Cultural Specialists

Meet the scholars who offer insights into the cultures we explore

Cultural

Cultural Specialists

Some of our voyages bring us deep into other cultures, where we have the chance to take part in local traditions and get a firsthand view of another way of life. In those places, we rely on our cultural specialists to interpret everyday customs and help us make meaningful connections with people we meet in our destinations. They may be archaeologists or anthropologists who can illuminate ancient civilizations in the Mediterranean or island cultures in the South Pacific.

Others are art historians or ethnomusicologists who give us a closer look at the rich artistic heritage of a destination through informative talks, guided tours, and concerts. All of them have spent time immersed in the regions they are exploring—and some of them were born and raised there.  

Often, we will welcome a local expert on board to offer insights and a personal perspective—such as a resident artist or a Tlingit cultural interpreter who sheds light on Alaska’s Indigenous traditions.  

Some of our voyages bring us deep into other cultures, where we have the chance to take part in local traditions and get a firsthand view of another way of life. In those places, we rely on our cultural specialists to interpret everyday customs and help us make meaningful connections with people we meet in our destinations. They may be archaeologists or anthropologists who can illuminate ancient civilizations in the Mediterranean or island cultures in the South Pacific....

Read more

Expedition staff are subject to change.

Meet our Cultural Specialists

Cultural Specialist icon Cultural Specialist

Konia Tack

Konia fell in love with Scotland in 1983 when she first visited from Germany. Settling on Scotland's West Coast, Konia quickly immersed herself in the local culture, the remarkable natural settings, and the history of the Highlands. Training with the Scottish Wildlife Trust, she obtained a diploma in conservation and wildlife Management. She then became involved in various conservation projects and studied Scottish history. In the 1990s Konia worked with the National Trust of Scotland — protecting the regions most cherished natural and cultural landmarks. It was here that she realized that she enjoys sharing her knowledge and enthusiasm for Scotland and so she trained to become a professional guide. Although her profession takes her all over Scotland, her heart is in the Highlands. Her specialties include Highland culture and history, as well as horticulture, as she also trained as a garden designer some years ago. Konia is a committee member of the Highland of Scotland Tour Guide Association. She is also a member of the North Kessock & District Local History Society, the Royal Horticultural Society and Perennial, the Gardeners’ Royal Benevolent Society. Being a keen photographer she is a member of Cromarty Camera Club, as well as the Bat Conservation Trust. Konia lives and gardens on the Black Isle in the Highlands near Inverness.

Cultural Specialist icon Cultural Specialist

Jacob Edgar

Jacob Edgar   is an Ethnomusicologist, world music tastemaker and global explorer with an insatiable curiosity for the diverse ways in which people express themselves through music. Jacob’s adventures have taken him to dozens of countries, and hundreds of the world’s greatest international music festivals, showcases and performance venues in search of exceptional musical talents. Since 1998, Jacob has been the main music researcher for the acclaimed world music compilations label  Putumayo World Music , contributing songs and liner notes to over 300 Putumayo collections that combined have sold over 15 million copies. In 2006, Jacob founded the record label  Cumbancha , whose artists include some of the top names in international music. In 2009, Jacob embarked on a new adventure as host of a new music and travel television program Music Voyager . The series invites viewers to discover the exciting sounds of the planet and broadcasts on PBS and other stations around the world. While pursuing his undergraduate degree at Oberlin College, where he was a double major in History and Latin American Studies, Jacob conducted field research on music and society in Central America. His love of music took him to the West Coast where Jacob was awarded the Mellon Fellowship in the Humanities and graduated from University of California, Los Angeles in 1994 with a Masters in Ethnomusicology. For a time, Jacob was a professional trumpet player performing primarily salsa and Afro-Cuban music. He has written for The Beat , Global Rhythm Magazine , The LA Times Book Review and other publications, and was the host of the radio program “Uncompass” on the San Francisco radio station KALW. Jacob lives in the small town of Charlotte, Vermont with his wife Deirdre and daughters Simone and Schuÿler. He runs his enterprises from an antique refurbished barn nestled amidst the picturesque Green Mountains. Also on the property is Cumbancha’s partner company, Lane Gibson Recording and Mastering, one of the most revered recording studios in New England. The studio has attracted artists from near and far to craft their music in a unique and magical setting.

Cultural Specialist icon Cultural Specialist

David Brotherson

Growing up near Sydney, Australia, as a student David was long captivated by science, astronomy, and aviation. His passion for the world’s cultural diversity - and it’s elaborate, often entangled history - developed later, and was rooted in a fascination with the civilisations, history, and mythology of the ancient Mediterranean. These interests took shape at the University of Sydney as an archaeology major. As his undergraduate studies neared completion, David started travelling the world, and he would make a transformative trip to Southeast Asia. His weeks abroad were a fairly balanced mix of sandy beaches and medieval ruins but would culminate in a life changing experience standing amidst the enigmatic temple complex of Angkor Wat in Cambodia. The opportunity then arose to work with the university’s Greater Angkor Project, a multi-disciplinary archaeological research program, and a PhD scholarship further cemented this collaboration. David’s dissertation on Angkor’s decline - founded in his expertise in settlement archaeology and GIS - integrated analysis of ceramics, the engineered landscape, environmental proxies, and international trade networks to analyse its urban trajectory, demise, and transformation. David is a long-term resident of Siem Reap, Cambodia, where he has lectured and led tour groups for over a decade. His role with Lindblad-National Geographic began in 2015 with the Mekong River voyage and has since broadened to various Mediterranean programs as expedition historian. David received his PhD from the University of Sydney in 2020. His archaeological research in Cambodia is ongoing, as is his passion for world history, educational tourism, playing guitar and tennis.

Cultural Specialist icon Cultural Specialist

Elsie Stewart-Burton

Elsie Gale is of the Ts'aahlth Laanaas Stastas Gitlun—a double Eagle, Eagle, Beaver, Sculpin and Frog clan from Hydaburg, Alaska, the most northern of Haida villages. Her Haida name is IL'skide and she was raised in the traditional Haida ways, learning about her family lineage and histories, songs and dance and food gathering throughout the seasons. She loves hunting, fishing, camping, picking berries, beach greens, teas and basic medicinal herbs. Elsie lived in Old Massett for 20 years where she raised two beautiful sons and worked as an entrepreneur. From 2008 to 2011, she opened and ran a studio/gallery in Ketchikan, Alaska, featuring Haida art as well as native art from many tribes of Alaska and British Columbia. She began learning Haida art in her youth and continued her studies by learning to make traditional Regalia and basic cedar weaving. From 2004 to 2006 she had the distinct honor of apprenticing with Master Haida Weaver Evelyn Vanderhoop to learn Raven's Tail and Naaxiin wool weaving which she demonstrated in her gallery and continues to make to this day!    In 2012 Elsie returned to Haida Gwaii, choosing Skidegate as her residence. Since moving home she worked one season as a Haida Gwaii Watchman in Gwaii Haanas, then next as an interpretive officer for Gwaii Haanas National Park Reserve, and has now opened and is operating her own inn in Masset. 

Cultural Specialist icon Cultural Specialist

Daniel Odess

Daniel (Dan) Odess has conducted archaeological research across the Arctic, including Zhokhov Island in the Russian High Arctic, the coast of Chukotka, dozens of sites in interior and coastal Alaska, and Baffin Island in Canada.  Dan’s work focuses on a variety of topics that relate to how people have met the challenges of living in extreme environments, including: what they ate and how they procured it, how they organized their technology, their social strategies, and what it meant to colonize a place where nobody had ever lived before.  During his time at Brown University, Dan conducted his doctoral dissertation on Baffin Island, where he focused on the Dorset Paleo-Eskimos and examined how interaction between distant groups of people affected their ability to survive over time. He has studied the origins of whaling and its effects on Arctic peoples, the colonization of the Arctic and the New World, and prehistoric demography. He is also interested in the philosophy of science, including how we know what we know and ways to apply the scientific method to test our understanding and assumptions, solve new problems, and answer new questions. His approach to research is multidisciplinary, involving collaboration with paleoecologists, biologists, paleontologists, physicists, and geologists, among others. He is keenly interested in how the knowledge of indigenous people can inform our understanding of the past and how in turn, the study of the past can help inform the decisions we face today.   Dan is a natural teacher, with great enthusiasm for archaeology and the Arctic, and is a firm believer that far more can be learned and taught in the field than in the classroom. In addition to his work as professor of anthropology at the University of Alaska, he has led field courses in Iceland, Newfoundland, Labrador, and Alaska. His hobbies include kayaking, birding, hiking, cooking, gardening and, since leaving Alaska in 2007, growing orchids. 

Cultural Specialist icon Cultural Specialist

Linda Tollas

Linda (Gaajiiaawa) is of the Skedans Raven clan and lives in Skidegate, Haida Gwaii with her husband. She is a proud mother and grandmother to two sons, five grandchildren and twin great-granddaughters. Aside from a 25-year period, Linda has lived her whole life in Haida Gwaii.  She and her husband returned in 1997.  They spent two summers as Watchmen, protecting and educating visitors about her ancestral village of Skedans.  Her passion for learning and her communication and leadership skills made her a natural Cultural Heritage interpreter.  She worked for 14 years in this capacity with Gwaii Haanas National Park Reserve and Haida Heritage Site, educating diverse audiences about Haida culture and ethnobotany.  Linda provided guided hikes of the forests and evening slide shows to visitors, and delivered educational and interactive programs to all schools in Haida Gwaii. Linda has also served as a local educator to university students from across Canada enrolled in the Haida Gwaii Higher Education Society Semester Program since its inception five years ago.  Her enthusiasm about cedar, ethnobotany and Haida culture, and her engaging approach have always made her guided hikes of Spirit Lake a favorite of the Semester Program. A highlight of her career with Gwaii Haanas was accompanying the Skidegate Haida Immersion Program (SHIP) elders as they circumnavigated Moresby Island for their Haida place-naming project. Inspired with SHIP’s work, Linda retired from Gwaii Haanas in 2012, and joined SHIP to learn the Haida language!

Cultural Specialist icon Cultural Specialist

Tua Pittman

Internationally acclaimed as a traditional master navigator, Tua has navigated canoes across the great oceans of our planet from the coastlines of Asia through to the shores of the Americas for more than 30 years, without the use of modern instruments. This Cook Islander, also of New Zealand Maori and Tahitian bloodlines, uses an ancient navigational system based upon careful observation of celestial bodies—sun, moon, and stars—as well as using ocean swells, flight patterns of birds, and other natural markers.   Tua’s efforts to adopt and promote the sailing arts of the ancients have been recognized throughout the Pacific. In 2008 he was designated a Pwo navigator on the island of Satawal in Micronesia and inducted by sacred ritual into this rarefied society of master navigators by Grand Elder and Master Navigator Mau Piailug. In addition to earning prominence among traditional voyaging societies, Tua is known throughout Polynesia, Melanesia, and Micronesia for his mentoring of young islanders in the traditional cultures and languages of their ancestors. Tua is a respected chieftain of his island homeland, a dancer, drummer, athlete, and gifted speaker. His lecture topics, accompanied by excellent visual materials, include the origin and migration theory of the Pacific people; ancient traditional voyaging and navigation; traditional voyaging in this modern day; open-air star presentation and identification—navigating Pacific skies; and Pacific Ocean traditions and cultures.

Cultural Specialist icon Cultural Specialist

Stefan Thorgeirsson

An avid hiker and outdoor enthusiast with a passion for languages and culture – Stefan is a Viking with a twist. Born in Reykjavik, to a family from the Westfjords of Iceland, Stefan’s upbringing has allowed him to experience the best of both worlds. During most of the wintertime, he lived in Reykjavik and got to know the city. When the summertime came, however, he would go hiking, camping and fishing in the beautiful nature of Iceland. Stefan lived in Japan for one year during his high school studies and speaks fluent Japanese. After high school, he took a year off to explore another part of the world – Costa Rica – where he worked as a volunteer at a wildlife reserve. Stefan got to know the locals and experience the biodiversity of Costa Rica as well as its culture and language. His Spanish is still pretty good. Stefan holds a BSc degree in Industrial Engineering from the University of Iceland as well as a BA Acting degree from Iceland University of the Arts. Right out of university Stefan moved with his family to Japan where they have been living for the past two years. Before joining Lindblad Stefan was working as a tour guide in Iceland and he has been around the island multiple times, both on land and sea.

Cultural Specialist icon Cultural Specialist

Patrick MacQuarrie

Patrick MacQuarrie grew up on a wheat farm on the Columbia River Basin. In college, he studied engineering, international relations, and geography, getting his PhD in International Water Management. Both Irish and American, Patrick has lived and worked abroad for the last 25 years, is a keen conversationalist and passionate musician.  He brings extensive and deep knowledge of river basin systems to Lindblad’s team of experts, having worked on crafting and implementing water sharing agreements with UN-Water, the Environmental Programme (UNEP), the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE), the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), the Mekong River Commission, and conducted research and taught at acclaimed Universities worldwide.  Patrick has waded in nearly every meandering river in the world; the Columbia and Colorado river basins in North America, the Amazon and Lake Titicaca basins in South America, the Mekong, Salween, and Irrawaddy, in Southeast Asia and the Murry-Darling in Australia, several basins across Europe and West Asia, multiple basins in the Middle East and North Africa, and intimate knowledge of waterways in Ireland and the British Isles. He now shares his insightful yet personal experience with guests aboard Lindblad’s authentic and memorable voyages. 

Cultural Specialist icon Cultural Specialist

Amy Loewen

After studying anthropology and music at the University of Toronto, Amy promptly left for Japan and found herself teaching English to over 12,000 junior high school students across Kanazawa. This overseas immersion uncovered her fascination with Japanese culture, and kickstarted her lifelong study of Nihongo (Japanese language). After returning to North America, Amy worked as a museum exhibit designer and project manager in Hawai’i and San Francisco before finding her way back to travel and education.    Amy has worked both backstage, as an operations manager of educational trips to Japan, and on the front lines, lecturing on expedition ships all over Japan and managing her own tour company. Amy holds her master’s degree in language teaching, and when she’s not in Japan, she teaches English language learners at community colleges in the San Francisco Bay Area. Amy is invited back to Niigata every summer as a visiting faculty member at the International University of Japan, and she also delivers regular training workshops to Japanese tour guides.  Amy has a boundless enthusiasm for Japanese culture and food, and her lectures focus on everyday life in Japan and the interplay between language, thought, and behavior. While cultural explorations are her specialty, her curiosity also extends to the natural world. Amy recently moved from Point Reyes National Seashore, home to over 400 species of birds and thousands of Northern elephant seals, to Lassen Volcanic National Park. She shares her new heavenly habitat with her park ranger husband, three cats, boiling mud pots, and four types of volcanoes.   

Cultural Specialist icon Cultural Specialist

Jacqueline Windh

Jacqueline is a PhD scientist, a best-selling author and photographer, and an elected Fellow of the Royal Canadian Geographical Society. She completed her doctorate studies in structural geology at the University of Western Australia, working as an exploration geologist on three continents before leaving that industry to follow more environmentally friendly pursuits. For the past two decades she has worked as a photojournalist and as a wilderness guide and adventurer, mainly in the Pacific Northwest, South America, and Antarctica. She is author or major contributor to four books. Her photographs and words have been published worldwide, and she has written and presented radio documentaries for both the CBC and the ABC. She is currently working on two books and involved in several adventure film projects. In 2021, Jacqueline was awarded the Sir Christopher Ondaatje Medal for Exploration by the Royal Canadian Geographical Society. A dual Canadian/Australian citizen, she lives on Vancouver Island, British Columbia.

Cultural Specialist icon Cultural Specialist

Shirley Campbell

Dr Shirley Campbell is a social anthropologist with a special interest in the indigenous peoples of Australia, Melanesia and the Pacific. More than four decades of academic research and university teaching have led to a sound knowledge and understanding of many cultures around the world and the theoretical foundations that human societies share. Growing up in California and exploring her suburban neighborhoods, Shirley’s passion for understanding different cultures was sparked by discovering ancient artefacts from Native Americans long dispossessed of their lands. Now widely travelled, she has had firsthand experience of the ways in which communities form and develop distinct, yet interrelated cultures. Living in England, Australia, Papua New Guinea and the United States, Shirley developed fluency in Italian and the Vakutan language and is now learning German. She has led groups of Italian tourists around England and American tourists throughout Western Europe; sailed in ocean-going outrigger canoes while living two years in the Trobriand Islands, a tiny coral atoll in Papua New Guinea, for her research. Now retired, Shirley was a lecturer and Research Fellow at the Australian National University and Canberra University, and a Visiting Professor at Dartmouth College, New Hampshire. Shirley has specialised in studying the anthropology of art, convinced that understanding the way people represent their ideas through the broad lens of art, valuable insights into peoples’ perceptions and relationships with the world around them can be gleaned. Her studies have led to degrees from Stephens College Missouri and the Australian National University. She has contributed several academic papers to peer-reviewed journals, has written pieces in numerous edited books and has written her own book recounting her research and experiences in the Trobriand Islands titled ‘The Art of Kula’. More recently, Shirley has turned attention to the Indian Sub-continent with a research interest in the diversity of people and cultures living side-by-side in this relatively small region. Shirley is passionate about mental and physical wellness and is a senior instructor in the Australian fitness industry and a master yoga teacher. For relaxation and pleasure, she enjoys studying the origins of yoga and its place within Indian society, music, quilting, bread making and scuba diving.

Showing 12 of 25