Hollyfeld Learning

Thalia R. Goldstein, PhD is an associate professor and director of Applied Developmental Psychology at George Mason University, where she also runs the Play, Learning, Arts, and Youth Lab. Her scientific research focuses on children's social and emotional development through activities such as theatre, imagination, and the arts. She has been the editor of the journal Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts, and is a current Fellow of the American Psychological Foundation. Thalia is the author of more than 75 peer reviewed scientific papers and two books. Her work has been featured on CNN, The New York Times, and The Washington Post, and funded by the National Science Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, the John Templeton Foundation, Arts Connection, and the Caplan Foundation. Cats, not dogs; dark chocolate, not milk chocolate; mountains, not beach; cake, not ice cream; city mouse, not country mouse

Carla Della Gatta, PhD, is Associate Professor of Theatre Scholarship and Performance Studies at University of Maryland, College Park. She is a theatre historian and performance theorist whose work focuses on the intersection of ethnicity and spoken word and sound. She is author of Latinx Shakespeares: Staging U.S. Intracultural Theater (open-access, 2023) and co-editor of Shakespeare and Latinidad (2021). She built and manages the only archive of Latinx theatrical adaptation, LatinxShakespeares.Org. Carla is a dramaturg and serves on the Steering Committee for the Latinx Theatre Commons. Cats, not dogs; dark chocolate, not milk chocolate; beach, not mountains; cake, not ice cream; city mouse, not country mouse.

Eliseo Valerio is a bilingual educator and arts integration specialist with experience in theatre, language learning, and culturally responsive education. He has deep experience in developing and leading innovative, equity-centered programming for multilingual learners. Eliseo is the founder of Playlabras, a theatre-based language initiative recognized by the Jacobs Foundation and Penn Wharton Innovation Fund. He is passionate about student voice, literacy development, and expanding access to transformative learning experiences through the arts. Dogs, not cats; dark chocolate, not milk chocolate; mountains, not beach; ice cream, not cake; city mouse, not country mouse.