Daniela Jauk-Ajamie Author & Editor

Matthew DelSesto is the coordinator for the Initiative for Community Justice and Engaged Pedagogy at Boston College where he also teaches in the sociology department. He has worked as an educator in prisons and jails for more than twelve years and developed a number of collaborative projects with community-based organizations. His research and practice have been funded by the National Science Foundation, Hearst Foundations, and Center for Human Rights and International Justice. He is the author of Design and the Social Imagination (2022).

Daniela Jauk-Ajamie is an assistant professor of sociology and criminal justice studies at the University of Akron, Ohio. She is a certified clinical sociologist and serves on the board of the American Association of Applied and Clinical Sociology (AACS). She co-authored the book Gardening Behind Bars: Clinical Sociology and Food Justice in Incarcerated Settings (2024).

Elizabeth Lara currently works as a garden educator, Dodger Stadium tour guide (with a specialization on the botanic garden tour), a facilitator for a domestic violence intervention program, and a freelance gardener. Her academic research focuses on gardens and horticultural history in current and former sites of incarceration in California. Her work "Prison Gardens and Growing Abolition" has been published in the edited collection The Promise of Multispecies Justice (2022).

Shea Zwerver works to bring nature to carceral settings, increase access to nature to promote prosocial behavior, and improve quality of life through equity-driven practices. From 2016 to 2022, she served in multiple roles with Pennsylvania's Department of Conservation and Natural Resources. There, she conceptualized and coordinated a vocational and educational training program–the "Correctional Conservation Collaboration" at state prisons in arboriculture, forestry, and natural resource conservation.