David Southward earned degrees in English from Northwestern and Yale Universities. In 1998, he joined the Honors College at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, where he is currently Associate Teaching Professor. Through introductory courses in graphic novels and film, as well as advanced courses in poetry and aesthetics, David shares his passion for the arts in all their variety.

His first chapbook, Apocrypha, was published by Wipf & Stock in 2018, and his collection Bachelor’s Buttons appeared from Kelsay Books in 2020. Other poems have appeared recently in THINK, Gyroscope Review, Measure, Light, Bramble, Millwork and Verse-Virtual. David is a two-time winner of the Lorine Niedecker Prize from the Council for Wisconsin Writers (2016, 2019) and the Muse Prize from the Wisconsin Fellowship of Poets (2017; selected by Mark Doty). In 2019, his poem “Mary’s Visit” was chosen from 978 entries for the $1,000 Frost Farm Prize for Metrical Poetry.

Emily Rogalski is a clinical and cognitive neuroscientist researching aging, Alzheimer’s and related dementias. Her investigations use a multimodal approach focused on two aging perspectives: primary progressive aphasia (PPA), in which neurodegenerative disease invades the language network, and SuperAging, in which 80+-year-olds are resistant to memory decline associated with typical cognitive aging. Rogalski’s PPA research helped to characterize its clinical and anatomical features, drivers of disease progression, identification of risk factors and refinement of cognitive neuroscience of language. She leads a global randomized controlled trial testing the efficacy of Communication Bridge, a novel nonpharmacologic intervention delivered by expert clinicians via telemedicine for individuals with PPA and their communication partners. Rogalski operationalized the SuperAging phenotype, and helped establish its unique biologic, molecular, genetic and psychosocial features. She leads the international SuperAging Research Initiative, which holds promise for identifying protective factors for avoiding Alzheimer’s disease, optimizing health span and reducing stigma associated with aging. Rogalski directs the new University of Chicago Healthy Aging & Alzheimer’s Care Center.

Philip Stafford received his BA from the University of Chicago and his Ph.D. from Indiana University. He is Adjunct Professor, Department of Anthropology, Faculty Affiliate at the Ostrom Workshop in Political Theory and Policy Analysis, and the retired Director of the Center on Aging and Community at Indiana University. As a senior consultant to the AdvantAge Initiative project of the Center for Home Care Policy and Research, he supports planning for age-friendly communities in over 40 U.S. cities and towns and participatory research and design projects for the development of the Lifetime Community Concept at the neighborhood level. He received the Walter S. Blackburn Award from the Indiana Chapter of the American Institute of Architects for contributions to the field by a nonarchitect and the Ageless America Award from Partners for Livable Communities.

He is a member of the advisory board of the International Making Cities Livable Institute, past president of the Association for Anthropology and Gerontology and recent board member of the American Society on Aging and the Memory Bridge Foundation. His major publications include Gray Areas: Ethnographic Encounters with Nursing Home Culture (2003: SAR Press), Elderburbia: Aging with a Sense of Place in America (2009: Praeger) and The Global Age-Friendly Community Movement: A Critical Perspective (2018: Berghahn Press).

In retirement, Stafford founded the Co-Design Commons in Bloomington, Indiana. Based on the belief that old people are experts on their own lives, the Co-Design Commons brings together older people and designers to help design with, not for, this population. Co-design works across several domains of daily life poorly served by products, technologies, services and built environments.