Chris Buttimer is a postdoctoral associate and educational researcher in the Teaching Systems Lab. His research focuses on supporting teachers to incorporate equity teaching, including through the use of MOOCs, blended learning spaces, and action research. Chris is also a former middle school ELA teacher in the Cambridge (MA) Public Schools, and he has extensive experience providing professional development to teachers in MA and GA around adolescent literacy, socioemotional learning, and youth participatory action research. He holds an Ed.D. and Ed.M. from the Harvard Graduate School of Education, an M.Ed. from UMass Boston, and a B.A. from Wake Forest University

Amelia is a postdoctoral researcher at the MIT Scheller Teacher Education Program (STEP). Her research focuses on design-based research approaches to supporting and understanding processes of mathematics thinking and learning. ​In her current role, she contributes to the development and evaluation of problem-based high school geometry curricula. She holds a PhD in mathematics education and an MA in mathematics from the University of California Berkeley, as well as a BA in mathematics from Columbia University.

Rebekah Larsen is a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Journalism and Media at Oslo Metropolitan University, and a Research Associate at Cambridge University’s Centre of Governance and Human Rights. She has a PhD in Sociology (Cambridge University), an MPhil in Technology Policy from the Judge Business School (Cambridge University), and a BA in Science, Technology and Society Studies (University of Pennsylvania). At OsloMet, she is a member of an international team researching how newsrooms approach misinformation around elections, particularly in the US. Her personal research agenda centers on media ecosystems with a special focus on the rural, religion, and broadcast radio. While at CMS/W (2022 - 2023), she will be researching the contemporary Utah media ecosystem, working with Prof. Heather Hendershot.

Ashley D. Scroggins is a PhD student specializing in Mathematics Curriculum and Instruction. Prior to her return to the University of Colorado Boulder, Ashley taught secondary mathematics in the heart of Denver. Her teaching expertise was established working with a diverse population of middle school students, their families, teachers, and the surrounding community. Ashley’s research interests include creativity, identity development, intersectionality, mathematics education, and teacher education. Education MA Educational Psychology Human Development, University of Colorado Denver, 2010 BA Mathematics + Secondary Mathematics Licensure, University of Colorado Boulder, 2008.

Porntip Israsena Twishime is a storyteller, educator, and doctoral candidate in the Department of Communication at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. She is also a recipient of the 2022-2023 MIT Diversity Predoctoral Fellowship in the School of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences. She researches stories and storytelling as a mode of communication and a methodology for communication studies. Her creative research practice considers the relationships between empire, race, gender, class, and sexuality in Asian America.

Nancy Baym is a Principal Researcher at Microsoft Research New England, a couple of blocks to the east of CMS/W's haunts. Her work focuses on interpersonal relationships and new technologies. She is the author of Personal Connections in the Digital Age (Polity 2010), Internet Inquiry (co-authored with Annette Markham) (Sage 2009) and Tune In, Log On: Soaps Fandom and Online Community (Sage 1999). Her current research is about musicians' relationships with audiences and how social media affect them.

Wasalu Jaco, professionally known as Lupe Fiasco, is a Chicago-born, Grammy award-winning American rapper, record producer, entrepreneur, and community advocate. Rising to fame in 2006, following the success of his debut album Food & Liquor, Lupe has released eight acclaimed studio albums, his latest being Drill Music In Zion, released in June 2022. His efforts to propagate conscious material garnered recognition as a Henry Crown Fellow, and he is a recipient of an MLK Visiting Professorship at MIT for the 2022/2023 academic year.

Mingjian Xiang is an associate professor of linguistics in the School of Foreign Languages and Literature at Nanjing Tech University. He received his Ph.D. from Zhejiang University in March 2018. His research has been focused on the rhetorical use of interactional structures in classical Chinese philosophical texts. He has published work in Cognitive Linguistics, Pragmatics, Journal of Historical Pragmatics, and co-edited volumes by John Benjamins.

At MIT, he is extending his research in a comparative direction by looking at how Zhuangzi (c. 369-c. 286 B.C.), the greatest of the early Daoist thinkers in ancient China, and Plato (427-347 B. C.), the greatest philosopher of ancient Greece, use various rhetorical figures (e.g., rhetorical question, metaphor, irony) and the classic Aristotelian elements of persuasion (i.e., ethos, pathos, logos) in fictional dialogues to convey their philosophical ideas and induce self-knowledge in the prospective readers by mobilizing their basic human capacities.