Iro Filippaki

Iro is a medical humanities scholar working as an associate lecturer in Athens, Greece. Her research focuses on aspects of feeling in cultural and textual narratives, as well as literary representations of physical and mental trauma. She is the co-editor of a special issue of the Journal of Trauma and Dissociation titled “Trauma, Narratives, Institutions: Transdisciplinary Dialogues” and an editor for De Gruyter’s book series Computer Games and the Humanities. She just completed her first monograph titled The Poetics of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder in Postmodern Literature (Palgrave Macmillan) and is currently exploring representations of feeling resilient in contemporary literature.

Academia

Elizabeth Im

Elizabeth Im is a senior studying Cognitive Science. As an aspiring scientist, writer and an artist, the topic of medical humanities bridges her different interests together. Outside of Tendon and writing, Elizabeth is interested in cognitive neuropsychology and disorders, and she currently researches developmental dysgraphia.

Alise Leiboff

Alise Leiboff is a recent graduate of Johns Hopkins University, where she studied the Medical Humanities, French, and the visual arts. She is now based in New York City where she works as a Medical Scribe and is looking forward to continuing her studies in Narrative Medicine at Columbia University. A vetted editor for Tendon, she seeks to tread the common ground between the health sciences, literature, and the visual arts.

Kathleen Li

Katie Li is a senior at Johns Hopkins University studying Public Health and Biology. She has a long-standing interest in health communications and incorporating art with medicine, ranging from health editorials to hospice care. She is particularly fascinated by communications of genetics and preventative care. Katie is currently conducting research on genetic counseling and e-cigarette use, and is an editor with Epidemic Proportions.

Makenna May

Makenna is an Sc.M student in the Johns Hopkins/NIH Genetic Counseling Training Program. She is primarily interested in neurogenetics, specifically neurodegenerative diseases in adults and children, and hereditary hematologic malignancies. Makenna earned her A.B. degree from Princeton University in 2017 in French Language and Literature. At Princeton, she was on the Student Health Advisory Board, and since graduating she has facilitated children’s grief groups for 1st through 3rd graders who have had a parent or sibling die through Good Grief in New Jersey and worked at the Mercer County Crisis Hotline on the suicide prevention team. Before starting the program, Makenna worked for a year at the NIH in research groups through the National Human Genetic Research Institute and the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. Makenna is most interested in the ethical and psychosocial components of genetic counseling, which drew her to the program at Johns Hopkins, and she is specifically interested in how genetic counselors and patients grapple with uncertainty. She makes time to read every day, explores photojournalism, writes book reviews, is very interested in language and how it impacts refugee migration and settlement.

Sarah Roth

Sarah Roth is a PhD student in Anthropology and trainee in genetic counseling at Johns Hopkins University. Her work bridges the social sciences and humanities, exploring the experiences of families and providers navigating shifting ethical and technological terrains in cancer care. She is currently an IRTA fellow at the National Institutes of Health.

Also a writer, Sarah is a Pushcart Prize nominee and holds an MFA in Creative Writing from University of Notre Dame. She is a founding editor of Tendon and a contributing writer at Synapsis: A Health Humanities Journal. Before arriving to Baltimore, Sarah coordinated programs at a health advocacy nonprofit in Washington, D.C.

Email: sarahroth@jhu.edu

Twitter: @saraheroth