Dr. Armstrong is the co-founder of The Overstory Underground (a Living Lab) and was the co-organizer (along with Kathe Latham and Alan Hedrick) of #ClimateStrikeGSO, the largest climate change protest in Greensboro’s history. Armstrong is the faculty advisor for Guilford College’s Green Society. He currently teaches at Guilford and at North Carolina A&T State University where he served, for three years, as curriculum design team leader for UNST 221: Technology and Society. Armstrong is a writer, scholar, educator and activist who has also worked in farming, landscaping and construction. He is the author of The Mysteries of Haditha, published in 2020 by Potomac Books. The Brooklyn Rail called The Mysteries of Haditha one of the “Best Books of 2020.” Armstrong, who grew up in Winchester, Virginia, embedded with Joint Special Operations Forces in Al Anbar Province, Iraq, in 2008. He published extensively on the Iraq war through The Winchester Star and his doctoral work focuses on the post-9/11 soldier-writer subculture. Armstrong is the winner of a Pushcart Prize. His fiction and nonfiction have appeared in Esquire, The Gettysburg Review, Wrath-bearing Tree and other journals and anthologies. Armstrong is the guitarist and lead singer-songwriter for Viva la Muerte, an original rock and roll band. His first novel, American Delphi, will be published in the fall of 2022. You can follow him on Twitter @mcarmystrong.

As the Interim Director of IRDI, Dr. Armstrong will work intimately with the Director of Renew Forsyth to deeply link Regenerative Agriculture and Curriculum Design through urban garden, farming and food forestry. Through this project, he is excited to be a part of developing the world’s first Health Innovation District that will serve as a regional health innovation-lab or “iLab” for the emerging bioregional model. As a part of this bioregional strategy, he is a part of the core team that is co-creating the regional “contemplative HUB” located at the St. Francis Springs Prayer Center. When taken together, the iLab and the HUB will play a significant role in the process-designs involved connecting Renew Forsyth to emerging initiatives across NC and the broader bioregion: the Great Appalachian Valley. His present teaching position at NC A&T, alongside his work at Guilford, will enable him to reach across the communities of the Triad to introduce Renew Forsyth to the up and coming generation.