Steve Pavey is an applied anthropologist, activist, and artist who engages in and supports community-based collaborative research with a focus on the role of the arts to reverse inequities and to develop sustainable communities. His activist focus has been on economic justice, the prison industrial complex, restoring voting rights to former felons in KY, prison re-entry, sentencing policies, immigration reform, and refugee resettlement. He obtained a Ph.D. in anthropology from the University of Kentucky. He recently joined the department of sociology at Georgetown College as a visiting faculty member. He has worked in community development as a Research Associate at the Institute of Community Research (Hartford, CT) researching MDMA use and HIV/stds among marginalized populations and as a Research Associate at Western Kentucky University developing the Kaleidoscope community youth arts program that provided opportunities for underserved youth.