Bio

I am a transdisciplinary scholar fascinated by historical and contemporary intersections between health, spirituality, and crosscultural exchange. I have a Ph.D. in History of Medicine from the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine (2010), and teach courses in Asian history, religions, and health humanities at Penn State University’s Abington College, located near Philadelphia. I also have been the editor in chief of the journal Asian Medicine: Journal of the International Association for the Study of Traditional Asian Medicine since 2016.

Résumé

My Backstory

I come from a bilingual and transnational Latino family with roots in Colombia, Uruguay, Spain, England, and the US. I spent my early childhood in Canada and Paraguay, moved to the US during elementary school, and spent nearly every summer in Spain. All of this is to say that my interests in crosscultural exchange, translation, and global movements of ideas came to me quite naturally!

I began pursuing my longstanding interest in Asian religion and medicine as an undergraduate majoring in Anthropology and Cognitive Science and minoring in East Asian Studies at the University of Virginia. After graduating in 1996, I lived in Asia for four years — more than two years in Thailand, with extended stays in India, China, and Indonesia as well. During this time, I trained as a practitioner of Traditional Thai Medicine (TTM), and spent time learning hatha–yoga and other Asian healing modalities. I also participated in extended stays at Buddhist meditation centers and monasteries in Northeast Thailand and India, including a summer as ananāgārika (white-robed monastic resident) in a Thai Forest monastery. Although I am neither a yogi nor a Buddhist, I have remained engaged in spiritual practice throughout the rest of my adult life.

While I was working as a practitioner of TTM, I wrote several book about the practice of Thai massage, herbal medicine, and spiritual healing traditions. When I became a graduate student, I left behind clinical practice in order to intensively pursue academic approaches to Asian medicine. I returned to the University of Virginia in 2002 to pursue a Master’s Degree in East Asian Studies. My thesis explored the cultural influences that led to the creation of modern TTM. In 2005, I entered the Ph.D. program in the History of Medicine at Johns Hopkins, where I completed fields in the global history of medicine with emphasis on the relationship between Buddhism and medicine in medieval China.

I joined the faculty at Abington College in 2010, where I have taught a range of undergraduate courses on Asian history, religions, health humanities, and related topics. I have a true passion for teaching, and it is my strong belief that the humanities are indispensable in providing undergraduates important tools to develop empathy and meaning. I have also been particularly involved in teaching innovations that promote the use of new technology in the curriculum.

My teaching methods have been influenced by several key experiences in my professional development. The first was my year as an instructor in the expository writing program at Johns Hopkins, which taught me the Harvard “Expos” pedagogical method. The second was my year-long fellowship at LeMoyne College, where I encountered the Jesuit philosophy of cura personalis (educating the whole person) and the grading method of “learning contracts.” Finally, my time at Abington College, a minority-majority institution with an extremely diverse student body, has also challenged me to expand and refine my teaching methods with a strong focus on student success and engagement. I call my approach to teaching “a pedagogy of the soul,” which I have written about in my blog, Human•ities. I wonder how we can contribute to healing, community building, empathy, and spiritual renewal at the deepest level for the current generation of students.

Meanwhile, I have been active in various Asian Studies organizations internationally, most notably the International Association for the Study of Traditional Asian Medicine and the association’s journal, Asian Medicine. I have maintained an active publication pipeline, focused on my own writings as well as major collaborative works that are intended to foster the nascent field of the study of “Buddhist medicine.” My work continually seeks opportunities to cross disciplinary lines conceiving, publishing, and presenting my research. I also am passionate about connecting my scholarship with contemporary issues and events both within and beyond the academy. I regularly publish books, trade magazine articles, blogs, and other works for broader audiences both inside and beyond the academy. I frequently give public lectures at Asian medicine schools, public libraries, and other civic organizations locally, around the US, and internationally. In the last decade, I have gotten into documentary filmmaking and podcasting as well. I am passionate about these activities, as I believe they are important ways to promote understanding of religious and medical pluralism, as well as the value of the humanities for our broader society.

Recently, I have also begun to write non-scholarly works about my own spiritual practice and experiences. My intention with these is not to promote any particular doctrinal system, but to empower and encourage people to explore spiritual techniques and perspectives that work for them. To drastically oversimplify, I would say that the major theme in my own spiritual journey has been integration of multiple perspectives, epistemologies, or realities into an ever larger, ever more coherent wholeness. For me, this has meant the integration of different facets of my own biographical background, of my academic intellectual knowledge with my personal experience of Asian traditions, as well as of the profound emptiness and vibrant fullness that lie at the heart of all experience.

Listen to my backstory in a podcast….