Becky Thompson

Becky Thompson is a US-based scholar, human rights activist, cross-cultural trainer, poet and yoga teacher. She is a professor of sociology in the College of Social Sciences, Policy and Practice at Simmons University.^[1] She also teaches yoga at the Dorchester YMCA in Boston. Since 2015 she has worked in Greece as a human rights advocate with people from Syria, Afghanistan, Palestine, Somalia.^[2]

Thompson has contributed thought-leadership and scholarship to groups interested in organizational transformation, contemplative practices, trauma, healing and social justice globally. She is the author/editor of twelve books including Teaching with Tenderness,^[3] Survivors on the Yoga Mat: Stories for those Healing from Trauma, A Promise and a Way of Life,^[4][5] and Zero is the Whole I Fall into at Night and has received the Ex Ophidia Poetry Prize,^[6] the Creative Justice Chapbook Poetry Prize and the Gustavus Myers Outstanding Book Award on Human Rights.^[7]

Thompson has been affiliated with several professional organizations, including the Association for the Study of the Worldwide African Diaspora and the National Women's Studies Association^[8] and is a representative of Cetlalic, Tlahuica Center for the Study of Language and Cultural Exchange in Cuernavaca, Mexico. She has taught seminars on social justice, yoga and creative writing in Guangzhou, Dali, and Beijing China and for the International Women's Partnership for Peace and Justice in Chiang Mai, Thailand.^[9]