Queer Advocacy and Leadership in Academia

ZANETA RAGO-CRAFT, ED.D., is the advisor to the president for Diversity and Inclusion and Director of the Intercultural Center at Monmouth University. Originally from Long Branch, she holds a B.A. in history and women and gender studies from Ramapo College, an M.A. from NYU in higher education and student affairs administration, and an Ed.D. in education, culture and society from Rutgers University. She has worked in identity-focused campus support for over a decade, including previous roles with the Rutgers Center for Social Justice Education and LGBT Communities, NYU’s LGBTQ Student Center and their Center for Multicultural Education and Programs, and Ramapo College’s Women’s Center and the campus Educational Opportunity Fund program. She also previously served on the board for the National Consortium of LGBT Resource Professionals in Higher Education.

JIRASSAYA (JIRA) UTTARAPONG (they/she/he) recently graduated from NJIT receiving a Bachelors of Science in Information Technology with a concentration in Game Development. As a member of the LBGTQIA+ community the-self, Uttarapong is a strong advocate for LGBTQ+ rights, notably in STEM and gaming spaces. During their time as a student at NJIT, they were the president of Spectrum as well as co-founder and President of NJIT Esports. They are currently working at NJIT as a UX Research Associate, studying content moderation. Extremely passionate about online communities, mental health and sexuality, Uttarapong aims their focus on the intersectionalities of these topics in video games and game-adjacent spaces. They look to research and understand user behaviors to develop solutions towards improving user experiences for marginalized peoples online.

ASHLEE BIRD, PH.D. is a Native American game designer and Ph.D. in Native American Studies. Her work theorizes digital sovereignty, drawing on Native American studies, media studies, and game studies to address representations of Native American characters in video games. Bird analyzes specific colonial methodologies being replicated within game spaces in order to then replace these with decolonial methods of game design being undertaken by herself and fellow Native game designers with a focus on what she terms “synthetic Indigenous identity,” oriented around promoting Indigenous futures. Beyond her academic writing, she has created three artworks, publicly exhibited seven times in group and solo exhibitions, and has curated one show. Among these are two of her original video games, One Small Step and Full of Birds, which have been featured in the InDigital Space at the ImagineNATIVE Film & Media Festival in 2018 and 2019 respectively. She is currently working on a book manuscript titled Red Dead Redemption that explores the complex relationships that different players have with games and undertakes an exploration of the Red Dead Redemption series and what the games have offered (or not offered) to their player bases.

KEITH J. BOWMAN, PH.D is a materials scientist who has served for the past six years as Constellation Professor and Dean of the University of Maryland, Baltimore County College of Engineering and Information Technology. As a member of 500 Queer Scientists, a visibility campaign for LGBTQ+ people working in the sciences, Bowman has worked extensively to advance diversity, equity and inclusion across engineering disciplines and the STEM pipeline. He is internationally recognized for his research on anisotropy and preferred orientation in ceramics and ceramic composites, and is a Fellow of the American Ceramic Society. Throughout his career, he has received numerous teaching awards including Purdue’s highest teaching award, the Charles Murphy Undergraduate Teaching Award and the Purdue College of Engineering Mentoring Award.