Kristal Bivona is Assistant Professor of Humanities and the Associate Director of the Behner Stiefel Center for Brazilian Studies at San Diego State University. Her research examines memory and visual culture from Latin America, including cinema, graffiti, street art, memorials, and other artistic interventions in public space. Her current book project, Democracy Out of Focus: Political Memory in Post-Dictatorship Brazilian Cinema tells the story of how cinema shapes Brazil’s official memory of the dictatorship through the stories told on screen and the debates that audiovisual production generates. Her work has been published in Memory Studies, Luso-Brazilian Review, and Latin American and Latinx Visual Culture. She is also an alumna of San Diego State University, where she earned her B.A. in English after transferring from community college. She holds an M.A. in Comparative Literature from Dartmouth College, an M.A. in Portuguese from UCLA and a Ph.D. in Hispanic Languages and Literatures from UCLA.

David P. Cline is a historian specializing in 20th and 21st-century U.S. social movements. He is a Professor of History at SDSU and the Founding Director of the Center for Public and Oral History. In addition to his courses on social movements and public history, David has innovated courses on sports in American History and is currently working on a textbook focusing on race, gender, and power in American sports.  He is the author of three books, including 2021's Twice Forgotten: African Americans and the Korean War, An Oral History (UNC Press). 

Matt Fowler is originally from the Inland Empire region of Southern California, and has spent portions of his life in Baltimore, Maryland before relocating to San Diego. He is of Indigenous P’urhépecha, Chichimeca, and Irish descent. A great deal of his work centers around radicalism, Indigeneity, survivance, environmentalism, reclamation and preservation, hemispheric and transnational studies, sociopolitical criticism, abolition, queer theory, cults, social milieus and movements, and militancy.

Matt holds an A.A. degree from Harford Community College, a B.A. in Literature and Writing Studies from California State University San Marcos, and a Creative Writing M.F.A. from San Diego State University. Matt is the Faculty Scholar for SDSU’s Native Resource Center, and works as a part-time Lecturer in the Department of American Indian Studies.

Matt is a Sarah B. Marsh-Rebelo Award recipient, and his work can be found in online and print publications including PRISM International, Quarterly West, Sycamore Review, The Los Angeles Review, Homology Lit Mag, GlitterMob, and elsewhere. He is currently working on a full-length manuscript. In his spare time, he enjoys relaxing with his dog, reading, writing, analog photography, bicycling, skateboarding, traveling, hiking, and backpacking.

Dr. Brandon Gamble received his training in psychology from Oakwood College for his Bachelor's degree, San Diego State for his Master's degree, and the University of Southern California is where he earned his Doctoral degree in Educational Psychology.

From 1998 to 2009, he served middle and high school students as a school psychologist in the Long Beach Unified School District before becoming an associate professor at Cal State University Long Beach, in the College of Education for the Educational Psychology program from 2007 to 2017.  He has had the honor to serve as the adviser for the Black Student Union at CSULB.  Also, from 2018-2021, he was at his undergraduate alma mater to serve as a professor of Psychology and the Dean of Student Success at Oakwood University in Huntsville, AL.  In 2021, he served as the Charles Bell Faculty Scholar for the Black Resource Center (BRC) at San Diego State University (SDSU). He was the Director of the BRC at SDSU in the Spring of 2022-2024.  Currently, he is excited to serve as the inaugural Director for the Office of Black Student Success at CSUSB. 

Dr. Gamble's written work and research has focused on African American male's social capital and familial support networks that empower young people to succeed in academics and live a strong socially and emotionally health life.  

Dr. Thomas Kemp is Chair and Professor in the Department of Economics at the University of Wisconsin – Eau Claire. He has held visiting appointments at Ateneo University – Manila; Kobe University, Japan; Jinan University, China; and Vietnam National University, Vietnam. He currently teaches Econometrics, International Trade and Finance, The History of Economic Thought, and Macroeconomics. Dr. Kemp earned his Ph.D. in economics in 2002 from Colorado State University and his Bachelor’s degree in 1995 from Carthage College. His ongoing research interests include non-market valuation, economic philosophy, and the economics of skateparks and skateboarding. His academic work has been published in a variety of journals including The Journal of Economic Analysis, The Appraisal Journal, Journal of Economic Issues, Review of Social Economy, and The Forum for Social Economics; and he is the author of the books, Progress and Reform: The Economic Thought of John R. Commons (2009) and Basic Macroeconomics (2016, 2022).

In his spare time, Dr. Kemp can be found with his family, on a skateboard (probably getting hurt), or wasting time and money riding and repairing old motor scooters. He reports that life is good despite the concrete being very, very hard.

Kristin Lawler is Professor of Sociology at the College of Mount Saint Vincent in New York City and teaches with the Bard Prison Initiative as well. Her first book, The American Surfer: Radical Culture and Capitalism, was published by Routledge in 2011, and her new book, co-edited with Michael James Roberts and David Cline, entitled Flow and Roll: the Political Ontology of Surfing and Skateboarding is forthcoming from San Diego State University Press. Her work has been published in numerous edited collections, including, most recently, Feminism and the Early Frankfurt School (forthcoming); Back to the 30s? Recurring Crises of Capitalism, Liberalism, and Democracy; Nietzsche and Critical Social Theory; Class: the Anthology; The Critical Surf Studies Reader, and Southern California Bohemias. Her work has also been published in the journal Situations: Project of the Radical Imagination; she is a member of its editorial board as well as a member of the board of The Institute for the Radical Imagination.

I grew up in the Bay Area and learned to surf in Santa Cruz, California, at a spot on the east side of town called “the Hook.” I earned my PhD in 2005 from the Graduate School and University Center of the City University of New York (CUNY), where I studied under the late, great Stanley Aronowitz.  At CUNY, I was trained in Cultural Studies and Sociology, with a particular emphasis on the Critical Theory of the Frankfurt School and British Cultural Studies. My areas of interest are wide ranging including: the culture, politics and history of surfing and skateboarding, the history of the American Labor Movement, science and technology studies, popular culture, the history of rock and roll and critical theory. I teach courses and have publications in all these areas, and I am the recipient of several teaching awards. My academic activities are situated in the context of the teacher-scholar model, informed by the critical pedagogy of Paulo Freire. I joined the faculty at SDSU in 2004.

I created a course on the culture and history of surfing with my graduate student Chad Smith in 2006 and have been teaching it ever since. I recently created a second course on the topic and both courses will be included in the new Board Studies Certificate. The certificate, which includes several courses on both surfing and skateboarding, will be offered under the umbrella of the new Sports and Society Minor offered at SDSU. 

In the area of surfing  and skateboarding studies, my recent publications include an article co-authored with Dr. Jess Ponting titled, “Waves of Simulation: Arguing Authenticity in an Era of Surfing the Hyperreal” (International Review for The Sociology of Sport) In the article, we look at how the surfing community has responded to the emergence “perfect” artificial waves produced in man-made wave pools. Using the work of the theorists Jean Baudrillard and Walter Benjamin, we look at how fake waves may become a primary referent for surf culture and what long term impact that will have upon the culture(s) of surfing. I also am co-editor with Dr. Kristin Lawler and Dr. David Cline for the volume Roll and Flow: The Cultural Politics of Skateboarding and Surfing (San Diego State University Press, 2024). I have two co-authored chapters in the volume. Consisting of 15 chapters on a wide range of topics, the book takes the occasion of the involvement of skateboarders and surfers in the Black Lives Matter demonstrations and protests in the Summer of 2020 as a means to intervene into the on-going conversations about the significance of the cultural politics of surfing and skateboarding.

I am currently working on three projects. The first is a guest-edited special issue on the cultural politics of surfing and skateboarding for the journal Sport in Society (co-edited with Kristin Lawler).

My second project is a monograph provisionally titled, Time Travels and Space Explorations: The Critical Theory of Surfing and Skateboarding. Currently under review at Routledge Press, my book is the first book to bring together a critical-theoretical interpretation of the cultural politics of surfing and skateboarding. It does so within a theoretical framework that reveals the ways in which the subcultural practices of surfing and skateboarding make critical interventions into the production and representation of space and time within contemporary capitalist social formations. Appropriating the concepts of “duration” from Henri Bergson and “the production of space” from Henri Lefebvre, this book examines the conditions under which the practices of surfing and skateboarding actualize temporal and spatial forms that resist the capitalist structuring of everyday life. The principal way in which subcultural surfers and skateboarders intervene into the social formations of time and space is by placing play, rather than work, at the center of everyday life. By contesting the capitalist constructions of time and space, subcultural surfers and skateboarders reveal – in their own particular ways - the conditions necessary for a life worth living.

Lastly, I am working with our team at the SSSC to launch a new journal in the Fall of 2025 titled, Board Cultures: The International Journal of Surfing and Skateboarding Studies. We plan to release the first issue of our journal at our next Stoke Sessions Conference to be held Oct 9 -12 at San Diego State University.

Kimball Taylor is the author of The Coyote's Bicycle: The Untold Story of Seven Thousand Bicycles and the Rise of a Borderland Empire, which was a finalist for the California Book Award. A longtime contributor to Surfer Magazine, his work has appeared in the The Surfer’s Journal, Surfing Magazine, Adventure Journal, Transworld Skateboarding, Transworld Snowboarding, ESPN Magazine, Los Angeles Times, Vice Media, and The Atlantic. He was a columnist for ESPN.go.com and a contributing author to history books on the legendary surf breaks Banzai Pipeline and Jefferys Bay. Taylor lectures in the Rhetoric and Writing Studies department at San Diego State University.

Tim Tully is a librarian in the Reference, Outreach, and Instruction department who specializes in supporting the Fowler College of Business and the Payne School of Hospitality & Tourism Management. In addition to this, Tim works across library units, such as Special Collections and University Archives and Digital Collections, to develop collections to support the teaching and research missions of the Surf/Skate Studies Collaborative and teaches the Freshman Seminar Gen S 100C - "Surfing and Sustainability." Prior to becoming a librarian, Tim was a retail buyer at a surf shop, interned at surf and skate companies, and co-founded the Florida lifestyle brand Flomotion. Tim grew up surfing and skating in New Smyrna Beach, Florida and competed at the amatuer and junior pro levels.

Neftalie Williams investigates global issues of race, diversity, and youth empowerment by utilizing critical theory to address power, identity politics, and social change through the lens of action sports. Centering the sporting lives of Black, Indigenous, and People of Color, his investigations offer historical examples of adversity and allyship to help develop a more inclusive future. Dr. Williams has published scholarly works on the topics, op-eds for mainstream publications, and provided commentary for multiple traditional news outlets. He has a forthcoming title with U.C. Press and Hatchett Books. His previous positions include Lecturer and Provost's Postdoctoral Scholar at the Annenberg School of Communication and Journalism and Yale Schwarzman Center Visiting Fellow in Race, Culture & Community.

Dr. Williams also introduced the concept of skateboarding as a tool for cultural diplomacy in both theory and practice. Utilizing skate diplomacy, he has led the U.S. Department of State's embassies' new action sports engagements with global youth and their host country's academic, sports, and cultural institutions. Those countries include Cambodia, The Netherlands, Kazakhstan, Barbados, and Granada, and supplement his scholarly research in Brazil, South Africa, Sweden, and Cuba.