Joby Taylor


Policy & Advocacy Committee

Board-elected (current term ends 2014)

Gabon 1991 – 1993

Email

Joby Taylor is Director of the Shriver Peaceworker Fellows Program, a graduate level service-learning program located at The Shriver Center, University of Maryland Baltimore County. Through this position, Joby has supported RPCVs from over 60 Peace Corps countries of service, advising them as they earn graduate degrees in over a dozen disciplines and engaging them in service leadership positions with over 50 community organizations in the Baltimore region.

Joby is a regular member of the University of Maryland Graduate Faculty with an affiliate faculty appointment in UMBC’s Language, Literacy, & Culture Ph.D. Program where he teaches courses and advises internships and research for doctoral-level students. He also regularly teaches undergraduate seminars in peace studies, service-learning, and other special topics for diverse programs including UMBC’s First Year Seminar program, Humanities Scholars, American Studies, Education, and Sociology Departments. Most recently he joined an interdisciplinary faculty team to lead an International Field Research course based in Switzerland where he developed research themes in environmental sustainability and cultural studies.

His practice of engaged scholarship is rooted in a long history of civic engagement including his own service as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Gabon, Africa, where he led a rural elementary school construction project. Upon returning, he spent several years leading international service experiences for high school youth as a program director for Visions Service Adventures’ in the French West Indies. He led the Shriver Center’s multi-year partnerships with the Corporation for National and Community Service and the Sargent Shriver Peace Institute, and is currently collaborating with a consortium of regional faculty to organize a Baltimore College Peace Network.

Joby’s book,”Metaphors We Serve By,” a collection of essays on the history and future of national service and service-learning, was published in 2008. His most recent publications have included pieces on the Peace Corps and Sargent Shriver for Worldview Magazine, and a book chapter on the history of the civil rights and peace movements in Baltimore in Baltimore ’68: Riots and Rebirth in an American City. He has presented and lectured from local to international settings across diverse topics including service-learning, place-based studies, conceptual metaphor, intercultural and interfaith dialogue, and more.

Joby lives in Baltimore and takes every opportunity to lead students and friends on excursions into the city in hopes that learning about its rich history, and its current challenges and opportunities, will inspire them to pursue lives of social change leadership in its future. He earned his B.A. degree in Philosophy, M.A. in Religious Studies, and his Ph.D. in Interdisciplinary Studies.

176 queries in 3.809 seconds.