Allaback, Christina L.
Christina L. Allaback is Assistant Professor and Director of Theatre at the University of Pittsburgh at Greensburg and received her PhD from the University of Oregon in 2009 and her master’s from Illinois State University in 2004. As a performance studies scholar, she enjoys writing about dance, political theatre, and “nerd” theatre. Besides Phish, she enjoys watching Star Trek, sewing, and spending time with her chocolate lab, Piper. Her favorite Phish show is 7/11/2000.
Beck, B. Elizabeth
B. Elizabeth Beck is a poet who writes fiction. She is the author of the Summer Tour Trilogy and five collections of poetry, including Dancing on the Page (Rabbit House Press, 2024). www.elizbeck.com
Boda, Jay
Jay Boda is an entrepreneur specializing in e-commerce, operations, and branding. As a writer, he explores philosophical and religious themes in popular culture.
Blau, Jnan
Jnan Blau is a better phan than even Trey is, and as a scholar works at the intersection of Communication, Performance Studies, and Critical Cultural Studies. He has published academically and non-academically on Phish, and is currently co-authoring a book on fandom with a Swiftie and a member of the BTS Army.
Cadran, Amanda
Amanda Cadran (PhDJ) is an education researcher, DJ, and certified music nerd. She is the host of the music podcast, All That Jam, which is focused on artists and industry professionals in the jambands community.
Cohen, Jake
Dr. Jake Cohen is a musicologist and part of the planning committee for the Phish Studies conference. He has presented scholarship on Phish at the national meetings of the American Musicological Society and the Society for American Music, and has published on Phish in several collections of essays devoted to the band.
Collier, Rob
Rob Collier is Associate Professor of Music Theory at Alverno College in Milwaukee, WI. He took a 19-year hiatus from Phish between 1999 and 2018 (a 506 show gap) and is happy to be back on the train.
Cooper, Adelin
Adelin Cooper is an assistant professor in the Department of Visual Arts and Media at the University of Mount Union. She teaches courses in narrative and documentary storytelling. Her first show was 6.20.95
Costello, Leo
Leo Costello is Associate Professor and Chair in the Art History Department at Rice University. He studies Romanticism and is the author of JMW Turner and the Subject of History and the forthcoming Early Turner: Seen and Unseen in London, 1795-1819.
Del Gandio, Jason
Jason Del Gandio (PhD) is a faculty member in the Department of Communication & Social Influence at Temple University. His latest project is www.20minutevibe.com, offering vibe-related content for the intellectually curious.
DiResta, John Michael
John Michael DiResta is a theater director, dramaturg, adapter, playwright, and Assistant Professor at Skidmore College. His work focuses on new play dramaturgy, site-responsive theater, community engagement, and queer liberation.
Dollar, Natalie
Natalie Dollar, Oregon State University-Cascades, studies musical speech communities, communicating identity, and community dialogue. She has published articles on the pedagogy of community dialogue, dispersed identity modeling, ethnographic approaches to group interaction, and jam band community identity.
Driscoll, Ashley
Ashley Driscoll, Boston native. Founder and President of GrooveSafe a nonprofit focused on anti-harassment, consent and concert safety.
Driscoll, Brendan
Brendan Driscoll is a writer and independent scholar based in Eugene, Oregon.
Dylan, Daniel
Daniel Dylan is a Canadian and American educated lawyer, professor and legal scholar. His scholarship on Phish’s failed attempt to trademark Fishman’s donut and its effects on identity performance and the production of culture will appear in Concepts We’ll Ponder, this conference’s inaugural book of proceedings.
Emidy, Blake
Blake Emidy is an Assistant Professor of Public Administration and Policy at the University of Montana. His research looks at the organizational factors that contribute to employee motivation and well-being in the public sector.
Farzindar, Anna Atefeh
Dr. Anna Atefeh Farzindar is a clinical professor at the Computer Science Department, Loyola Marymount University (LMU) in Los Angeles, California. Prior to her current position, she served as a faculty member in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Southern California (USC) for approximately a decade. She made significant contributions to the fields of AI, Natural Language Processing, Social Media Analysis, Interdisciplinary Data Science and Healthcare Predictive Machine
Fink, Ari
Ari Fink is Senior Director of Music Programming at SiriusXM and the creator of SiriusXM’s Phish Radio and Dave Matthews Band channels.
Garrett, Andrew
Andyis an EMS and disaster medicine physician with a background in public health and a penchant for music that elevates the human spirit. Along with a long history of front-line disaster and emergency response, he is now a faculty member at The George Washington University where he runs their academic Emergency Health Services undergraduate program.
Gardner, Robert Owen
Robert Owen Gardner is Professor of Sociology at Linfield University in McMinnville, Oregon where has taught courses and published regularly on the topic of music scenes, subcultures, and communities. His recent book The Portable Community: Place and Displacement in Bluegrass Festival Life (2020, Routledge) examines the various forms of “portable” community cultivated in bluegrass festival campgrounds across the American West.
Goddard, Ellis
Ellis Godard is an Associate Professor of Sociology at California State University Northridge, where he primarily teaches Statistics, Research Methods, Sociology of Law, and Deviance. He is a founding board member and the volunteer Executive Director of the Mockingbird Foundation and has played various roles at Phish.net since c1992.
Goldman, Denise
Denise Goldman is an adjunct professor of writing and research at Long Island University in Brookville, NY. Her research on online communities has informed her approach to teaching genre awareness. In addition to teaching, Denise also works as a college admissions coach while raising two kids and two dogs. Her first show was 10/30/92.
Gray, Kristin
Kristin is an experienced litigator who represents management in labor and employment law matters. She is also a regular contributor to her law firm’s blog, EntertainHR, which provides an informative look across the landscape of pop culture from an employment law perspective.
Grosby, Alexander
Alexander Grosby is the curator of The Phishsonian Institute, a fan-run Phish public history project. He holds a Masters in Library and Information Science from Simmons University, a Masters in Entertainment Business from Full Sail University, and is currently the Maker Studio manager at Norfolk Public Library. He resides in Norfolk, VA with his wife Meredith and enjoys Portland Timbers soccer, New York Rangers hockey, and collecting vinyl records when he’s not seeing Phish.
Grosser, Rena
Rena Grosser is an Early Childhood Educator at Bernard Zell Anshe Emet Day School in Chicago. She has a background in art therapy and art education. She completed her undergraduate studies at Queens College and received her Masters in Creative Arts Therapy from Hofstra University. Rena is also an artist and believes in the creative process as a model and tool for self expression and exploration. She is a mother of 3 and lives with her family in Evanston, IL.
Harper, Kristin and Charles
Kristin and Charles Harper founded the solestus artist collective in 2022 to create digital artwork for NFTs. Using a new style known as light painting, solestus explores the liminal spaces of our everyday lives through abstract impressionist and expressionist digital photography.
Hollo, Kev
Kev Hollo wears a lot of hats: musician, mentor, climber, steward, activist, educator. Having studied and taught Creative Writing at Miami University and now working as a consultant in the Carolinas with his dog Margaret, he’s been thinking and writing (and dancing!) about Phish for over 30 years.
Howard, Malcolm
Malcolm Howard is a Founding board member and Treasurer of Phans for Racial Equity. Day job health care economist. Lives in St Pete Beach Florida
Jakus, Paul
Paul Jakus is a Professor Emeritus of Economics at Utah State University. A Phish fan for more than three decades, he has published numerous studies focusing on public lands, water quality, and outdoor recreation.
Jarvis, Jason
Dr. Jarvis is an Associate Professor of Communication Studies at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, California where he is the newly elected Chair of the Department. He attended his first Phish show on 7/31/1993 in Atlanta, GA and has been a jam band fan ever since. Dr. Jarvis’ research focuses on the rhetorical power of visual images on digital media platforms and last year he published his first book: Social Media and Oil in Southern California: Greenwashing Los Angeles (Lexington Press, 2023).
Jenkins, Stephanie
Stephanie Jenkins is an associate professor of philosophy in the School of History, Philosophy, and Religion at Oregon State University and a volunteer director of the Mockingbird Foundation. In addition to publishing and editing in moral philosophy, she is co-editor of the Public Philosophy Journal special issue devoted to Phish and has taught a Phish and Philosophy course at OSU since 2014.
Jordan, Marilyn
Marilyn Jordan completed her master’s degree in interdisciplinary studies last year at OSU, where she studied songwriting and how stories work. A jamband-inspired singer-songwriter, Marilyn was assistant curator for the music technology exhibit “Sonic Booms,” on display now through July at OSU’s new performing arts center.
Kazmierowski, Magdalena Wanda
Magdalena Wanda Kazmierowski is a born helper and the least subtle Phish fan. She has spent most of her life as a supportive force behind the scenes in comedy and entertainment, and is thrilled to contribute her skills towards helping make the Phish community, and ultimately the world, a better, lovelier, more connected place.
Kroll-Zeldin, Oren
Oren Kroll-Zeldin is the assistant director of the Swig Program in Jewish Studies and Social Justice where is also an assistant professor in the Department of Theology and Religious Studies. He is the co-editor with Ariella Werden-Greenfield of This Is Your Song Too: Phish and Contemporary Jewish Identity.
Kullen, Tony
Tony Kullen is a shareholder at the law firm of Farleigh Wada Witt in Portland, Oregon, where he specializes in creditor’s rights and bankruptcy law. He is also a musician and music fan, and current defending champion of the “Best Oregon Lawyer Band” competition.
Layne, Lizzy
Lizzy Layne is a Creative Director, Artist, and Lot Lizard, specializing in graphic design, painting, and printmaking. Lizzy has been making concert posters and fan art for over 15 years and is thrilled to share her art at the retrospective show during the 2024 Phish Studies Conference.
Lehrman, Noah Munro
Noah Munro Lehrman is a New York City based musician, Judaics scholar, and critical minerals expert. The Economist magazine called him “likely the only person in history to perform at the Jewish Grateful Dead Festival and advise Congress on resource security.”
Lewis, Radha
Dr. Radha Lewis is a board-certified family physician with a focus on preventative medicine and holistic solutions to health-related problems. She has been providing primary care services to Bay Area patients for over twenty years.
Lynch, Matthew B.
Matthew B. Lynch is an Instructor in the School of History, Philosophy, and Religious Studies at Oregon State University. His primary research is on religion and mysticism in medieval Muslim societies, with a particular interest in how communities are constructed through authority and scripture.
Maisel, Matthew
Matthew Maisel is an attorney in Philadelphia, PA, who was most recently General Counsel for a real estate management company. He is the author of “Slave to the Traffic Light: A Road Map to Red Light Camera Legal Issues”.
Mallory, Chaone
Dr. Chaone Mallory has taught and published widely in the field of Ecofeminist Philosophy, and is a Grateful Dead scholar and a Deadhead who is just beginning her foray into Phish scholarship, despite being a 1.0er. Chaone engages in the life of the polis by attending live music events as often as possible, joining in the antics of the Merry Pranksters, and playing music with others.
Mason, Pete
Pete Mason is a teacher, writer and author living in Albany, NY. He promotes PhanArt shows and runs PhanArt.net, highlighting music-inspired fan creations, and serves on the Board of Directors of The Mockingbird Foundation. He is Publisher of NYS Music.
McCaffrey, Shelli
Shelli McCaffrey, MS, LPCA is a visual artist and art therapist. Currently she is a counselor and utilizes the power of art making alongside women with substance use disorders in Portland, Oregon.
McClarence, Sho
Sho McClarence is a PhD candidate at the University of Denver and Iliff School of Theology in the Joint Doctoral Program for Religious Studies. Sho’s focus is on mystical experiences and in particular mystical space as it is concerned with queer studies, visual arts, and environmental humanities.
Mitchell, Garrett
Garrett Mitchell is an oceanographer, research development consultant, and marine biotech startup founder in the “outside” world but a nostalgic, yet to be jaded 1.0’er with a love for the exploratory space and cow funk styles and ambient jams in “our” world, who is eternally thankful to the band for their aesthetic craft, creativity, and longevity; their management, engineers, and organization behind the scene, and the fans and their culture that make Phish uniquely Phish.
Nuckles, Brooke
In 2002, Brooke received a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Indiana University of Pennsylvania, including a semester abroad in Slovenia. Her work has been shown in national and international spaces, with recent exhibitions at Jack Langford Gallery, Rogue Valley International Airport, Medford Food Co-op Cafe, Miner’s Bazaar, Pollinator Place, Art du Jour, GoodBean, Art Presence, The Arts Center in Corvallis, and Liberty Arts Gallery in Yreka.
As co-founder of the Arts Alliance of Southern Oregon, a testament to her belief in the transformative power of artistic collaboration, Brooke advocates for artists, arts organizations and cultural events. Brooke also kindles the flames of positive change through passionate volunteerism and as a consultant to nonprofit organizations via Growing Assets, LLC.
Phillips, Hunter
Hunter is an English PhD student at Cornell University, studying the intersections of gender, sexuality, and medicine in medieval literature.
Potter, Shawna
Shawna Potter is an activist, educator, Intimacy Coordinator, and the lead singer of punk band War On Women. She is the author of Making Spaces Safer: A Guide to Giving Harassment the Boot Wherever You Work, Play, and Gather.
Prince, Chris
Chris Prince is an Instructor of First Year Composition English at Kennesaw State University. He follows the sounds of words and music wherever they may lead.
Rashotte, Ryan
Ryan Rashotte is an Assistant Professor of English at Temple University Japan, and the author of Narco Cinema: Sex, Drugs and Banda Music in Mexico’s B-Filmography. He also plays guitar in Tokyo’s best (. . . and only) Phish cover band.
Reason, Dana
Dana Reason is a Canadian-born composer, improviser, music supervisor, producer, recording artist, and educator. In addition to composing, music supervising and performing, Reason writes about creative intercultural music practices, feminist improvisatory and sound studies practices, and has either published or been reviewed by the following: Routledge, New York Times, Washington Post, San Francisco Chronicle, Oxford University Press, Columbia University Jazz Studies Online, University of Chicago Press, National Geographic, McGill-Queen’s University Press, Wesleyan University Press, Downbeat, Jazziz, All Music, and Musicworks. Reason is currently an Assistant Professor of Contemporary Music at Oregon State University.
Robinson, Ariela
Dr. Ariela Robinson is an artist and educator. She has been teaching High School English for the past 20 years and graduated from Teachers College, Columbia University with her Doctorate in Interdisciplinary Studies in both the Teaching of English and Art Education programs. She believes in the fusion of art-making and teaching literature in the English classroom due to its ability to access the imagination in order to create an open, free-flowing, deep thinking space. She is also a portrait artist and is currently working on a portrait project in which she paints portraits of characters from classic literary texts. Her favorite painting to date is her portrait of Trey which she was able to show him backstage at a show. She is a mother of 3 and lives in Evanston.
Rosen, David
David Rosen is a postdoctoral research fellow at the Center for Psychedelic and Consciousness Research at Johns Hopkins University, where he is investigating the role of music in psychedelic experiences. He is a lifelong musician (bass and piano), and flow-states ensuing from improvisation, both as a listener and performer, serve as the inspiration for his cognitive neuroscience research on the topic.
Rosen, Devan
Devan Rosen (Ph.D., Cornell University) is Professor of Emerging Media in the Roy H. Park School of Communications at Ithaca College. His research and teaching focuses on the social uses of new media, social network analysis, and distributed socio-technical systems. He has developed social and semantic network-analytic theories and methods for the analysis of dynamic social networks in online environments. His research on decentralized self-organizing systems, Flock Theory, has been featured as the basis for several episodes of the hit CBS show Numb3rs.
Schlegel, Ivy
Ivy Schlegel (they/them) is a member of Mike Side Dyke Side and BrianRobert, as well as Phans for Racial Equity. Ivy is also a campaign strategist focusing on deforestation and climate change.
Schwittek, David
David Schwittek is an artist, designer, and filmmaker working in New York City. He is currently Assistant Professor of Graphic Design and Digital Media at Lehman College (CUNY). In 2015, David was the recipient of a NY Emmy for best PSA series, in the Community/Public Service category, for his work as producer on the Best of the Bronx series. Schwittek’s most recent works, a series entitled 21 Truck of San Antonio Texcala, was exhibited at the Katonah Museum of Art in the summer of 2020.
David lives with his wife Abby,and his children, Sloane and Sawyer, in Bedford Corners, NY.
Sell, Michael
Michael Sell is a photographer from Michigan who now lives in Oregon. He is currently an Assistant Professor of Art at Eastern Oregon University.
Sofranko, Dmitri
Dmitri Sofranko is a 2023 graduate of Linfield University in McMinnville, Oregon and an avid Phish fan. Since his first show at SPAC almost ten years ago, he credits the band for providing the unique relationships he has made along the way and the rich appreciation he still holds for music. He is currently a planning committee member of the Walnut City Music Festival, an annual music festival hosted in McMinnville.
Sottile, Matthew
Matthew Sottile is a computer scientist and mathematician living in Portland, OR. He studies problems in software correctness, data analytics, and scientific computing.
Special Purpose
Combining lead guitar with saxophone and blending vintage keyboards with modern ones, Special Purpose is an instrumental band that blends psychedelic rock sounds with earthy elements of funk and jazz. In addition to genre-bending original material, the band plays arrangements of works by other artists, including Jimi Hendrix, John Scofield, and Herbie Hancock.
Stern, Hal
Hal Stern is the R&D Chief Information Officer at a major pharmaceutical company and spent more than 25 years in leadership positions at technology companies. He has co-authored three books, holds 11 patents, and despite a decade of lessons plays the bass somewhat haphazardly.
Taylor, Leah
Dr. Leah Taylor is an Integrative Mental Health Coach & Consultant. She is passionate about exploring mind-body-spirit practices that can therapeutically impact rising mental health conditions such as loneliness, depression, anxiety, and chronic stress.
Terry, Lisa
Lisa Terry has been involved with the clean & sober music community since 1990. She has done service for The Phellowship since it’s inception and has been the west of the Mississippi volunteer coordinator since 2009
Tertin, Ben
Dr. Ben Tertin serves as an Editing Scholar for the BibleProject (bibleproject.com), an animation studio and education-tech nonprofit. During his free time, Ben will either be on tour, or out exploring the Pacific Northwest with his wife and two kids, or in his backyard making unnecessarily dangerous rope swings.
Viscardi-Smalley, Julie
Julie Viscardi-Smalley, DMA, is an Associate Professor in the Department of Sports, Entertainment, Event – Management at Johnson & Wales University in Providence, RI. She teaches coursework related to the music industry and concert production while focusing her research on popular music analysis and music industry studies.
Vernon, Jim
Jim Vernon is Professor of Philosophy at York University, and is the author of Hip Hop, Hegel, and the Art of Emancipation, and Sampling, Biting, and the Postmodern Subversion of Hip Hop (both from Palgrave Macmillan). He recently taught a graduate course on Hegel’s philosophy of art and the rise, fall, and rebirth of Phish, currently being worked up into a book tentatively titled ‘In A Minute I’ll Be Free: Phish, Hegel, and the Beautiful Failure of Aesthetic Emancipation’. His first show was 12/12/92, and he was at every Toronto Tweezer.
Warrenburg Rome, Kristine
Kristine Warrenburg Rome, Ph.D., is a cultural rhetorical critic with concern for communication ethics and an Associate Professor of Communication for Flagler College since 2009. Her first Phish show was Deer Creek Music Center, Noblesville, Indiana, Monday, August 12, 1996 and you can read some of her research in the special issue of the Public Philosophy Journal, Vol. 4, No. 3 (2022): Phish.
Wuagneux, Robert James
RJ Wuagneux is an assistant professor of music theory at Appalachian State University in Boone, NC. His research focuses on the live music of Phish, the Phish scene, and affect.
Zietz, Jason
Dr. Jason Zietz is an Assistant Teaching Professor at the University of Colorado Boulder. His classes cover topics such as programming, cognitive science, and user centered design.