Bonnie Glass-Coffin, Ph.D.
Bonnie Glass-Coffin first became widely-known beyond the academic world of anthropology with the publication of The Gift of Life: Female Spirituality and Healing in Northern Peru, exploring the role of curanderas in their communities. She has published numerous anthropological articles and teaches at Utah State University, where she organized a major conference in 2000, "Body, Mind, and Spirit: Culture and Health in America." She founded and directs an ethnographic field school that meets in Huanchaco, Peru each summer. Additionally, she has received numerous awards for her research and for her teaching, including the prestigious CASE/Carnegie Foundation award as Teacher of the Year.
Douglas Sharon, Ph.D.
Douglas Sharon's reputation as a brilliant research anthropologist was firmly established in the 1970's, when he worked closely with don Eduardo Calderon, one of the best known and most colorful curanderos of Peru. In Wizard of the Four Winds: A Shaman's Story and the award-winning documentary film, Eduardo the Healer, he explored the contemporary healing practices of the curanderos of northern Peru. Almost single-handedly Dr. Sharon opened contemporary Peruvian curanderismo as a field of study to North American academia. He is credited with transforming the San Diego Museum of Man into a world class facility during his long engagement as its director. He now directs the Hearst Museum of Anthropology. Author or co-author of five books and of numerous scholarly articles, he still teaches and conducts research in Peru, Ecuador, and Bolivia. He is currently engaged in an ongoing collaborative research project documenting the plant pharmacoepia of numerous curanderos, the samples of which are then chemically analyzed and matched with scientifically known healing agents.
C. Manuel Torres, Ph.D.
C. Manuel Torres has long been recognized as a leading authority in the relationship of art and shamanism in Pre-Columbian South America. His work on the visual art of Tiahuanacan culture and its relationship to the regionally surviving practices associated with the Anadenanthera plant is widely recognized as groundbreaking. Anadenanthera: Visionary Plant of Ancient South America, his most recent book, provides the first ever comprehensive study of the cultural and healing practices linked with this plant.