Terrell is a trainer for UACT and a PhD student in the Anthropology department at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. His research interests are youth organizing, Black power movements, and political/popular education. 

Terrell has worked in and with public schools supporting various community engagement projects and social justice work. He also works with youth to improve food access and advocate for food sovereignty in his hometown Springfield MA.

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Urgyen is currently working on a project-based Masters in Community Engaged Research and Practice at UMass Amherst. They are bridging UACT-style relational organizing and deep facilitation work with devised theater practices, aimed at creating theater that is rooted in relational practices and vulnerable exploration of lived experience. They are passionate about grassroots organizing, embodiment and meditative practices, and traveling to meet friends— both old and those yet to be discovered.  

Fu-Yu is a PhD student in the anthropology department at UMass. During her work as a family doctor in rural areas in Ecuador she realized that there’s so much more than pills and surgeries in healthcare… she didn’t feel like she was doing enough for her patients and during COVID she felt burn out. And now she’s back in school.

Her interests are care, public health, health inequities, healthcare workers burnout, mental health, medical education, critical pedagogy.

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Why?  I think UACT serves a valuable role in and outside the university as a community

that embraces the challenges of communicating across differences. We practice

patience, honesty, reflection, and deep listening, not only in our training and classroom

spaces but in all that we do as a community. I want more people to share in all that!

Uni Position: UMass non-traditional undergrad, senior (?)

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Area of Study: BDIC “Youth Liberation and Children’s Rights”

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Projects/Interests: UACT Zine. Bugs!

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Organizer Prof: Radicalized by Jewish identity and having a Palestinian friend help me

unlearn Zionism. Involved in the Free Palestine movement and anti-Zionist organizing.

Fun fact: I work at a toy store called A2Z and you should come and visit me!

Jeff Coyne is a graduate student of anthropology at the University of Massachusetts Amherst where he is pursuing a degree in Community Engaged Research & Practice. His current research focuses on the political economy of the overdose crisis, and the ways in which contemporary narratives about addiction are internalized by drug users. He previously worked for the People’s Harm Reduction Alliance and Department of Public Health in Seattle, and currently works as a tenant organizer in the Connecticut River Valley of Western Massachusetts. 

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Jen Sandler is the Director of UACT and Senior Lecturer in the Department of Anthropology at UMass. Her research and writing focuses on on how people use different forms and practices of knowledge to create positive change. Jen earned a Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2008, and held visiting faculty positions at Trinity College and Bates College before coming to UMass and UACT in 2012. She is intensely grateful to have so many meaningful projects and relationships guiding her engagement in these times of extraordinary precarity, injustice, violence, and possibility. Jen's day-to-day is grounded by an 11-year-old kid, builder partner, and the best pup.