The Big Question

Joshua D. Rubin received his Ph.D. in Sociocultural Anthropology from Yale University in 2013. He currently teaches in Bates College’s Department of Anthropology, and he is also a member of the program committee for Africana (formerly African American Studies). His research examines the categories of art, sport, and media, and how boundaries are drawn (and blurred) between them. His research to date has centered on rugby and videogame production, and he has just begun a new long-term project about the role that culture plays in claims people make about representations of violence and the implications of those representations for those who perceive them.  

 His ethnographic study of South African rugby was published with University of Michigan Press in 2021, and his second book (on the roles that user research plays in the making of videogames) is forthcoming with University of Michigan Press as well. He has also published on the politics of the NFL Rulebook, the ambiguous violences of videogames, professional wrestling, and rugby, and contestations over artistic autonomy in Zimbabwe. Additional work has appeared in the journals SAFUNDI, Cultural Anthropology, and Africa. 

Kate Dickerson is the Executive Director of the Maine Discovery Museum and one of six Inaugural Liaisons for the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) Local Science Engagement Network. 

 The Maine Discovery Museum uses interactive exhibits and robust STEM programming inside and outside the museum to introduce Mainers to the value and importance of discovery and exploration. Before heading up the museum, Dickerson was the Founder and Director of the Maine Science Festival, an annual celebration of Maine science, technology, engineering, and innovation.  She’s also the Founder, Host, and Executive Producer of the Maine Science Podcast. 

Over the course of her career, Dickerson has worked for industry, nonprofits, and educational institutions in the areas of environmental policy, pollution prevention, and environmental cleanup. 

Dickerson currently serves on the Maine Innovation Economy Advisory Board (MIEAB), having been appointed by Governor Mills in April 2022. 

Cait Maddan’s (she/her) personal experience with the death by suicide of her best friend, followed two months later by her grandfather’s death, is exactly what propelled her curiosity and life-focus into the unique and vast space of grief, death, and suicide.  

Through that journey, Cait began volunteering with her local hospice and served at the bedside in her community. During that time she chose to take an end-of-life doula course and continue expanding her theory. A passion for serving folks in the death space developed, deeply, and over the years Cait’s journey has led her into different avenues of death care, work, and education. 

Currently, Cait offers digital downloads that you can purchase on her resource site: deathbysuicideawarecare.com and value-driven education via Instagram and TikTok, @cait.deatheducation.  

Cait hosts a membership specific to suicide care and conversations, the Aware Care Library, where you gain access to a library of suicide-specific resources and receive new content each month, as well as a private Discord where suicide is talked about openly. 

Cait is proficient with and a member of the National End-of-Life Doula Alliance, proficient with the Home Funeral Alliance, and is passionate about participating in continuing education on a vast array of topics in death care, as death is a vast space.  

Cait is a Virgo, a mother to two teens, and loves finding quiet in the forests and throughout nature. 

Dan Sandweiss is an archaeologist who works mainly in Peru on climate change and ancient coastal adaptations, with a particular interest in the prehistory of El Niño. Since 1993, he has been a professor of Anthropology and Quaternary and Climate Studies at the University of Maine, where he teaches classes on archaeology at all levels and inflicts lots of puns on his students. From 2005 to 2014, Dan served as the Dean and Associate Provost for Graduate Studies. He is currently the President of the Society for American Archaeology.