Participants who took part in our 2025 Roundtables.
Leo A. Shifrin Professor of War and Peace Studies Emeritus, Columbia University
Adjunct Senior Fellow, Council on Foreign Relations
Richard K. Betts is the Leo A. Shifrin Professor of War and Peace Studies Emeritus in the Columbia University political science department and School of International and Public Affairs and adjunct senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. He works on international politics and U.S.… read more »
Saxophonist, Composer
Soprano saxophonist/composer Jane Ira Bloom has been developing her unique voice on the soprano saxophone for over 45 years. She is a pioneer in the use of live electronics and movement in jazz. Winner of the Guggenheim Fellowship for music composition, the Downbeat International Critics Poll & Jazz Journalists Association Award for soprano saxophone, the Mary Lou Williams Award for lifetime service to jazzand the Charlie Parker Fellowship for jazz innovation. … read more »
Singer-songwriter, Author
“One of the most ambitious and literary songwriters of her generation” (Rolling Stone), Rosanne Cash is America’s foremost musical woman of letters, a literate and incisive artist whose poignant and distinctive vocals turn every song into a revelatory tale.… read more »
Writer
Stephen Rex Dames is a recent graduate of Columbia University. He wrote his senior thesis on the history of British non-medical psychoanalysis, arguing that out of various labor and gender conflicts surrounding “lay analysis” in early twentieth-century Britain, certain defining aspects of the modern psychoanalytic profession were born. … read more »
Psychotherapist
Cheryl Dolinger Brown, LCSW, has been a psychotherapist for nearly fifty years, specializing in trauma therapy and couples work. She trained as a psychoanalyst, a trauma therapist certified in Somatic Experiencing and the Tapping Method, and couples therapist certified in Imago Relationship Therapy, PACT and the Doherty Approach.… read more »
Professor of Clinical Psychology, Department of Psychological Sciences, University of Connecticut
Director of Research for the Institute for Brain and Cognitive Sciences
Inge-Marie Eigsti, Ph.D., is Professor of Clinical Psychology in the Department of Psychological Sciences at the University of Connecticut, and Director of Research for the Institute for Brain and Cognitive Sciences. Prof. Eigsti received doctoral degrees in clinical psychology and brain and cognitive sciences from the University of Rochester. … read more »
Psychiatrist
Mark Epstein, M.D., a psychiatrist in private practice in New York City, is the author of a number of books about the interface of Buddhism and psychotherapy, including Thoughts without a Thinker, Going to Pieces without Falling Apart, Going on Being, Open to Desire, Psychotherapy without the Self, The Trauma of Everyday Life and Advice Not Given: A Guide to Getting Over Yourself.… read more »
Emeritus, Urban Education Doctoral Program, City University of New York
David Forbes, PhD, is an Emeritus in the Urban Education Doctoral Program at the City University of New York (CUNY) Graduate Center. He teaches and writes on critical and integral approaches to mindfulness in education and has consulted with New York City schools on developing social mindfulness programs.… read more »
Fred & Fannie Mack Professor of Humanities in the Department of Philosophy, Columbia University
Author
Lydia Goehr is Fred and Fannie Mack Professor of Humanities in the Department of Philosophy at Columbia University. She is the author of The Imaginary Museum of Musical Works: An Essay in the Philosophy of Music ; The Quest for Voice: Music, Politics, and the Limits of Philosophy; Elective Affinities: Musical Essays on the History of Aesthetic Theory; Red Sea-Red Square-Red Thread.… read more »
Professor of Religious Studies, Indiana University
Editor, Journal of the American Academy of Religion
Andrea R. Jain, Ph.D. is professor of religious studies at Indiana University, Indianapolis, editor of the Journal of the American Academy of Religion, and author of Selling Yoga: From Counterculture to Pop Culture (Oxford, 2014) and Peace Love Yoga: The Politics of Global Spirituality (Oxford, 2020).… read more »
Associate Professor of Clinical Psychoanalysis, Department of Psychiatry, Columbia
Ben Kafka, Ph.D., L.P., is a psychotherapist and psychoanalyst in private practice in Greenwich Village. He serves on the faculties of the Columbia Psychoanalytic Center and the DeWitt Wallace Institute of Psychiatry at Weill Cornell. He is also the co-founder of Princeton’s new Seminar on Interdisciplinary Psychoanalytic Studies.… read more »
Licensed Clinical Psychologist & Psychoanalyst
Founder & Director, Greene Clinic
Dr. Cassie Kaufmann is a licensed clinical psychologist and psychoanalyst. She is the founder and director of Greene Clinic, a sliding scale psychoanalytically oriented training clinic in Fort Greene, Brooklyn. There she supervises, teaches, and introduces psychoanalytic theory and practice to students and early career psychologists, social workers, and counselors.… read more »
Assistant Professor, Department of Anthropology, Appalachian State University in North Carolina
Marc Kissel received his PhD in anthropology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2014 and was a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Notre Dame from 2014-2017, where he worked on a project on the evolution of human symbolic thought that, intersecting with scholars from philosophy, theology, psychology and other related disciplines.… read more »
Professor of Neural Science, New York University
Joseph LeDoux is a Professor of Neural Science at New York University. His work, which has spanned the topics of emotion, memory, and consciousness, and their interaction in the brain. He is an elected member of the National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.… read more »
Professor, Department of Psychiatry & Department of Neuroscience & Physiology, New York University Grossman School of Medicine
Dayu Lin, Professor of the Department of Psychiatry and Department of Neuroscience and Physiology New York University Grossman School of Medicine, has studied the neural mechanisms underlying the generation of social behaviors, especially aggression and parental behaviors for the last 20 years.… read more »
Director, Department of Music Therapy, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai
Professor, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai
Joanne Loewy DA, LCAT, MT-BC is the Director of the Department of Music Therapy, and a Professor at Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. She is a Founding Member of the International Association for Music and Medicine and is an MPI on two NIH funded studies on Pain and Music therapy in the stress measured by metabolic pathways of Black pregnant women.… read more »
Florence Irving Associate Professor of Medical Psychology (in Psychiatry), Columbia University Medical Center/New York State Psychiatric Institute
Claudia Lugo-Candelas, Ph.D., is a licensed clinical psychologist specializing in the perinatal programming of risk and resilience for neurodevelopmental disorders. She obtained a B.A. from the University of Puerto Rico, Rio Piedras, a Ph.D. in clinical psychology from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and completed her clinical internship at the NYC Health + Hospitals/Lincoln.… read more »
Historian of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania
Vice-President, National Council on Severe Autism (NCSA)
Amy S.F. Lutz, PhD is a historian of medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, the Vice-President of the National Council on Severe Autism (NCSA), and the parent of a profoundly autistic son, Jonah, 26. She has written about profound autism for many journals, including The American Journal of Bioethics, The Hastings Center Bioethics Forum, Autism Research and Frontiers in Psychiatry, as well as for more mainstream platforms including The Atlantic, Psychology Today, The Washington Post, and Slate. … read more »
Schub Professor and Chair, Department of Psychiatry, NYU Grossman School of Medicine
Director, NYU Center for Precision Medicine in Alcohol Use Disorder & PTSD
Executive Director, NYU Langone Military Family Center
Charles R. Marmar, MD joined NYU Grossman School of Medicine and Langone Health in 2009 as the Lucius N. Littauer Professor and Chair of the Department of Psychiatry. He has recently been named the Peter H. Schub Professor of Psychiatry. He also serves as Director of the Center for Precision Medicine in Alcohol Use Disorders and Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and as Executive Director of the Steven A.… read more »
Author & Curator
Tim McHenry has been presenting Rubin Museum of Art audiences over the past twenty years with what the Huffington Post has called “some of the most original and inspired programs on the arts and consciousness in New York City.” McHenry created 26 onstage conversations around Jung’s Red Book in 2009 with Jungian analysts paired with the likes of composer John Adams, artist Marina Abramovic, musician David Byrne, filmmaker Jonathan Demme, and novelist Alice Walker.… read more »
Director, The Helix Center
Clinical Professor of Psychiatry, Weill-Cornell Medical College
Training & Supervising Psychoanalyst, New York Psychoanalytic Institute
Edward Nersessian is Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at Weill-Cornell Medical College, Training and Supervising Psychoanalyst at the New York Psychoanalytic Institute, Distinguished Life Member of the American Psychiatric Association, and Corresponding Member of Société Psychanalytique de Paris. He is co-founder and first co-editor of the journal Neuropsychoanalysis, co-editor of the Textbook of Psychoanalysis and of Controversies in Contemporary Psychoanalysis.… read more »
Professor, Journalism, NYU
Associate Professor, Journalism, Hofstra University
Joe Peyronnin has been an adjunct journalism professor at NYU since 2008, and he served as a full time associate professor of journalism at Hofstra University from 2011-19. In 2017 he was voted “Teacher of the Year” at Hofstra’s School of Communication. … read more »
Associate Professor, English, UCLA
David Russell is Associate Professor of English at UCLA, where he teaches nineteenth-century literature, as well as film, philosophy and psychoanalysis. He is the author of Marion Milner: On Creativity (Oxford University Press, 2024) and Tact: Aesthetic Liberalism and the Essay form in Nineteenth-Century Britain (Princeton University Press, 2018). … read more »
Professor, Neuroscience & Psychiatry, Icahn School of Medicine at Mt. Sinai
Dr. Daniela Schiller is a Professor in the Department of Psychiatry, the Nash Family Department of Neuroscience, and the Friedman Brain Institute, at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. Her research is focused on how the brain represents and modifies emotional memories.… read more »
Training and Supervising Analyst, NYPSI
Adjunct Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at Mount Sinai College of Medicine
Clinical Assistant Professor, Albert Einstein College of Medicine
Founder/Director, The Sherkow Center for Child Development and Autism Spectrum Disorder
Susan P. Sherkow, M.D. is a Training and Supervising Adult and Child Analyst at both the New York Psychoanalytic Institute (NYPSI) and The Berkshire Psychoanalytic Society. She is on the faculties of Mount Sinai and Albert Einstein Colleges of Medicine, is the recent past President of Association for Child Psychoanalysis, and is the Chairman of the Faculty at NYPSI.… read more »
Chairman Emeritus, Department of Psychiatry, Brigham and Women’s Hospital
Stanley Cobb Professor of Psychiatry, Harvard Medical School
Dr. David Silbersweig graduated from Dartmouth College with high honors in philosophy. He studied medicine at Cornell University Medical College. He is a neurologist and psychiatrist, having trained in both psychiatry and neurology at The New York Presbyterian Hospital-Weill Cornell Medical Center.… read more »
Artist & filmmaker
Viviane Silvera is a Telly Award–winning filmmaker and visual artist whose work bridges neuroscience, psychology, and fine art to explore how memory shapes—and reshapes—our sense of self. Her acclaimed film See Memory—crafted from over 30,000 hand-painted frames—translates scientific insight into poetic visual storytelling, illustrating how trauma fragments memory and how healing becomes possible through presence, imagination, and narrative.… read more »
Co-Director, Division of Narrative Medicine, Columbia University Irving Medical Center
Sr. Lecturer, Department of English & Comparative Literature, Columbia University
Professor Maura Spiegel is Co-Director of the Division of Narrative Medicine at Columbia University Irving Medical Center and Senior Lecturer in the Department of English & Comparative Literature at Columbia University. She teaches fiction and film courses often centering on topics of family, memory, place, and affect.… read more »
Professor of Psychiatry, Neurology, Pharmacology, Columbia University & New York State Psychiatric Institute
Dave Sulzer is a professor of Psychiatry, Neurology, Pharmacology, and at the School of the Arts at Columbia University and New York State Psychiatric Institute. He received a PhD in biology from Columbia University. His lab has published over 250 studies on synaptic function, particularly of the basal ganglia and dopamine systems, and neuroimmunology, in normal and diseased states that are cited over 50,000 times (h-index 198).… read more »
Assistant Clinical Professor of Psychiatry, Columbia University
W. Craig Tomlinson, MD, is a psychoanalyst in private practice and Asst. Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at Columbia University, where he has taught at the Center for Psychoanalytic Theory and Research for over two decades and directs the Freud curriculum. He also designed and teaches courses on Freud and psychoanalysis to graduate and undergraduate students at the Psychoanalytic Studies Program of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences at Columbia.… read more »
Clinical Psychologist
Dr. Catherine Wikholm is a Clinical Psychologist based in Kent, UK. She is registered with the HCPC and Chartered by the BPS. Having previously worked in the National Health Service (NHS), Catherine currently works in private practice and specialises in child, adolescent and young adult mental health.… read more »
Associate Professor, English, Film and Media, at Yale University
R. John Williams, PhD, is Professor of English, and Film and Media Studies at Yale University. He is the author of The Buddha in the Machine: Art, Technology, and the Meeting of East and West, and has published as well on a number of topics including religion, futurology, systems theory, psychoanalysis, and film and television.… read more »