Panu Pihkala is an adjunct professor (Title of Docent) of environmental theology at the Faculty of Theology in the University of Helsinki, Finland. Pihkala is the leading Finnish scholar in eco-anxiety research, and he is known internationally as an expert in interdisciplinary eco-emotion studies. Many of his research articles from the 2020s have over 40,000 views and several hundred citations each. Pihkala has published two books in Finnish about eco-emotions and he was awarded several prizes for them, including the National Prize for Adult Education (Sivistyspalkinto) in 2018 by The Finnish Lifelong Learning Foundation (Kansanvalistusseura) and a national environmental education award in 2019 by FEE. Pihkala’s dissertation from 2014 focused on Religion and Ecology, and he has worked on the intersections of spirituality and environmental matters. Pihkala is a sought-after keynote speaker and often gives interviews to various media. He serves as an advisor in many projects, including the Finnish national eco-anxiety project for social and health sectors (2020-) and Climate Mental Health Network, with whom he worked on the popular Climate Emotions Wheel. Pihkala hosts the international podcast Climate Change and Happiness together with leading environmental psychologist Dr. Thomas Dopanuherty (climatechangeandhappiness.com). He lives in Helsinki with his family.

(photo courtesy Uzi Varon / Kirjapaja)

Lucy Christine Schultz is Assistant Professor of Philosophy and Co-Director of Environmental Studies at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga. She holds a Ph.D. in Philosophy from the University of Oregon and an MA in Philosophy and the Arts from SUNY Stony Brook. Her research revolves around questions pertaining to dialectic, philosophy of nature and environment, and the genesis of art as they are developed within the traditions of German idealism, phenomenology, and modern Japanese philosophy. She is currently working on projects drawing out the philosophical resources within these traditions for thinking through and addressing the challenges presented by climate change. Her work has appeared in journals such as Philosophy East and West, Environmental Philosophy, Japanese Journal of Religious Studies, and Hegel Bulletin, and she is co-editor of Tetsugaku Companion to Nishida Kitarō (Springer Nature, 2022). Beyond the academy, Schultz serves the Chattanooga community through volunteer work at several community gardens, urban farms, and non-profit organizations whose missions relate to climate resilience and food security.

Paula Arai (Ph.D. in Buddhist Studies, Harvard University) holds the Eshinni & Kakushinni Chair of Women and Buddhist Studies at the Institute of Buddhist Studies in Berkeley, California. She is author of Women Living Zen, Bringing Zen Home, Painting Enlightenment: Healing Visions of the Heart Sutra, and The Little Book of Zen Healing: Japanese Rituals for Beauty, Harmony, and Love. She also co-edited The Oxford Handbook of Buddhist Practice. Her current book project is supported by the Lenz Foundation: Of Mud and Lotuses: Stories of Women Liberating Dharma. Arai has received generous support for her pursuits, including from Fulbright, American Council of Learned Societies, the Mellon Foundation, and the Reischauer Institute of Harvard University. She has curated exhibits of a Japanese scientist’s Heart Sutra paintings at a number of venues around the US. Steeped in ethnographic research, she takes an embodied approach to her work and finds poetic immersive storytelling a potent medium for conveying the experiences of transformative healing she researches. An active public speaker, Arai also leads workshops on healing rituals.