Robert Atkinson
Co-host ROBERT ATKINSON, PhD, author, educator, and developmental psychologist, is a 2020 Gold Nautilus Book Award winner as co-editor of Our Moment of Choice: Evolutionary Visions and Hope for the Future, and a 2017 Silver Nautilus Book Award winner for The Story of Our Time: From Duality to Interconnectedness to Oneness. He is the author of eight other books including Mystic Journey: Getting to the Heart of Your Soul’s Story (2012), and The Gift of Stories (1995). He assisted Babatunde Olatunji with his autobiography, The Beat of My Drum (2005). In 1969, following an M.A. in American Folk Culture from SUNY Cooperstown, he sailed with Pete Seeger on the maiden voyage of the Hudson River Sloop Clearwater, and met Joseph Campbell at one of his Cooper Union talks. As key mentors, their supportive relationships are central to his memoir, Year of Living Deeply: A Memoir of 1969 (2019). He completed an M.A. in Counseling from the University of New Hampshire and a PhD in cross-cultural human development from the University of Pennsylvania as well as a post-doctoral fellowship at the University of Chicago. A highlight of his academic career was sailing around the world as a faculty member on the fall 2002 Semester at Sea voyage. He is professor emeritus at the University of Southern Maine, an internationally recognized authority on life story interviewing, a pioneer in the techniques of personal myth-making and soul-making, director of StoryCommons, founder of One Planet Peace Forum
