CONFERENCE PARTICIPANT BIOS

Anderson, Tommy. Tommy Anderson is a participating filmmaker in the Appalachian Media Institute: http://www.appalshop.org/ami/

Angel,  Patrick N. Senior Forester/Soil Scientist, U.S. Dept. of the Interior – Office of Surface Mining, Appalachian Regional Office. Dr. Patrick Angel has been employed by the Office of Surface Mining (OSM), USDI, in London, Kentucky since the implementation of the Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act in 1978. Dr. Angel is currently serving as Senior Forester/Soil Scientist for OSM where he is promoting reforestation partnerships on surface mines in the eastern coal states through the Appalachian Regional Reforestation Initiative (http://arri.osmre.gov/) and Green Forests Work (http://greenforestswork.com/).

Anglin, Mary. Mary Anglin is Associate Professor and Chair, Anthropology Department, at the University of Kentucky and the author of numerous articles on women’s studies, women’s health, anthropology, rural Appalachia and labor history.  Her research addresses concerns about the relationship between gender, ethnicity, race, structures of oppression, and practices of resistance and agency. She has conducted ethnographic studies of North America, and research located in the intersections of medical anthropology and public health. Through ethnographic research on reproductive cancers, for example, she examines social and political economic structures through which health disparities are produced, as well as the ways that women engage social networks, community practices, and notions of social justice to contest inequities in treatment. In conjunction with exploring particular questions in medical anthropology, her work investigates the relationship between contemporary states, situated in global economies, and daily life as it is experienced in particular geographic and cultural settings. Her works include “Whose Health? Whose Justice? Examining Quality of Care and Breast Cancer Activism through the Intersections of Gender, Race, Ethnicity, and Class” (in Health at the Intersections of Gender, Race, and Class, edited by Amy Schulz and Leith Mullings); “Erasures of the Past: Culture, Power, and Heterogeneity in Appalachia,” Journal of Appalachian Studies vol. 10, nos. 1 and 2: 73-84. (2004); and her book Women, Power, and Dissent in the Hills of Carolina (2002). manglin@uky.edu

Balasundaram, Sasikumar. Sasikumar Balasundaram received his Ph.D. in Anthropology from the University of South Carolina in 2012. He worked as a lecturer for two years in the Department of Sociology at the University of Peradeniya, Sri Lanka. His research interests include refugees, humanitarian aid, global health, engaged anthropology with children and  youth, and contemporary issues of the Up-country Tamils of Sri Lanka.  He is a Postdoctoral Scholar at the University of Kentucky Appalachian Center. Sasikumar@uky.edu

Barret, Elizabeth. Appalshop Archive director; Media arts producer/director. A

native of Kentucky, veteran documentary filmmaker Elizabeth Barret has pursued an abiding interest in the history, culture, and social issues of Appalachia.  Her films/videos are produced in association with the artist-centered organization Appalshop where she is involved in multidisciplinary work that helps advance new dialogue about documentary practice and community-based art.  Barret is a graduate of the University of Kentucky and the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship (awarded in 2012 for 2013), a Rockefeller Foundation Film/Video/ Multimedia Fellowship, and a Kentucky Arts Council Fellowship in Media Arts. Her work has been screened at festivals and venues worldwide.  The award winning production Stranger With A Camera (2000), a self-reflexive exploration of issues of media representation, premiered at the Sundance Film Festival and was selected for PBS broadcast nationally on P.O.V., the longest running showcase for independent non-fiction film.  She is currently producer/director of Portraits & Dreams: A Revisitation, a media arts/visual arts project with photographer Wendy Ewald, serves as Director of the Appalshop Archive working on an initiative with funding from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and coordinates cultural exchange activities at Appalshop, www.appalshop.org.

http://www.gf.org/fellows/17162-elizabeth-b-barret

Barton, Chris. Dr. Chris Barton is Associate Professor of Forest Hydrology in the Department of Forestry at the University of Kentucky. He received a grant from the Appalachian Regional Commission to start Green Forests Work for Appalachia, and has worked on research on stream and forest restoration in a number of countries. See: http://www.ca.uky.edu/forestry/BartonCV.pdf

Beaver, Patricia. Patricia Beaver grew up near Asheville, NC, earned the Ph.D. in anthropology from Duke University, and has conducted research in southern Appalachia and in China. She is Director of the Center for Appalachian Studies and Professor of Anthropology at Appalachian State University. Author of Rural Community in the Appalachian South, she edited (with Burton Purrington) Cultural Adaptations to Mountain Environments, (with Carole Hill) Cultural Diversity in the US South, (with David Williams) The Cratis Williams Chronicles: I Come to Boone and Tales from Sacred Wind: Coming of Age in Appalachia, (with Leo Finkelstein) Letters from Leo: World War II Correspondence to the Asheville Lions Club, and Leo Finkelstein’s Asheville and the Poor Man’s Bank, and co-edited (with Judi Jennings) Helen Matthews Lewis: Living Social Justice in Appalachia. She was awarded the Cratis Williams/James Brown Service Award from the Appalachian Studies Association in 2004, and was named Distinguished Friend of Appalachia by East Tennessee State University in 2012.  She developed, with Helen Lewis, ASU’s Wales study abroad program in 2001, which foregrounded her collaboration with Tom Hansell on After Coal.  (www.appstudies.appstate.edu)

Bell, Shannon Elizabeth. Assistant Professor of Sociology, University of Kentucky.

http://soc.as.uky.edu/users/sebe223. Shannon Elizabeth Bell is also affiliated faculty in the Appalachian Studies Program, the Department of Women & Gender Studies, and the newly-forming Environmental & Sustainability Studies Program. Bell’s research interests fall at the intersection of environmental sociology, gender, and social movements. Her research is primarily aimed at understanding the ways in which environmentally-destructive industries acquire, maintain, and exercise their power and discovering strategies for increasing the political participation of local citizens who are most affected by environmental injustices. To date, most of her research has focused on the social and environmental impacts of the coal industry in Central Appalachia and the grassroots movement that has risen up to fight irresponsible mining practices. Bell’s first book, Our Roots Run Deep as Ironweed: Appalachian Women and the Fight for Environmental Justice, is forthcoming from University of Illinois Press. She is presently working on finishing her second book, Fighting King Coal: The Barriers to Grassroots Environmental Justice Movement Participation in Central Appalachia.

Blair, Machlyn. Machlyn Blair is a participating filmmaker in the Appalachian Media Institute: http://www.appalshop.org/ami/

Bivens, Felix (Skip). Empyean Development Consulting. Felix (Skip) Bivens completed his Ph.D. in International Development Studies at the Institute of Development Studies (IDS) at the University of Sussex in Brighton, England, in 2011. His doctoral research explored the institutional factors within higher education institutions which enable and sustain community engagement and other forms of social-change oriented teaching and research. His background is in political organizing, community and international development, experiential education and carpentry. He is a graduate of the London School of Economics (MSc) and the University of the South (BA) in Sewanee, Tennessee. For the academic year 2011-2012, he served as Acting Assistant Dean of Students at the University of the South. He currently works as an independent consultant focusing on international development, participatory and systemic action research, organizational change, community-university partnerships and reflective practice. A lifelong Tennessean, Skip has been involved in Appalachian issues for almost twenty years.

Bonair-Agard, Roger. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roger_Bonair-Agard.

Roger Bonair-Agard is a poet and performance artist from Trinidad and Tobago. He was a member of the 1997 Nuyorican Poets Cafe Poetry Slam team and later coached the 1998 Nuyorican Poets Cafe Poetry Slam team, which went on to win the National Poetry Slam Championship that year in Austin, TX. He then co-founded the louderARTS Project and has been on the 1999, 2001, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006 and 2007 louderARTS Poetry Slam teams. In 1999, he won the individual competition at the National Poetry Slam. He is currently the Artistic Director for louderARTS. He has also been Adjunct Professor in the Creative Writing Department at Fordham University. Over the past decade he has worked with the youth at Urban Word in New York City, at Volume in Ann Arbor and with poetry youth organizations in Seattle, San Francisco, and the Adirondack Valley, NY. He teaches poetry at the Cook Country Temporary Juvenile Detention Center in Chicago, IL. Bonair-Agard is also a Cave Canem fellow, and has studied under Yusef Komunyakaa, Cornelius Deady, Marilyn Nelson, Toi Derricotte, and Patricia Smith.

Brunn, Stanley D. Stanley D. Brunn is a professor in the Department of Geography at the University of Kentucky.  Prior to coming to UK he taught at Michigan State University (1969-80) and the University of Florida (1966-69). His interests in geography are very broad and include the geographies of knowledge, the geographies and cartographies of silence, innovative mapping, cyberspace geographies, time geopolitics, the impacts of megaengineering projects, visual learning (from stamps and the WWW), music, gated communities, and the geographies of survival.  He has traveled in all continents and taught in more than fifteen countries in the past half-century, including  these mountain societies: Austria, Switzerland, Iceland, Slovenia, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan.  He has recently published books on Wal-Mart, the 2008 national election, cities of the world, and an atlas of Central Eurasia.  Among his current projects are editing books on the changing world religion map, the use of maps by scholars in the humanities, social and natural sciences, and visual world regional geography.  Publications and presentations on Appalachia include marriage-mate selection, the geographies of isolation, wet-dry referenda, a typology of immobility, place elasticity, and the content of hymns sung in Appalachian churches commemorating the events of 9/11.

Button, Gregory. Dr. Gregory Button is a disaster researcher who has over thirty of years experience studying extreme events such as the Three Mile Island nuclear accident, the controversy surrounding Love Canal, the eruption of Mount St. Helen’s, Hurricane Katrina, the BP oil spill and the TVA ash spill. He is currently a faculty member in the Anthropology Department at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville where he is a Co-Director of the Disasters, Displacement and Human Rights Program and a Division Head and Fellow at the Center for the Study of Social Justice. Prior to his appointment at the University of Tennessee he was a faculty member for many years at the University of Michigan School of Public Health in Ann Arbor.In 1993 he was awarded a Congressional Fellowship and served as a fellow to U. S. Senator Paul Wellstone where he crafted legislation on environmental issues including environmental justice. Dr. Button’s research has over the years received attention from national, international and regional news media. His books include Disaster Culture: Knowledge and Uncertainty in the Wake of Human and Environmental Disasters (2010, Left Coast Press) and The Road From Love Canal To The TVA Ash Spill: The Wasting of America (Left Coast Press, forthcoming in spring 2013).

http://www.lcoastpress.com/books_author.php?id=426

Calandra, Lina M. Researcher of Geography, Department of Human Studies, University of L’Aquila, Italy. Lina Calandra is researcher of Geography at the Department of Human Studies (previously Faculty of Lettere e Filosofia), University of L'Aquila, where she teaches Geography and Cultural Geography and she is the head of the cartographic laboratory "Cartolab". She received a Ph.D. from the University of Naples “L’Orientale” in 2004 for her dissertation “Colonialismo e ambiente in Africa coloniale: Italia e Francia a confronto”. Her fields of research are the geography of colonialism in Africa; the problems of conservation with particular attention to the relationship between environmental conflict and local development in Africa and in mountain regions of the Italian Appennini; cultural heritage with particular attention to landscape and territorial planning; and the didactic of geography. After the earthquake in L'Aquila on 6 April 2009, she studies the social geography of vulnerability and resilience and social, territorial and political consequences derived from exposure to environmental hazards. She was the editor of the journal Terra d'Africa. She has published several articles and books: Atlante del turismo sostenibile in Africa (2007), Progetto geografia. Percorsi di riflessione e didattica (2007 and 2009), and Territorio e Democrazia. Un laboratorio di geografia sociale nel doposisma aquilano (2012). http://dcc.univaq.it/pagina_personale.php?id=91

Channa, Subhadra Mitra. Dr. Channa is Professor of Anthropology at the University of Delhi, India. Her work in the Indian Himalayas began more than a decade back when it was focused on the Jad Bhotiyas of  Uttarkashi, who were erstwhile cross border traders with now Chinese occupied Tibet. She investigated how identities and lives of even a small group like that of the Jads was tied up with the geopolitical fortunes of the nations engaged with each other on the Himalayan border, and also how the edge of the Himalayas was not really a fringe area but the centre of creative activity and that the very existence of border trade was the genesis of communities like the  Jads, a part of the larger generic identity of Bhotiya that stretches across the entire length of the border that provides natural passages through the Himalayan ranges for people, animal and goods to pass through. Dr. Channa’s work also now focuses on the anthropogenic ecological devastation in the Himalayas and the consequent climate change fraught by it. There is also the environmental and social effects of large dam construction in this region, the combined effects of which along with market forces is threatening traditional economic self sufficiency in the remote Himalayan villages. The Delhi University web site is www.du.ac.in.

Chují, Monica. Monica Chují is Chair of the Constituent Assembly Committee on Natural Resources and Biodiversity, Quito, Ecuador. Monica Chují’s family migrated from their impoverished indigenous community in southern Ecuador to a northern petroleum-extraction region. From early childhood, she accompanied her parents to community meetings, where she learned about the importance of Ecuador’s land and natural resources, and the indigenous understanding of nature as a living force with its own rights. From local clergy, Monica came to understand that the survival of Ecuador’s indigenous population and traditions would require self-organization and initiative, and would not easily be granted by conservative social and economic forces that had dominated Ecuadorian society for centuries. Monica quickly ascended to local leadership positions and joined CONAIE. She was an active participant and young leader in the 1990 indigenous uprising that thrust issues of indigenous rights and demands onto Ecuador’s national stage. Inspired by the results of the 1990 protests, Monica participated in additional mobilizations in 1992 and 1994. She came to believe that indigenous stories needed to be told in indigenous languages, and she helped organize an indigenous film festival. That festival opened a pathway of educational opportunities for Monica and others. Monica studied environmental issues in university courses in Ecuador and she won a scholarship to study indigenous rights in Spain. Subsequently, she was hired by the United Nations to work internationally on inter-cultural and indigenous rights. In 2006, President-elect Rafael Correa asked Monica to serve as his press secretary. She worked for President Correa until the 2007 election of a more progressive Constituent Assembly. She successfully ran for a seat on the Constituent Assembly, chartered to write Ecuador’s new constitution. Monica was then elected to lead the Committee on Natural Resources and Biodiversity. She chaired this committee during eight months of deliberations over several of the most crucial constitutional articles. These included the prohibition of all forms of water privatization and the constitutional recognition of the inherent rights of nature.  (Excerpt from: http://webphotoessay.com/LL/WomenLeaders.html)

Cross, Al. Al Cross is director of the University of Kentucky’s Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues, which helps rural news media define the public agenda in their communities and cover broader issues that have local impact. He is an associate extension professor of journalism and the first tenured extension faculty member at UK outside the College of Agriculture. Cross helped organize the Institute, which has academic partners at 28 universities in 18 states and pays particular attention to Appalachia. He became director in 2004 after more than 26 years as a reporter at The Courier-Journal, the last 15½ as chief political writer. He writes a fortnightly political column for the Louisville newspaper and is appears on Kentucky Educational Television’s election programs. His awards include the Kentucky Journalism Hall of Fame, the East Kentucky Leadership Foundation’s 2009 Media Award, and a share of the Pulitzer Prize won by The Courier-Journal staff in 1989. He was national president of the Society of Professional Journalists in 2001-02 and has received the Wells Key, SPJ’s highest honor. He is a native of Albany, Ky., and a graduate of Western Kentucky University. He and his wife Patti live near the state Capitol in Frankfort.

Davis, Stephen R. Stephen Davis is Assistant Professor of History, University of Kentucky. He is currently revising a manuscript on the history of everyday life

of rank-and-file soldiers in Umkhonto we Sizwe. This work borrows from

microhistory and recent work on public history in South Africa and is part of a broader critique of official histories of the armed struggle written after the transition to democracy. This work is an extension of his work on the politics of exile and international radio broadcasting during the anti-apartheid struggle. In 2007-2008, he conducted research in South Africa on a grant provided by the Fulbright Institute for International Education (IIE). During this trip he collected several dozen oral interviews with ex-combatants, former activists, and current ANC members. In addition to research, he spent three years learning Xhosa and

intensive language training in Zulu at the University of KwaZulu-Natal.

DeYoung, Alan J. Professor De Young earned his Ph.D. at Stanford University in 1975. He is now Professor and Chair of the Educational Policy Studies and Evaluation Department in the College of Education at the University of Kentucky, where he has been on the faculty for more than 30 years.  He also holds an adjunct appointment in the Department of Sociology.  Dr. DeYoung teaches courses in Sociology of Education, Policy Issues in Education, and Education in American Culture. He also occasionally teaches Comparative Education, since he has been a visiting lecturer in New Zealand, Italy, Kazakstan and the Kyrgyz Republic. He has twice been a Fulbright Scholar to the Central Asian Republics of Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan since the independence of these countries from the former USSR. Dr. DeYoung's has two general areas of research interest. One is in rural schools and in the sociology, politics, and economics of educational change in rural America.  The other is in educational transformations within the former Soviet Union, particularly Central Asia.   Under the first interest area, he has published numerous articles and book chapters on Appalachian schools in West Virginia, Kentucky and Tennessee, and authored or edited three books on issues in rural education.  In 1996, Dr. DeYoung won the national research award of the National Rural Education Association for his book, Life and Death of a Rural American High School, a work about school consolidation in West Virginia.  His more recent work focuses upon educational dynamics in post-Soviet Central Asia, particularly Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan.  In addition to a dozen journal articles and book chapters on school issues and problems in these countries, he has two recent books on secondary and higher education issues in Kyrgyzstan:  Surviving the Transition?: Case Studies of Schools and School Reform in the Kyrgyz Republic since Independence (2006), and Lost in Transition: Redefining Students and Universities in the Contemporary Kyrgyz Republic (2011).  DeYoung’s Central Asian research undertakings have been supported by several international and American funding sources.  Among them was the John J. and Nancy Lee Roberts Fellowship, administered by the International Research Exchanges Board (IREX) of the US State Department.

Ditsch, David C. David C. Ditsch is a Kentucky native from Jefferson County.  He received his B.S. degree in Agronomy from the University of Kentucky in 1980 and began his professional career as a Soil Conservationist with the Soil Conservation Service until 1982.  He received is M.S. degree in Agronomy from the University of Kentucky in 1984.  David worked as an Extension Specialist at the UK West Kentucky Research and Education Center conducting on-farm erosion control demonstrations until 1988.  In 1991, David received his PhD in Soil Fertility/Soil Chemistry from Virginia Tech.  In 1992, David was hired as an assistant professor in Agronomy at the University of Kentucky and headquartered at the Robinson Substation in Quicksand, Kentucky.  His applied research focus has been livestock grazing systems on steep terrain.  In 2009, David was promoted to Full Extension Professor and appointed as the Director of the Robinson Center for Appalachian Resources Sustainability, previously known as the Robinson Station.

Fauzanafi, Muhammad Zamzam. Muhammad Zamzam Fauzanafi, MA., is the founder and director of the Kampung Halaman Foundation, and a visual anthropologist. The Kampung Halaman Foundation is an Indonesian NGO that fosters the use of audio-visual media for popular and critical education through participatory and community based programs, particularly targeting youth in transition areas, pursuing transformation towards a better society. Started in 2006, Kampung Halaman has been facilitating the work of hundreds youth and teenagers from all around Indonesia. More than 150 community videos have been produced by youth from villages, sub-urban areas, traditional art communities, indigenous community, Juvenile correction centers, borderland communities, etc., capturing different issues including poverty, multiculturalism, education, environmental issues, identity-politic, youth and traditional arts, and borderland issues.  He has been engaging in the using of audio-visual media tools for anthropological research and popular education since 1999 when he was a student in Department of Anthropology, Gadjah Mada University, Indonesia. In 2003, he received an IFP (International Fellowships Program) scholarship from Ford Foundation and continued his studies in visual anthropology at the Granada Centre For Visual Anthropology at the University Of Manchester, United Kingdom. In 2011 he was selected as one of 21 Asian Young Leaders by Asia Society.  He is now, also, a lecturer in the Department of Anthropology, Gadjah Mada University, Indonesia, on the subject of visual anthropology.

Fernando, Jude. Jude Fernando is Associate Professor of International Development in the Department of International Development, Community, and Environment at Clark University in Massachusetts.  He researches the comparative roles of governmental and non-governmental institutions in the areas of sustainable development, environment, livelihoods, gender and empowerment, child labor, humanitarian assistance, and governance. His book The Political Economy of NGOs: State Formation in Sri Lanka and Bangladesh (2011) examines the controversial social roles of micro-credit NGOs in India, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh and their links to the state, based on his long-term fieldwork in the 1990s. He was principal investigator for the project, “Sustainable Development and Civic Society,” funded by the Office of Sustainable Development and Intergovernmental Affairs of the U.S. Department of Commerce and in 2002 organized the international conference, “Sustainable Development in Urban Communities.” He has consulted for the Asia Foundation, IFAD and the World Bank. In Sri Lanka he worked in conflict zones for World Vision. Fernando previously taught at the Department of Geography and Regional Development and the International College at the University of Arizona; Dordt College, Iowa; and was a visiting lecturer at the University of Colombo in Sri Lanka. Fernando and his colleagues in Sri Lanka established the Alfa Children and Youth Training Institute in Sri Lanka (ACUIS), a non-governmental organization (NGO) to assist children and youth affected by the Southeast Asian Tsunami of 2004. ACUIS resulted from the lessons Fernando learned while working with tsunami survivors and conducting participant observer research on humanitarian assistance provided by existing NGOs in the region. He found that many of these organizations rarely invest much time and resources for creating a viable learning environment conducive for long-term formal education and vocational training facilities that would lead to sustainable employment and resettlement for displaced children and youth. Fernando felt that a fundamental prerequisite for improving the quality of life for those is a viable learning environment that would complement the services provided by the public school system. By using an experimental child-centered rights based approach model to social change, Fernando hopes to combine academic research with practical projects aimed towards positive social change. http://www.clarku.edu/faculty/facultybio.cfm?id=473

Fitzgerald, Jenrose. Jenrose Fitzgerald is a Visiting Scholar at the University of Kentucky Appalachian Center.  She received a PhD in Science and Technology Studies from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in 2005, and also hold Master’s degrees in Women’s Studies and Comparative Studies from Ohio State University.  In 2008, she was awarded a 2-year postdoctoral fellowship from the National Science Foundation titled “The Messy Politics of ‘Clean Coal’: Contested Energy Alternatives in the Appalachian Coalfields.  This project examined a range of approaches to addressing greenhouse gas emissions within energy-related industries, including carbon mitigation technologies like carbon capture and storage (CCS) as well as renewable energy like wind and solar, and their implications for the Appalachian region.  She is currently working on a Citizens’ Guide to Energy in Appalachia, to be released through the Appalachian Center in 2013.

Good, Crystal. Crystal Good is a writer and Affrilachian poet living in West Virginia with her three sons. Her first chapbook of poetry, Valley Girl, explores themes in quantum physics, Appalachian culture, gender equality and mountaintop removal.  Her work has been called “dazzling, bold, innovative, disarming.” Jeff Biggers of The Huffington Post says Good’s poetry “wonderfully carries on the legacy of (her) fellow Affrilachian Poets.”  She serves on the Board of Create WV, a grass roots initiative to develop the innovative economy in WV and OVEC, the Ohio Valley Environmental Council that fights to protect and preserve clean air and clean water. www.crystalgood.net

Hall, Nathan. Nathan Hall is Reforestation Coordinator, Green Forests Work,

www.greenforestswork.org. He hails from the hilly coalfields of Eastern Kentucky, where his family has resided since the late 1700s. He holds a self-designed BA in Sustainable Agricultural & Industrial Management from Berea College and has been involved with numerous projects related to organic agriculture, renewable energy, and remediation of damaged landscapes. After finishing at Berea College, Mr. Hall was awarded the Thomas J. Watson Fellowship to spend a full year abroad in regions that parallel the coalfields of Appalachia while gaining direct experience with projects of the type listed above. This experience took him from Wales to Romania covering 8 European countries, from Himachal Pradesh to Meghalaya covering 13 states in India, and to remote reaches of Thailand. Upon returning, Mr. Hall was in the process of starting an organization to establish sustainable development pilot projects in Central Appalachia when he was hired by the newly formed Green Forests Work. GFW exists to reforest surface coal mined lands throughout Appalachia to reestablish native biodiversity, mitigate environmental problems, and create a foundation for economic development based on local use of woody products. As the reforestation coordinator, he now works to find sites and organize logistics to successfully reforest mine-scarred lands in his home region.

Hansell, Tom. Tom Hansell is a documentary filmmaker and installation artist who lives and works in the Appalachian Mountains.  Hansell teaches Appalachian Studies at Appalachian State University in Boone, North Carolina, and has twenty years of experience at the Appalshop media arts center working with students and adults to create media about their communities.  Hansell has taught community video workshops in throughout the U.S as well as in China and Indonesia. Hansell’s documentary work has been broadcast nationally on public television and has screened at international film festivals.  He is the recipient of grants and fellowships from the Kentucky Arts Council, the Rockefeller Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Arts.  Hansell’s documentary Coal Bucket Outlaw was broadcast on public television in 30 states.  His most recent documentary project, The Electricity Fairy, premiered at the Museum of Modern Art in New York in 2010 and was selected by the Southern Arts Association for the Southern Circuit tour of independent filmmakers.  His current documentary project, After Coal: Welsh and Appalachian Mining Communities, is scheduled for release in 2014.

http://appstudies.appstate.edu/

Horn, Tammy. Dr. Tammy Horn is an apiculturist with Coal Country Beeworks and

Eastern KY University—CEDET. In 1997, Horn became a beekeeper after finishing a doctorate in literature at the University of Alabama.  In 2007, she left teaching to pursue pollinator habitat opportunities with surface mine companies in eastern Kentucky.  She now works with four coal companies and local schools.  She is also the author of Bees in America: How the Honey Bee Shaped a Nation (2005) and Beeconomy: What Women and Bees Teach us about Local Trade and Global Markets (2012).  She is currently working on a third book to complete the bee trilogy: Apiforestation: The Future of Beekeeping.  www.tammyhorn.com

Jensen, Jane McEldowney. Dr. Jane McEldowney Jensen holds a Ph.D. in Anthropology and Higher Education from Indiana University, Bloomington, and conducts research in rural areas of North America.  The Fulbright Foundation and the National Science Foundation sponsored her previous research on post-secondary education and development in coal-mining regions of Atlantic Canada and Eastern Kentucky.  Dr. Jensen’s research focuses upon the authenticity of local knowledge production and learning as processes that synthesize and reflect the larger political economy. She is currently completing research in Eastern Kentucky on high school students’ aspirations for college and the ways post-secondary educational experiences and credentials are negotiated in Appalachian communities.  She is also collaborating with faculty in Italy on a comparative project to examine transitions from secondary to post-secondary education in Europe and the United States.  A member of the department of Educational Policy Studies & Evaluation at UK, Dr. Jensen teaches courses in qualitative evaluation, field studies, rural higher education, and comparative higher education.

Kahn, Si. From his website: http://sikahn.com/about.shtml: Si Kahn (Ph.D., American Studies) has worked for over 45 years as a civil rights, labor and community organizer and musician. He began his organizing career in 1965 in Arkansas with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, more popularly known as SNCC, the student wing of the Southern Civil Rights Movement. During the War on Poverty, he served first as a VISTA Volunteer and later as Deputy Director of an eight-county community action agency in rural Georgia, where he also coached the first racially integrated Little League team in that part of the state. During the 1970s, he worked with the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA) during the Brookside Strike in Harlan County, Kentucky, and was an Area Director of the J.P. Stevens Campaign for the Amalgamated Clothing and Textile Workers Union (ACTWU). These historic labor struggles are portrayed in the movies Harlan County U.S.A. and Norma Rae. Si founded Grassroots Leadership, a Southern-based national organization, in 1980, and served as its Executive Director for 30 years, becoming Executive Director Emeritus on May Day 2010. For the past 12 years, Grassroots Leadership has worked to oppose privatization and to defend the public sector. This work currently includes a campaign to abolish all for-profit private prisons, jails and detention centers, including immigrant detention centers, as a step towards helping create a prison and criminal justice system that is at least to some extent just and humane. In August 2009, shortly before Si's retirement, Grassroots Leadership won a major national victory in its Campaign to End Immigrant Family Detention, when the Federal government removed 150 children from the notorious for-profit private T. Don Hutto "family residential center" in Taylor, Texas, where children as young as infants were imprisoned together with their parents. The New York Times wrote, "The decision to stop sending families there - and to set aside plans for three new family detention centers - is the Obama administration's clearest departure from its predecessor's immigration enforcement policies." Si is currently a Distinguished Senior Fellow at Demos: A National Center for Ideas and Action, and serves as Executive Director Emeritus of Grassroots Leadership.

Kingsolver, Ann. Ann Kingsolver is the Director of the Appalachian Center and Appalachian Studies Program and Professor of Anthropology at the University of Kentucky. Her work on how people make sense of globalization has always been grounded in her home community in Kentucky. Tobacco Town Futures: Global Encounters in Rural Kentucky (2011) is based on 25 years of conversations about the future of livelihoods and community in Nicholas County, Kentucky. She has also learned from talking with people in Mexico and the U.S. about how they imagined transnational policies shaping their lives and work (NAFTA Stories: Fears and Hopes in the U.S. and Mexico, 2001), and from conversations in Sri Lanka about the tea industry that has so shaped identities and communities in the Upcountry, as tobacco has in Kentucky. Her other books are More than Class: Studying Power in U.S. Workplaces (ed., 1998) and The Gender of Globalization: Women Navigating Cultural and Economic Marginalities (ed., with Nandini Gunewardena, 2007). Kingsolver’s articles document the strategic ways in which neoliberal capitalist logic and practice promote inequalities, as through the recent wave of anti-immigrant legislation across the U.S. ann.kingsolver@uky.edu, http://appalachiancenter.as.uky.edu/

Markowitz, Lisa. Lisa Markowitz is Associate Professor and Chair in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Louisville. Since the 1980s, she has carried out fieldwork in  Andean South America, mostly in the rural alpaca-raising  regions of southern Peru.  As both an activist and researcher, she has also been involved with alternative agrifood projects in Kentucky, and more recently, Vermont. Her research themes have included community food security, the history and impact of rural development programs in Latin America, and the role of producers’ organizations in regional social movements.  She is co-editor of U.S. Food Policy: Anthropology and Advocacy in the Public Interest (Routledge 2012).

Martínez Novo, Carmen. Carmen Martínez Novo is an Associate Professor of Anthropology and the Director of Latin American Studies at the University of Kentucky. Before that, she taught for eight years at the Latin American Faculty for the Social Sciences in Quito, Ecuador. She holds a Ph.D. in Anthropology from the New School for Social Research, New York City. She is the author of Who Defines Indigenous? Identities, Development, Intellectuals and the State in Northern Mexico (Rutgers University Press, 2006) and the editor of Repensando los movimientos indígenas (Rethinking Indigenous Movements, FLACSO, Ecuador, 2009). She has written a number of peer reviewed articles and book chapters about indigenous identities and policies towards indigenous peoples in Mexico and Ecuador. She has been Visiting Professor at the Johns Hopkins University, Grinnell College, Universidad Iberoamericana de México, Universidad Nacional de Colombia, and Universidad de Lleida in Spain, and has received among other grants a Post-PhD scholarship from the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research. 

McSpirit, Stephanie. Stephanie McSpirit is a professor of Sociology at Eastern Kentucky University, where she has been a faculty member since 1995. McSpirit teaches classes in statistics, introductory sociology, environmental sociology, animal studies, and community-based research methods. She has worked with teams of faculty and students on research projects related to environmental and other social issues in Appalachia and throughout the state of Kentucky and has published her research in various academic journals, such as the Journal of Appalachian Studies, Southern Rural Sociology, and International Journal of Society and Natural Resources.  McSpirit’s most noted work is with Shaunna Scott, a faculty member at the University of Kentucky; together, they have worked over the past ten years in Martin County, Kentucky, assessing the long-term impacts of the October 2000 coal waste disaster on the environment, community and civic life. Currently, both McSpirit and Scott are planning another collaborative community-based project in Elkhorn City, Pike County on tourism and development efforts in that particular coal mining region of eastern Kentucky.  McSpirit is also a co-editor on a recently released volume through the University Press of Kentucky, Confronting Ecological Crisis in Appalachia and the South: University and Community Partnerships. The book focuses on classic and current partnerships that have emerged between university faculty, students and citizens in confronting major environmental issues that plague the Appalachian and southern regions of the United States.

Meade, Pam Oldfield. Pam Oldfield Meade is a visual artist living and working on her family farm in Morgan County located in eastern Kentucky.  Working in a variety of mediums her art tells the story of life lived close to the land. “I am inspired to create art by many things.  Things of beauty, things of past.  People good and bad.  Places I go sometimes only in a dream. And always by the place where I live and work in the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains.” Her work also includes coordinating community art programs to support and promote the arts and artists in the area.  After an EF3 tornado destroyed much of her hometown - West Liberty, KY and surrounding areas, that work has turned to helping rebuild using the arts.  www.pamoldfieldmeade.com, pamoldfieldmeade@gmail.com

Molina Rosales, Dolores. Dolores Molina is a Mexican anthropologist who is interested in understanding how gender specific human environment interactions may lead to social inequality and environmental vulnerability.  She works at El Colegio de la Frontera Sur, a research center in South East Mexico. In Mexico she worked with populations adapting to: mountain environments in the state of Chiapas, tropical rain forests in the municipality of Calakmul, Campeche, and coastal ecosystems in the state of Tabasco. She studied women´s access and attitudes to emergency care during childbirth in the highlands, colonists’ motivations to migrate in Campeche, and she is presently studying vulnerability to floods and hurricanes in the Gijalva Basin. http://www.ecosur.mx/esp/doloresmolina.html

Mullinax,  Maureen. Maureen Mullinax is Assistant Professor of Sociology, Xavier University (www.xavier.edu). She is a scholar and educator with interests in social movements, community-based arts, social inequalities, central Appalachia and documentary media.  Prior to moving into an academic role at Xavier University in Cincinnati, Ohio, Mullinax worked as a community media educator with Appalshop, first as director of the Appalachian Media Institute (AMI) and then as the director of interdisciplinary programming, including cross-cultural exchanges with Chinese and Indonesian mediamakers. During her time with AMI she refocused the work toward youth media engagement with social justice issues, participation in the national youth media field, and the involvement of youth participants in the active distribution of their media. Mullinax’s current research examines grassroots efforts to engage people in democratic dialogues about their communities through community-based art.  She continues to be involved in conversations with colleagues about the community arts field in U.S. and international contexts.  She is also active forging relationships between scholars and activists in the Black Belt South with members of the Appalachian Studies Association.  At Xavier University, she is working with students to develop visual sociology and oral history-based research projects that document the experiences of members of diverse communities in Cincinnati.

Nugraheni, Dwi Sujanti. Dwi Sujanti Nugraheni is with Komunitas Dokumenter Indonesia (www.festivalfilmdokumenter.org). She was born and raised in Yogyakarta, Indonesia. She studied Political Science at Gadjah Mada University and worked for several NGOs both local and international before she turned to film-making. Since 2003, she has also been organizing a documentary film festival in Yogyakarta and facilitates video workshops for adolescents and the Deaf community. She worked as an intern at Appalshop, Kentucky in 2007 and Women Make Movies, New York City in 2009. In 2008, she participated in the Cinema capacity building workshop "Ten years after reformasi" held by Goethe Institute-Indonesien, The Ford Foundation and Jakarta Arts Council. She developed her first feature-length documentary DENOK & GARENG in this workshop. In 2010 she participated in the Varan film workshop in Da Nang, Vietnam and Cinema without Border workshop in The Hague, Netherlands. In 2012, she participated in the IDFA Summer School in Amsterdam. Her new documentary project OUR DAILY BREAD is in pre-production. It's about a village that is only 3 km away from the peak of Merapi Volcano, one of the most active volcanoes in the world. Her films include

DENOK & GARENG, 89 mins – it will have its world premiere in the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam in November 2012; JANJI JABRIK - JABRIK'S PROMISE, 2007, 20 min - The Body Shop – Think-Act-Change Documentary Film Competition: Best Film; and PENGABAR KEMATIAN - THE DEAD MESSENGER, 2002,15 mins.

Paden, Jeremy. Jeremy Paden, Ph.D., is Associate Professor of Spanish and Latin American literature at Transylvania University. The son of medical missionaries, he was born in Italy and raised in Central America and the Caribbean. Most of his scholarly work is in the area of Colonial Latin American literature and examines the intersection of religion and politics in 17th century poetry; his essays can be found in such journals as Colonial Latin American Review, Calíope: Journal of the Society for Renaissance and Baroque Hispanic Poetry, Review of International American Studies and other journals. He is also a poet and a member of the Lexington-based writing collective known as the Affrilachian Poets. His poems have appeared in The Atlanta Review, Borderlands: Texas Poetry Review, Cortland Review, Louisville Review,  Pluck! Journal of Affrilachian Arts and Culture, and other journals. His most recent publications have included poems on the 2010 earthquake in Haiti, in the anthology So Spoke the Earth, and poems about the Chilean mining accident in The Adirondack Review, Beloit Poetry Journal, and Sin Fronteras/Writers Without Borders.

http://www.transy.edu/about/faculty_bio.htm?ID=0264135

Pandey, Annapurna Devi. Dr. Annapurna Devi Pandey was born and brought up in Cuttack, Orissa. She went to Ravenshaw College for her undergraduate education and moved to Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, for her M.A. and Ph.D. in Sociology. Her thesis was a study of women in Orissa Politics, one of the first studies of its kind in India. After eight years of teaching at Ravenshaw College, She went to Cambridge University, UK, as a Commonwealth postdoctoral fellow in Social Anthropology. In 1989, she moved to Santa Cruz, California to make a home in the Diaspora. She spent the first seven years raising her two boys and since 1995, she has been teaching in the Anthropology Department at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Annapurna has remained committed to Orissa and her people (Volunteer at Basundhara, Cuttack, and Vijaya, Bhubaneswar). In Santa Cruz, she has organized many Odissi dance programs with dancers and musicians coming from Orissa. She also made a film on the Oriya community in the Bay Area. Annapurna is committed to the betterment of the life of the Oriya community in the Diaspora as well as in the state of Orissa. She has been very actively involved in the Orissa Society of America (OSA). Annapurna was the Vice President of OSA during 1998-1999. She has been a volunteer, the organizer of seminar sessions and speaker in many Annual OSA Conventions.

Pant, Dipak. Professor Pant is the founder and head of Interdisciplinary Unit for Sustainable Economy at Università Carlo Cattaneo (LIUC), Italy. The Unit conducts studies and surveys and provides advisory and planning service to organizations and industries in many countries. Since 2010 a service-learning (research + outreach) collaboration, Mobile Community Training Project/Extreme Lands Program,  is underway between the social scientists (academics) from Italy’s LIUC and Trento University and practitioners (NGO) from Mongolia to experiment with a new model of local development in Arkhangai, north-western Mongolia. The empowerment of nomadic herders is designed as a seasonal and itinerant (mobile) community training program – a nomadic format of awareness campaign and training services for the benefit of the nomadic herder households camping around the steppes and taiga of Arkhangai. Dr. Dipak R. Pant is an academic of Nepali origin who lives and works in Italy. He is an economist, an anthropologist, a consultant and an explorer who is considered a leading expert on sustainable economic development. He has advised countless NGOs and spoken at many conferences around the world on economic and social development planning. Professor Dipak R. Pant is an economist, anthropologist and explorer. Originally from Nepal, he has lived in Italy for the last 15 years where he lectures in Italy at the  Carlo Cattaneo University in Castellanza, he is Professor of Economics, and he is the founder of the Interdisciplinary Unit for Sustainable Economy at the same University. He has taught classes on Culture, South Asia, and has also advised many businesses and NGOS on environmental sustainability. Additionally, he has lectured on human security issues at Western European, Chinese and American scientific institutions. He is regarded as the pioneer of 'Extreme Lands Program' which conducts ethnographic field surveys, economic studies and collaborative economic and social development planning in the most marginal and difficult terrains of the world. He is also considered “Italy’s leading speaker on sustainable economic development”. http://www.culturaldiplomacy.org/academy/index.php?Dipak-Pant;

www.sustainable-economy.net (the web-site of Prof. Pant & his research

associates); http://www.liuc.it/cmgenerale/default.asp?ssito=13&codice=23

(Interdisciplinary Unit for Sustainable Economy, the official university web-page).

Paradiso, Maria. Professor Maria Paradiso, University of Sannio, Italy, currently serves as Chair of the IGU-International Geographical Union Commission ‘Mediterranean Basin’; and as Vice-Chair of the International Geographical Union (IGU) 'Commission on the Geography of the Global Information Society'. She has been appointed 2010 Academician of Academia Europaea (London) Social Sciences Committee. Prof. Paradiso has held several visiting positions and academic exchanges and partnerships in Italy and abroad: University of Bordeaux 3 (France), University Pole of Bordeaux, University of Bremerhaven (Germany), University of Trieste, University of Basilicata in Potenza, University of Toulouse le Mirail, University of Haifa, University of Le Havre, Seoul National University; University of Kentucky (US), Michigan State University; University of Sieldce (Poland), University of Bologna. She founded an International Consortium CIREDET-Environment, Resources, Development with the University Pole of Bordeaux, University of Bordeaux 3, and the University of Sannio Italy, based in Bordeaux. She has been one of the founders of the Faculty of Economic and Business Sciences of the University of Sannio. Also, she founded and she has chaired the Italian Network ‘Geography of the Information Society’ sponsored by the Italian Geographical Society, and the research group Geography of the Information Society within the Italian Association of Geographers. She is Associate Editor of NETCOM-Networks and Communications Studies Journal. She started up and coached the first spin-off company of Sannio University ‘Risorse s.c.a.r.lit’ in 1999. Her list of publications includes five books; four edited books; five edited international journal issues; over 80 refereed publications including journal articles and book chapters; proceedings; book reviews, and commentaries. She has gained a rich experience in paper presentations in English, French, and Italian. paradiso@unisannio.it; www.unisannio.it

Pickering,  Mimi. Mimi Pickering is a Guggenheim award-winning filmmaker and director of Appalshop’s Community Media Initiative (CMI). Pickering’s documentaries often feature women as principle storytellers, focus on struggles for justice and equity, and explore the efforts of grassroots people to address community concerns that frequently reflect global issues. She and Anne Lewis have just completed Anne Braden: Southern Patriot, a documentary on the life and legacy of this Kentucky civil rights leader, journalist, teacher and mentor to three generations of social justice activists.  In 2005, Pickering’s film The Buffalo Creek Flood: An Act of Man was selected by the Librarian of Congress for inclusion in the prestigious National Film Registry. As CMI Director, Pickering leads community media training and production projects and assists grassroots groups and public interest advocates in developing and implementing communication strategies in support of policy change and social and economic justice organizing.  She is currently collaborating with WMMT-FM, Appalshop’s community radio station, on the creation of a multi-media storybank exploring alternative economic options for the coalfields.

Pitzalis, Marco. Marco Pitzalis earned his Ph.D. in Sociology at the EHESS in Paris, France, and is Associate Professor of Sociology - University of Cagliari in Sardinia (Italy) in the Department of Social Sciences and Institutions (www.unica.it) He is Director of the Inter-departmental Centre of Educational Research – University of Cagliari (www.cird.it). He is a member of the Board of the Educational Section of the Italian Sociological Association (AIS-EDU) and of the Italian Journal of Sociology of Education (http://www.ijse.eu/index.php/ijse). He is also a member of the Italian Centre for Research on Universities and Higher Education Systems – UNIRES – (http://users.unimi.it/Unires/?hl=it_IT). His main research activities and projects are concerned with school choice, guidance and the reproduction of inequalities. This research deals with the debate on school choice and the reproduction of inequalities, using an ensemble of qualitative and quantitative researches to study school choice and guidance. He and his collaborators, in their theoretical approach, conciliate a structural approach (P. Bourdieu) with the interpretative approach (H. Mehan). He is also engaged in research focusing on secondary teachers’ representations and practical experiences in the context of actual change and reform. pitzalis@unica.it

Roy, L. Somi. Somi Roy is the Film Festival Director of the Indo-American Arts Council. He is a New-York based film and media curator with an interest in transnational media projects and local and regional cultures. He has facilitated media exchanges between young filmmakers in the People’s Republic of China and Appalachia, and he was involved in organizing the Appalshop/Indonesia exchange being discussed in this conference. He is running a film festival at the same time, so he is not present for the conference, but he will be participating in the book published from the Global Mountain Regions conference. http://www.iaac.us/Bios/LSomiRoy.htm

Scott, Shaunna. Dr. Shaunna Scott is Associate Professor and Director of Graduate Studies in the Department of Sociology at the University of Kentucky.  She is also a faculty member in Appalachian Studies, Social Theory, and Gender & Women’s Studies. Her research and teaching center upon social inequality, environmental sociology, social movements and community development in Appalachia, New Zealand and Northern Ireland. She is a Past President of the Appalachian Studies Association, and she is the former Director of Appalachian Studies at the University of Kentucky. Her work has appeared in American Ethnologist, Action Research, Rural Sociology, Annual Review of Sociology, Qualitative Sociology, Journal of Appalachian Studies, and the Appalachian Journal.  She is author of Two Sides to Everything: The Cultural Construction of Class Consciousness in Harlan Country, Kentucky (State University of New York Press, 1995).

Sharma, Kunal. Kunal Sharma is the resident manager of JLR, which is an undertaking of the Government of Karnataka, in India

(www.livingforest.blogspot.com). Kunal has been working in the field of forestry, ecotourism and community development at a grassroots level, particularly in mountain ecosystems. Currently, he manages a team of 122 people on an ecotourism venture of the state government of Karnataka. His prior and current work involved understanding of the complex issues surrounding forest livelihoods, conservation and natural resources in the global ecological hotspot of the Western Ghats. Kunal worked as Additional Coordinator at Keystone Foundation from 2004 to 2008 where he documented traditional methods of dependence that indigenous people have on the forest. He served as the Knowledge Manager for the DEFRA funded Darwin Initiative project on Bees, Biodiversity and people in the Nilgiri Biosphere Reserve. Kunal has co-authored a book titled Honey Trails in the Blue Mountains along with Snehlata Nath, Director of Keystone Foundation. He is the author of a book on ecotourism through the years titled Wild Vistas.

Sissoko, Yacouba, and Stone, Jayme. Yacouba Sissoko is a kora master and singer from Mali, and Jayme Stone is a banjo player from Canada. Together with other musicians, they are playing concerts “From Africa to Appalachia,” building on the CD recorded by Jayme Stone and Mansa Sissoko, Africa to Appalachia, which won a Juno Award for Best World Music Album of the Year.

Taibe,  Patmawaty. Patmawaty (Eva) Taibe joined the University 45 Makassar in 2010 after finished her M.A. at Gadjah Mada University. Since coming to University 45 Makassar, she has served in the Department of Psychology and has written collaborative grant proposals. She currently teaches students for Social Psychology, Observation Psychology and Cross Culture Psychology. In 2008, she received a U.S. government grant to attend a youth exchange media in Kentucky, to study documentary filmmaking and the role of youth and local institutions in using audiovisual as media for community empowerment. She has also been active in the development of independent film in Indonesia, especially in east Indonesia, and was involved in several international and national film festivals. She has received grant funding to study religion cross-culturally and public activism using geographic information systems (GIS) and community video in West Kalimantan. Since 2006, she has served as program director and founder of kiri depan (www.kiridepan.or.id) in Makassar. This is a community organization that uses video and film media in empowering young people to provide knowledge/ understanding/ awareness of social and environmental problems. Besides doing research in environmental awareness in Indonesia, she is also focused on developing archiving and distribution systems for independent films in Makassar, and she is also working for the Makassar SEAScreen Academy Film Festival. patmawatytaibe@gmail.com.

Tajik, Mir Afzal. Dr. Mir Afzal Tajik is a faculty member and Head of Graduate Programs at the Aga Khan University Institute for Educational Development (AKU-IED) in Karachi, Pakistan. Dr. Tajik completed his doctoral studies from the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto. His thesis title was "From Educational Reformers to Community Developers: The Changing Role of Field Education Officers of Aga Khan Education Service, Pakistan". Dr. Tajik has extensive experience of designing, implementing and evaluating professional development programs for teachers, head teachers, teacher educators, and education managers. He has also played a leading role in designing and implementing community-based school improvement programs in the rural, mountain regions of Pakistan and Afghanistan. Prior to joining AKU-IED, Dr. Tajik worked as a teacher, teacher educator, and Training Program Officer with the Aga Khan Education Service, in Northern Pakistan. 

Tanaka, Keiko. Dr. Keiko Tanaka is Associate Professor of Sociology in the Department of Community and Leadership Development, University of Kentucky. Her research primarily focuses on the role of agricultural science and technology in reconfiguring the relationship between production and consumption in the global context. Her recent work examines knowledge politics surrounding food safety, healthy food, agricultural sustainability, and food localization. Beside the Sociology program, she teaches courses in the Sustainable Agriculture Program in the College of Agriculture and the UK Honor’s Program. Dr. Tanaka has also directed the UK Asia Center which provides instructional and outreach programs on Asian societies and cultures for UK community members and Kentuckians. keiko.tanaka@uky.edu

Thomas, Terry. Terry Thomas was employed in the coal mining industry in Wales from 1960 to 1989.  He was actively involved in the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) throughout that period.  In 1969 he was elected to be the local union, Lodge (Branch) Secretary at the mine where he worked (Brynlliw Colliery) and in 1974 he was elected to be a member of the Executive Committee of the South Wales Area NUM.  In 1980 he was elected to be a full time Union representative and became the Miners’ Agent for the Swansea district of the NUM.  In 1983 he became the Vice President of the South Wales Area NUM.  Terry left NUM in 1989 following the rapid decline of the coal mining industry in the aftermath of the 1984-85 miners strike, and took up a position as Regional Political Officer with the GMB (Britain’s General Union), which he held until 1998. Throughout the periods of his involvement in the NUM and the GMB he was also very active politically, and was elected as a member of the Wales Labour Party executive committee for twenty two years consecutively.

Tuaza Castro, Luis Alberto. Luis Alberto Tuaza Castro is from the indigenous community of Chimborazo, Ecuador. He has a BA in Theology from the University of Azuay. He has a Masters in Political Science from the Latin American Faculty of Social Sciences, FLACSO-Ecuador. He has a Ph.D. in Social Sciences and specializes in political studies. For 12 years Tuaza Castro has worked with the Colta and Guamote indigenous communities. His research is focused on the areas of ethnicity, politics and religion. His books include: Ecuadorian Indigenous Movement Crisis (2011), and Ethnicity, Politics and Religion in the Central Andes of Ecuador (2012). Several of his articles have been published by FLACSO Ecuador, the Andean Center for Popular Action, Americas / Society and the University of Seville.

Walker, Frank X. Frank X. Walker is a founding member of the Affrilachian Poets and the author of seven collections of poetry including Affrilachia and the forthcoming Turn Me Loose: The Unghosting of Medgar Evers. He is the founding editor of PLUCK! The Journal of Affrilachian Arts & Culture and currently serves as Director of African American & Africana Studies at the University of Kentucky and Associate Professor in the Department of English. His is committed to helping to identify and educate the next generation of artists and writers and to contributing to the forced re-accounting of the true ethnic diversity, history and culture of the Appalachian region and the regional outposts that are home to its many out migrants.  www.frankxwalker.com; aaas.uky.edu.

Watts, Natasha. A native of Letcher County, Kentucky, Natasha Watts first participated in the Appalachian Media Institute as an intern in the 2000 Summer Documentary Institute and has worked in the program every year since. Watts returned to Appalshop in 2006 to work full-time as AMI’s lead trainer after receiving a Bachelors of Arts in Broadcasting and Electronic Media from Eastern Kentucky University. Currently Watts serves as the Director of AMI. Over the last twelve years Watts has been involved in numerous cultural and media-production learning exchanges with Appalshop’s national and international partners, during which she cultivated extensive knowledge in the field of community-based arts.

www.appalshop.org/ami

Wilson, Matthew. Dr. Matthew W. Wilson is an assistant professor in the Department of Geography at the University of Kentucky.  His research is at the intersection of critical human geography and geographic information science, what is called ‘critical GIS’. Wilson draws upon science and technology studies to understand the development and proliferation of location-based services and the rapid evolution of Internet-based geographic information, more generally. Wilson has published in a range of social science, GIScience, and digital humanities venues, and has developed a pedagogical model of university-community partnership where students work with community-based organizations in the use of GIS and mapping technologies. http://matthew-w-wilson.com

You You. Dr. You You, an associate professor in the Department of Journalism, Film and Video Art and Technology, Shanghai University, has mainly focused on the relationship between politics, culture and communication in Chinese rural areas for a long time. At the same time, she attempts to rethink profoundly the consequences of mass media reform during Chinese comprehensive social transformation since 1978. She has published a couple of correlated academic articles in some important journals in China and two books in 2011, named The Transformation of  Mass Media in Chinese Rural Areas and  The Social Role of Mass Media in Chinese Rural Areas During the Social Transformation. At present, she is also a visiting scholar at the University of Kentucky for a year, and works with Al Cross, director of the University of Kentucky’s Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues, on the social role of some community newspapers in economically marginalized mountain areas of America in comparison with Chinese rural communities’ current status. She was born in Jiangsu Province, in the southeast of China, next to Shanghai.