:: William Joiner Center

Staff

KEVIN BOWEN, DIRECTOR

Kevin Bowen is the director of the William Joiner Center. Prior to his tenure as director he served as co-director of the center with David Hunt and Paul Watanabe and as director of the university’s Veterans Center Upward Bound Program. A 1973 graduate of UMass Boston, he earned his Ph.D. from the State University of New York at Buffalo. A Danforth Fellow at Buffalo, he was awarded a Fulbright Fellowship to New College, Oxford in 1979. He served as an aide and speechwriter for Lieutenant Governor Thomas P. O’Neill, III prior to his return to UMass Boston in 1984. He served with the 1st Air Cavalry Division in Vietnam from 1968-1969 and has returned to Vietnam many times, initiating cultural, educational, and humanitarian exchanges. A poet and translator, he has authored and edited more than a dozen collections of poetry and prose and has received awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Massachusetts Cultural Council, and a Pushcart Prize for his work.

PAUL R. CAMACHO

Dr. Paul R. Camacho is currently Director of Special Projects at the Center. A recipient of BA and Ph.D. degrees from Boston College, prior to coming to the center in 1986, he was the Director of the Special Commission on the Concerns of Vietnam of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.

In addition to coordinating research and programs at the center, he serves as an associate editor for Armed Forces & Society. His most recent work, published in the October 2007 issue of that journal, was “Civil – Military Relations – Who are the Real Principals?” Dr. Camacho served as a non-commissioned officer in the E Co., 2nd BN, 9th Marine Regiment in Vietnam and was wounded in action. Most recently he as been working to build an exchange fellows program with the Veteraneninstituut of the Netherlands and with members of the Somali Diaspora community in Boston and Washington, D.C.

BAN AL-MAHFODH

Ban Al-Mahfodh is the center’s Research Coordinator. Ban received her B.A. from the University of Basra in 1997, majoring in English Language and Literature with a minor in translation in Arabic and French. She also received her M.A. in Applied Linguistics from the University of Basra, Iraq, in 2000. Most recently, she received an additional M.A. from Brandeis where she studied at the Heller School for Social Policy and Management. Her work at the Heller School focused on issues such as Advanced Study in Sustainable International Development, Conflict Theory, Coexistence Strategies, Art and Peacebuilding, and Development and Conflict. Her master’s thesis, “YIELA: A Youth Business Entrepreneurship Model in Iraqi City Slums as a Sustainable Instrument of Peace within the Conflict Situation”, drew on her work in Iraq. Ms. Al-Madfodh’s work experience before coming to the center includes an internship in Youth and Philanthropy for the Near East Foundation in New York and work as project manager for Save the Children in Basra from 2003-2005.

T. MICHAEL SULLIVAN

T. Michael Sullivan is the coordinator of the center’s annual Writers’ Workshop and edits the center’s newsletter and other publications. He joined the center in 1985 as a teacher in the Veterans Upward Bound Program and later served as the director of the Veterans Resource Project. An honors graduate of Boston College and the recipient of an MA in Anglo-Irish Literature University College, Dublin (Ireland) prior to coming to the center he taught at Somerville High School and as a journalist and editor at The Somerville Journal and Cambridge Chronicle. For his reporting and editing he received a number of awards including First Place from Suburban Newspapers of America for his work exposing government corruption and an award for General Excellence form the New England Press Association. He is also the recipient of a commendation from the State of New Hampshire for heroism for saving a young girl from drowning off Hampton Beach, N.H. in 2006. A poet whose poems have appeared widely, he works closely with the faculty of the writers workshop and with visiting fellows throughout the year.

NGUYEN BA CHUNG

Nguyen Ba Chung is a Research Associate at the Center. He is the director of the Rockefeller Residency Program and coordinator of the center’s cultural exchanges with Vietnam. Born in Vietnam, he studied in the U.S. as a high school exchange student in Minnesota and later as a student in the Brandeis Ph.D. Program in American Studies. A writer, poet and translator, his essays and translations have appeared in numerous journals. He is the co-translator of Thoi Xa Vang (A Time Far Past), by Le Luu and the author of three poetry collections Mua Ngan (Distant Rain) 1996, Ngo Hanh (Gate of Kindness) 1997, Tuoi Ngan Nam Den Tu Buoi So Sinh (A Thousand Years Old At Birth) 1999, with Song Han (The Han River) forthcoming. He co-edited with Kevin Bowen and Bruce Weigl the anthology, Mountain River: Vietnamese Poetry From The Wars 1948-1993; and with Kevin Bowen Distant Road - Selected Poems of Nguyen Duy; and Six Vietnamese Poets. His most recent works include the tri-lingual translation of Tho Van Ly Tran (Early Zen Poems From Vietnam), co-edited with Kevin Bowen and Nguyen Duy in 2005, and the bilingual translation of Tran Dang Khoa’s “From the Corner of My Yard”, co-translated with Fred Marchant in 2006.

PATRICK McCORMACK

Patrick McCormack started with the Joiner Center in December of 2000 as an events coordinator, and was promoted to office manager in 2006. He earned his Bachelor of Arts in Music from UMass Boston in 2003 and is currently enrolled in a state licensure program to teach music in the public schools.

PAUL ATWOOD

One of the original founders of the Joiner Center, Paul Atwood served in the Marine Corps, and became active in antiwar efforts and veterans issues after discharge. In addition to work in the center he is on the faculty of the American Studies Department at the University of Massachusetts/Boston. He did his undergraduate work at UMass Boston where he was on the original staff of the Veterans Upward Bound Program, a federally funded initiative aimed at addressing the educational and counseling needs of returning veterans. He worked as a high school teacher in the mid-seventies, and later became Director of the Veterans Program at UMB in 1979. Throughout the 80s about 10% of the students at UMB were Vietnam era veterans, and pressure was building for the creation of courses dealing with the war. In 1982 Dr. Atwood was appointed co-director of the Joiner Center to establish a comprehensive program committed to teaching about the Vietnam War, and other conflicts, and research aimed at meeting the needs of veterans throughout the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.

In 1985 he returned full-time to Boston University, and after finishing his doctorate there, started teaching at UMB. His courses include The U.S. in the Sixties, The Culture of War, The U.S. in the 1940's, and The Vietnam War, The U.S. and the Middle East since 1945. He has edited the Joiner Center publication Agent Orange: Medical, Scientific, Legal, Political and Psychological Issues. Most recently he co-edited Sticks and Stones: Living with Uncertain Wars (University of Massachusetts Press, 2006) and is working on War and Empire: The American Way of Life (London, UK, Pluto Press). He has published articles on the consequences of warfare, for example in Barry Levy and Victor Sidel, eds. Public Health and War, New York, (Oxford University Press, 1996) and articles on the Vietnam War in Microsoft Encarta Encyclopedia (1998).

SEAN LUNDE

Sean Lunde coordinates the Joiner Center’s outreach and information systems. He entered the United States Army as a medic in July of 2001. Sean served tours in Iraq (2004), Kosovo (2002-2003) and Germany. Sean completed his four-year enlistment in 2005 and transferred from the University of Maryland to the University of Massachusetts Boston, where he received a BA in Psychology and Sociology. While employed as a program and policy analyst for the Massachusetts Department of Veterans' Services, Sean's work obtained new grants that expanded the Department's outreach services and increased public awareness of veterans' issues. His work received attention from media outlets including NECN, PBS and NPR and the Boston Globe. At the Joiner Center, Sean is the Principle Investigator for the first population-level research of Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans in Massachusetts. Sean is also collaborating with the National Veterans Foundation as a research consultant. In 2007, Sean traveled to Vietnam as part of the Joiner Center delegation. Sean has written extensively about trauma in marginalized nations. One of his poems was translated into Vietnamese and published in the Perfume River Literary Journal. His short stories and essays have been published by the Voices In Wartime project and LUX, the UMass Boston student magazine. He is now editing the draft of his first novel. In addition to his work at the Joiner Center, Sean is graduate student at Boston University, pursuing an MBA from the School of Management and an MPH from the School of Public Health.

ELENA MOSKAL

Elena Moskal is the center’s Departmental assistant. Originally from Niskayuna, New York, she came to Boston after graduating from the College of Saint Rose in 2007 with a Bachelor degree in Sociology. Elena started working for the William Joiner Center in April 2008 first as a research assistant, working on the center’s study on Massachusetts’ Veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan. She is currently completing her masters in Applied Sociology at the University of Massachusetts Boston.