Bobbie Chew Bigby is a scholar, researcher, and educator who is passionate about the potential for tourism to serve as a tool for Indigenous and post-conflict communities to be connected with culture, arts, community, and the environment. Bobbie is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the University of Waterloo (Canada) and an Adjunct Researcher with the Nulungu Research Institute at the University of Notre Dame Australia, from which she holds a Ph.D. in Indigenous Tourism. Her research and community-based work has taken her around the world, supported by Fulbright, Rotary Peace, and Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (Canada) fellowships. Bobbie is the co-author/editor of books including The Local Turn in Tourism: Empowering Communities (2022) and Indian City USA (2024). Born and raised in Oklahoma, Bobbie is a citizen of the Cherokee Nation, and Oklahoma remains her home base. She will teach Expressive Cultures: Topics — Native Arts in Contemporary America beginning in Summer 2025.

Denni Blum is an educational anthropologist and a qualitative methodologist who specializes in Latin American education and diversity issues, with a research focus on Cuba, where she has conducted studies for more than 25 years. She is a professor in the College of Education and Human Sciences at Oklahoma State University, teaching in the Social Foundations graduate program, and a board member for El Centro, a grassroots community, learning, and worker center in East Tulsa, where she teaches citizenship preparation classes. Denni holds a Ph.D. from the College of Education at the University of Texas at Austin.

Stewart Habig is an assistant professor of English at Langston University, Oklahoma’s only HBCU, and also teaches in the Sports Management program at the University of Tulsa, where he previously ran the advising and mentoring program for student-athletes. Stewart’s interests include jazz, blues, and 20th-century American literary culture. He is currently working on a monograph that explores the impact of African-American poetics on Poetry: A Magazine of Verse. Stewart holds a Ph.D. in English Language and Literature from the University of Tulsa. He is excited to help NYU Tulsa students explore all that the Tulsa community has to offer through internships and experiential learning.

Kelsey Putman Hughes is a geoscientist working at the intersection of earth systems science, renewable energy tech, and policy development. She is the founder and principal of Sun Wolf Energy, a consulting firm that advises public and private entities, including Tribal governments, on renewable energy strategic and project planning. Kelsey also co-founded the Tulsa Renewable Business Alliance and recently completed a year-long fellowship with the Energy Leadership Institute. Her research interests focus on energy project siting and analysis, energy justice and equality, and climate change resilience. Kelsey holds an M.S. in Geology from the University of Missouri, with a research focus on paleoclimatology.

Quraysh Ali Lansana is an author, educator, and public scholar with a focus on Black literature, history, and culture. He has written more than 20 books of poetry, nonfiction, and children’s literature and won the 2022 regional Emmy award for his role as host of the OETA/PBS documentary film Tulsa Race Massacre: 100 Years Later. Quraysh is a professor at the University of Tulsa and Executive Producer of the award-winning KOSU/NPR monthly radio program Focus: Black Oklahoma. He is an alum of the Tulsa Artist Fellowship and a founding member of Tri-City Collective, and has held teaching roles at Oklahoma State University-Tulsa, the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, The Juilliard School, and Chicago State University, where he directed the Gwendolyn Brooks Center for Black Literature and Creative Writing. He holds an MFA in Creative Writing from NYU.

Luke Lawson is Director of Research and Analytics at ImpactTulsa, where he studies the impact of neighborhood factors such as evictions, access to cars, crime rates, and socio-economic status on education outcomes, partnering on associated policy initiatives with organizations like My Brother’s Keeper, the Obama Foundation, the City of Tulsa, and others. Luke came to Tulsa via the Tulsa Remote program. He holds a Ph.D. in Educational Psychology from Oklahoma State University and an M.A. in Psychology from NYU, and he has previously held instructional roles in psychology and statistics courses at NYU and Columbia.

Josiah Robinson is an attorney, researcher, consultant, and educator with a commitment to empathy and bridge-building across ideological lines. His work uses research, data, and policy to advance more inclusive systems for 2SLGBTQ+ people in historically exclusionary environments. Josiah is Managing Director of the Prism Project, focused on improving conditions for LGBTQ+ Tulsans in consultation with nonprofit, philanthropic, and municipal leaders, and he currently serves as the LGBTQ+ advocate on the City of Tulsa’s Human Rights Commission. He holds a J.D. with Honors from Regent University School of Law.