2023 is the launch year of The Upper New Review. Currently, the UNR Staff is in its infancy, but we’re looking to add to the team as the year progresses!
Founder and Publisher
Dr. Erlandson at Wildcat Rock in Doughton Park on the Blue Ridge Parkway, with the Upper New River Basin flowing northward behind him.
Benjamin E. Erlandson, Ph.D.
Ben is a perpetual skeptic, longitudinal thinker, brewer, gardener, photographer, filmmaker, learning systems designer, and writer. Combinations of his efforts often manifest as digital technology, visual media, and printable narrative. Dr. Erlandson has published extensively in academia, including many journal articles and co-authorship of the graduate-level textbook Design For Learning In Virtual Worlds. He operates The Wolfbird Studios, creating stop motion animation, timelapse films, and interactive multimedia, all in service of learning.
Shooting for more than thirty years and writing for nearly forty, he spends as much time as possible outside, exploring the New River Basin, switching gears between fiction, nonfiction, and visual arts to keep his mind limber. For many years now he’s been an ordained Dudeist Priest, in the Church of the Latter Day Dude.
Ben earned a B.A. in Multimedia Arts and Sciences from UNC-Asheville, an M.A. in New Media Production from Emerson College, and a Ph.D. in Educational Technology from Arizona State University. His interest in the sociotechnical complexities of watershed ecology were solidified during his doctoral studies, resulting in his dissertation: Fostering ecological literacy: Recognizing and appreciating emergence in a complex virtual inquiry environment.
As a reader, a writer, a photographer, a filmmaker, and an independent scholar, Dr. Erlandson is constantly exploring the intersection of narrative, knowledge, belief, and behavior change.
Born and raised in Elkin, North Carolina, Ben has lived and worked in a variety of urban and rural environments, including Asheville, Boston, Tempe, Monterey Bay, Berkeley, and Washington, DC. Ben currently resides in Glade Valley, North Carolina, working toward an ecological home base as the yin to his nomadic yang, practicing photography and telling stories.
Help us grow!
Are you interested in helping out with submission management, reviewing, editing, social media, etc.?
Let us know.
