Professor of history and intercultural studies and the director of Cross  Cultural Programs at Eastern Mennonite Seminary. His teaching and research focus on the braided identity categories of race, religion, and nation. He is the co-editor of Between the World of Ta-Nehisi Coates and Christianity. Dr. Evans is currently working on a book project that explores the work of Dorothy Day, Clarence Jordan, and Ralph Templin in the context of the long Black Freedom Movement entitled, Damned Whiteness: How White Christian Allies Failed the Black Freedom Movement.

RJ: Principles, Theories, Applications - PAX 571

TAMMY KRAUSE, Ph.D., has worked on federal death penalty cases throughout the United States for over twenty-five years. She is co-coordinator Defense-Victim Outreach for the Federal Death Penalty Resource Counsel Project. With Howard Zehr and Dick Burr, Krause pioneered the legal profession’s Defense-Victim Outreach, which seeks to establish relationships between defense attorneys and the survivors and family members of victims of violent crime in an effort to bridge the historical gap between the two. Defense-Victim Outreach works to integrate restorative justice principles into legal cases to better address the judicial needs of both the harmed parties and the accused. Krause is also a trained facilitator of victim-offender dialogue and is asked to assist in this process throughout the United States.
Krause obtained a Ph.D. from the University of Manchester School of Law in England and a
master’s degree in Conflict Transformation from Eastern Mennonite University, Harrisonburg,
Virginia. Krause's work awarded her two fellowships, a Soros Justice Fellowship (1998-2000)
and an Ashoka: Innovators for the Public Fellowship (2001-2004). In 2016, Krause was awarded
the Center for Justice and Peacebuilding Alumni of the Year award. In 2019, Krause delivered a
TEN Talk at Eastern Mennonite University’s Homecoming. Krause has also taught Restorative
Justice Practices at the Center for Justice & Peacebuilding, Eastern Mennonite University.

When she isn’t working, Krause is an avid hiker and walker in the woods. She recently walked
the Camino del Norte in Spain and is dreaming of her next pilgrimage.

Unsettling Antiracism - PAX 693

Jonathan McRay is a father, farmer, facilitator, and writer in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia. He grew up in the Central Appalachian Mountains of East Tennessee and worked in Palestine and Mozambique before returning home to take responsibility for his life and history. Jonathan helped found and garden Vine and Fig, an urban farm, education center, and supportive home, where he also served as house mediator. He teaches classes and workshops on cultural ecology, radical social movements, and agroecology and supports grassroots groups and organizations through conflict transformation, restorative justice, and participatory decision-making. He farms with Silver Run Forest Farm, a riparian nursery, woodland collective, and folk school propagating beautiful and useful tree crops (and other plants) that cross-pollinate food sovereignty and ecological restoration.

Jonathan has facilitated circles of support and accountability in the legal system and community, as well as emotional support circles for a residential mental health and recovery program. He joined grassroots organizing against jail expansions, immigrant detentions, and white nationalists, and helped provide de-escalation and nonviolent protection for local youth-led uprisings in 2020. While in Palestine, Jonathan worked as a journalist, wrote a book based on interviews with Israeli Messianic Jews and Palestinian Christians, as support for a therapeutic community, and unarmed accompaniment for nonviolent direct action. He has an MA in Conflict Transformation and Restorative Justice and trained with the Emergent Strategy Ideation Institute.

Jonathan does what he does because he loves trees, the land he tends, his friends, and the beautiful biodiversity of rainbow coalitions to make the world free from violence and waste. 

Circle Processes - PAX 672

Kay Pranis teaches and writes about the dialog process known as 'peacemaking circles'. Kay learned about peacemaking circles in her work in restorative justice in the mid-90s. From 1994 – 2003 Kay held the position of Restorative Justice Planner at the MN Dept of Corrections.

Her initial teachers in the circle work include Barry Stuart, a judge in Yukon, Canada, and Mark Wedge, a member of the Tagish/Tlingit First Nation. Tahnahga Yako has been an important on-going mentor for her practice. Since that initial exposure to the use of peacemaking circles in the criminal legal system, Kay has been involved in developing the use of peacemaking circles in schools, social services, churches, families, museums, universities, municipal planning and workplaces.

Kay has authored or co-authored several books about circles: Peacemaking Circles - From Conflict to Community; The Little Book of Circle Processes – A New/Old Approach to Peacemaking; Doing Democracy with Circles – Engaging Communities in Public Planning; Heart of Hope – A Guide for Using Peacemaking Circles to Develop Emotional Literacy, Promote Healing & Build Healthy Relationships; Circle Forward – Building a Restorative School Community.

Kay works primarily as a trainer in the peacemaking circle process. She is also an adjunct professor at Eastern Mennonite University.

Kay has a particular interest in the use of circles to support social justice efforts addressing racial, economic, class and gender inequities. That interest includes the use of peacemaking circles to understand and respond to historical harms to groups of people. The peacemaking circle process has been a source of energy, inspiration and continuous learning for Kay for the past 25 years.

Transformational Leadership for Effective Change - PAX 568

Lori enjoys working with people and organizations in service of their growth and development, whether through teaching, facilitating meetings or retreats, individual or group coaching, or creating strategic intentions or plans. She founded Stonewave Leadership, LLC, is an ICF-accredited leadership coach, a certified Presence-Based® coach, and offers coaching, consulting, and facilitation services for higher education institutions, non-profit organizations, and small- to- mid-size businesses. As a growth-minded practitioner, Lori is perpetually curious about how people and organizations develop and grow, and in partnering with them to create inner and external environments in which to thrive.

Analysis: Understanding Conflict - PAX 533
Formation for Peacebuilding Practice - PAX 532                                                              

Gloria Rhodes is associate professor of peacebuilding and conflict studies at EMU. As a faculty member at the Center for Justice and Peacebuilding, she teaches conflict and peacebuilding theory, personal formation for peacebuilding practice, and conflict analysis. She also teaches courses in conflict transformation and peacebuilding for the undergraduate program and the Masters of Nursing program.  She has led semester and summer cross cultural programs in Northern Ireland, the Republic of Ireland, Russia, South Korea and the Navajo Nation. She has served as Department Chair of EMU's Applied Social Science Department, Administrative Director of the Summer Peacebuilding Institute at EMU and as a program assistant for the National Conference on Peacemaking and Conflict Resolution. Her areas of expertise include peacebuilding curriculum development and pedagogy, conflict assessment and situation analysis, practice-related research, group facilitation and mediation, enneagram training, and cross cultural education. She holds a PhD in conflict analysis and resolution from George Mason University.

Strategies for Trauma Awareness and Resilience (STAR), Level 1 - PAX 540