Ellis Adams - Water Policy and Governance
Globally, over 1 billion people have no access to clean drinking water while over 2 billion have no access to improved sanitation services. To these people, access to clean affordable water and basic sanitation is a daily luxury. My whole passion about interdisciplinary environmental research is to help contribute a solution to this global crisis. My research broadly seeks to shed more light on the nexus between water and development from a socio-economic standpoint. 
Following my bachelors in Natural Resources Management from Ghana with emphasis on Fisheries and Watershed Management, I shifted my focus from the laboratory to people environmental interactions. I received a Master of Science degree in Environmental Policy from Michigan Technological University where my thesis sought to understand Water, Sanitation, and Health (WASH) based NGO staff perceptions of water privatization, and how it influences their organizational WASH project decision making. The World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) have been at the forefront of neoliberal policies and opening the water sector of developing countries to market forces. My study sought to illuminate our understanding of how the growth of such market based policies had the tendency to shift WASH based NGO projects towards more publicly owned water systems.
For my PhD work, I will continue my broad research on water policy and governance through the lenses of political ecology. , I will explore the political, social-economic and institutional dimensions of water governance especially in developing countries and how it can advance sustainable development. Small scale private water entrepreneurs are fast emerging developing countries and supplying water as vendors to urban and peri urban areas without the reach of piped water supply. This remains an avenue for bridging the gap between water demand and supply while also proving a job opportunity. However, our understanding of how this locally based private water supply could complement governmental water supply efforts as well provide jobs is limited. With growing influx of people from rural to urban areas, thus, intensifying the competition for drinking water, it is imperative to understand the sustainability of different water supply avenues.
David Baylis - Historical Geography, Cultural Geography, Critical Cartography, Turkey, Ottoman Empire, Central Asia
Originally trained as a political scientist with a minor in biology, I am a strong proponent of the historical geographic approach, combined with elements of cultural and linguistic studies as well as critical cartography and political ecology. I don't adhere to any one method, 
and prefer to see my work as literary and as opposed to scientific. As such, I am also interested in the critical nature of science and technology studies.
The nature(s) of water and its interaction with humans are a dominant theme in my research to date. While my master?s thesis research constructed a critical geopolitical analysis of the hydropolitical debate in Central Asia, emphasizing environmental security policy and its explicit social, economic, and environmental impacts in Uzbekistan, my current research entitled "Surely the state is the sewer: sewers, drains, and flows of power in Ankara, Turkey" has shifted my regional focus to Anatolia. I am researching the development of Ankara's hydraulic network from the late Ottoman (Hamidian) period through the present, paying particular attention to the intersection between sanitation ideologies, material constructions, and the consequences for landscapes and bodies in central Anatolia. This work builds heavily on the urban political ecology of Swyngedouw an Kaika and the historical approaches taken by Mike Davis, Matthew Gandy, Martin Melosi, etc.
In addition, I am also interested in non-traditional and non-ocularcentric approaches to cartography (Denis Wood, etc) as well as the further development of historical GIS (Anne Knowles, etc). On a personal note, I am an avid weightlifter, currently in competitive training and I enjoy industrial and techno/electronic music, karaoke, and archery. I speak Turkish, Uzbek, and some Azerbaijani, and am currently learning Ottoman Turkish and French.
Eric A. Butvidas - Medical and Population Geography, Refugee Diasporas, and Geographic Literacy
My area of research concerns the distribution of the neglected tropical diseases in the newly emerging autonomous state of Southern Sudan. Understanding the historical patterns of disease distribution and the related geopolitical ecology of disease in Sudan is vital to perceiving the impact on the overall health of the population. I am interested in incorporating a geopolitical approach with the medical geographer, Jacque May's ecology of human disease model. By doing so, I am attempting to illustrate the role that culture has in the proliferation or limitation of the spread of disease. This can be shown with the return of Sudanese refugees from around the globe, back to their place of origin in Southern Sudan.
Williams Castro - Nature-Society Studies / GIS
I am a Brazilian biologist currently working towards a PhD in geography at Michigan State University. My research interest lies in the field of the environmental sciences. I have experience with eco-physiology of tropical rain forest, such as interactions between biosphere and atmosphere and traces gases. My actual field of work encompasses the human dimension of land use land cover change in the Brazilian Amazon. During my bachelor's degree in biology I studied the eco-physiology of several important rain-forest trees, focusing particularly to their resistance to severe drought. This research was part of an LBA-NASA funded project that sought to understand the Amazon rainforest's capacity to regulate weather and climate.
After this, I obtained a master's in Environmental Sciences, where again as part of an LBA-funded research team, I studied the d
ynamics of land use and land cover change in the eastern Brazilian Amazon. In this research I tested how the delimitation of the study area may influence the results of multi-scale analyses in spatial processes of land use and land cover change. Using GIS software, satellite thematic imagery, landscape metrics, and field surveys, I calculated changes in land use and land cover to better understand the human context of the expansion of soybean cultivation and its consequences on the Amazonian landscape.
Now as a PhD candidate, I am looking to deepen my knowledge of land use and land cover change in the Amazon basin, with a specific focus on its drivers. I aim to study the viability of carbon markets and other potential economic incentives, like Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation (REDD), in the East-Central Amazon to reduce deforestation and yield acceptable financial returns at the same time. I aim to do this by mapping forest areas that qualify for receiving the compensation through REDD. Once I gather this information, I wish to build models to illustrate the potential for REDD at a regional-scale, and eventually to estimate impacts for counties and regions within the basin. My goal is to answer the important question of whether REDD is a feasible incentive for reducing Amazonian deforestation. Full online CV
Saul (Daniel) Ddumba - Climate
Climate change is one of the greatest challenges of the 21st century whose impacts are believed to affect various sectors. Among the most affected is agriculture which greatly depends on the climate. Climate change modifies both the amount of water available for the crop and the temperatures thus causing a threat to the survival of ecosystems including people. Crops need water, temperature and solar radiation for photosynthesis and also for general growth. The largest percentage of agriculture in both developing and developing countries is rain fed. The increase in world population with the developing countries in particular, having higher growth rates, also leads to more demand for the already threatened food production.
My research therefore, is aimed at contributing to solving the above problem by assessing the 
impact of climate change on food security in Uganda (East Africa). Using selected crops, I will: (i) describe the variability of crop production and climate over the last 30-40 years; (ii) examine the relationship between climate variability and crop production; (iii) identify and assess the impact of other factors affecting crop production; (iv) explore the impact of future changes in climate to crop production; and (v) assess the effectiveness of policy intervention measures related to climate change and agriculture in Uganda. The research will use selected regional climate and crop models, and geographical information system methods.
Before being awarded a Fulbright Science & Technology scholarship to pursue my PhD at Michigan State University, I studied a Master of Science in Applied Meteorology at the University of Reading, United Kingdom and researched on “Influence of sea surface temperature on Ugandan rainfall regimes”. I also have a Post Graduate Diploma in Meteorology and a Bachelor of Science in Education both from Makerere University in Uganda. I have participated on various research projects in East Africa, and presented various papers in international conferences. I am also an Assistance Lecturer at Makerere University (Uganda).
Courtney Gallaher - Nature-Society Studies and Physical Geography
In the growing slums of Nairobi, home to more than half the population of Kenya's capital city, food insecurity and environmental contamination are a growing concern. Given the growing number of slum residents, it is important to find ways to address the existing urban poverty, such as urban agriculture (UA), which allows people to positively contribute towards their local livelihoods. While urban agriculture is not new in the cities of Kenya, its spread throughout the slums is recent. In early 2008, following post-election violence, a NGO called Solidarites helped to scale up urban agriculture in the slums by promoting sack 
gardening throughout Kibera. Sack-gardening is well adapted to slums because residents can grow food in sacks outside their doorstep, rather than relying on access to plots of land, which are scarce in these informal settlements. Now more than five thousand residents of Kibera are farming in this way. However, slum residents who garden are potentially exposed to environmental toxins via contaminated soil and water, due to the lack of sanitation in the slums. Kibera slum serves as ideal location to investigate the tradeoffs between sack gardening as an activity that may help to improve people's ability to eat or earn an income, and one that potentially exposes people to health risks. My dissertation research investigates how participation in sack gardening serves to improve local livelihoods, and the extent to which sack gardening exposes people to environmental risks. This research draws on a mixture of methods, including qualitative interviews of farmers, household surveys, focus group discussions, and analysis of plant, soil and water samples for heavy metal and fecal coliform bacteria contamination.
Yankuic Galvan - Land Change / Political / Economic / Latin America
Tropical nations, usually perceived as traditional and remote, are undergoing profound changes in its political economic system, population distribution, density, connectedness, and mobility, which result in increasing interactions between the local, the regional and the global systems. Globalization is the term we usually apply to this, and several other changes we perceive in our contemporary interconnected world. While this phenomenon is not new, as it began several centuries ago, but has never in history involved so many people in so many places.
In Mexico, relatively recent changes in the political and economic system of the country, urbanization and transnational migration have increased the interconnectedness of rural communities, reshaping the way people interact with their immediate environment and manage local production systems. My research interest focuses on the understanding of the effects of the increased interconnectedness (e.g. commodity flows and access to non-agricultural labor markets) of rural communities in Mexico in the dynamics of land use systems and its consequences in forest spatial distribution. This is a question relevant to land change studies, as clearing forests for agricultural production is named as one major proximal driver for deforestation in carbon and biodiversity rich tropical countries. I will critically approach this question using, but not limited to, the framework of the Forest Transition Theory (FTT), an emerging body of literature seeking to investigate the relationship between forest recovery and economic development. My approach will also require a combination of Political and Cultural Ecology, Economic Geography and Spatial Analysis frameworks, theories and methods.
Jordan Howell- Energy Studies
I am a cultural geographer examining energy issues in the United States and Europe. Secondary research interests include include the critical study of viticulture, wine production, and alcohol marketing and regulation in the United States, European Union, and Latin America as well as (the history of) cartographic design and production. I consider all of my research to be interdisciplinary, drawing from anthropology, cultural studies, geography, history, science and technology studies (STS), and environmental sociology.
My research centers on 'energy' in all its forms, from raw mineral resources to shining light bulbs, and the transformations that happen along the way. I focus on energy's representation in art, film, news media, and popular culture, aiming to understand energy's conceptualization in public (and private) consciousness, and how those conceptualizations are translated into physical infrastructure and government/corporate policy. I examine the historical and social contingencies of energy development schemes, disasters, and technologies, and am currently investigating the geography of waste-to-energy incinerators in the United States and Europe. Fundamentally, I seek to understand why this technology is adopted in some places but rejected in others.
Currently, I am a STAR Graduate Fellow with the US Environmental Protection Agency and also a Graduate Fellow at the Residential College in the Arts and Humanities at Michigan State University. In my spare time, I am an avid tennis, yoga, and pilates enthusiast.
Visit my website for more information!
Ritaumaria Pereira - Nature-Society Studies and Amazon
Since the 1960s the Brazilian government has advanced a series of comprehensive plans designed to integrate the Amazon region with the Brazil’s economic and political core of the country. The diverse reasons for these efforts included the geopolitical need to populate the 
Amazon frontier to ensure Brazil’s territorial claim, initiatives to increase economic growth through agro-industrial development, and attempts to enhance social welfare and alleviate dire poverty in other parts of the country by providing land to the poor. Given the failure of state-led colonization programs, persistent rural poverty, and growing land conflict, in the late 1980s, Social Movement Organizations (SMOs) started to organize at the national level claiming for agrarian reform in Brazil. In recent years, SMOs have incorporated environmental concerns with their social and political agenda and encouraged settlement residents not to focus on a monoculture production system for markets, but instead to engage in what they call an “agro-ecology” that promotes diversified production so as to ensure food sovereignty and sustainable development that balances the environmental and social needs.
Despite the green policy rhetoric of the SMOs, which is reiterated in most settlements, field evidence reveals a trend in which settlement residents in the Brazilian Amazon have not pursued “agro-ecology” with alternative productions systems, but instead they focus on livestock, which has been directly linked with deforestation. Due this economic trend in settlements created in the Brazilian Amazon, my dissertation research focuses on (1) understand why and how settlement residents are engaged in the expanding cattle economy, (2) explain the positive and negative implications for their livelihoods, and (3) examine how this engagement to the cattle production system integrates small and large holders mitigating land conflicts in the region. Finally, my dissertation research will attempt to identify the potential barriers to green alternatives, or agro-ecology, with the aim of highlighting policy implications.
Ivan Rameriez - Climate Change and Health
I am a Ph.D. candidate and expect to complete my program in May of 2011. In addition I will be completing a specialization in Ethics and Development in the Department of Philosophy and a certificate in Community Engagement. I am also an adjunct scientist with the Consortium for Capacity Building (CCB) in Boulder, Colorado (http://ccb.colorado.edu/).
My teaching and research interests are climate-environment-society interactions, vulnerability, and global health. I am also interested in development and environmental ethics. I seek to understand the interrelationships among climate (averages, extremes, variability and change), society and ecosystems and how these interactions impact population vulnerability and infectious disease transmission in different geographic contexts (e.g., coast versus highland or urban versus rural). Importantly, I seek to identify and understand the 
ethical issues that arise from these interactions.
In my dissertation research I investigate the interactive effects of El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) and social vulnerability on cholera transmission in Piura, Perú. Piura, located on the northern coast of Peru, is an important case study to examine because it was one of three coastal areas where cholera emerged in 1991 after a century of being absent. It is also a region historically associated with ENSO. The goal of my research is to improve our understanding of the cholera epidemic in Peru by studying its association with ENSO in the 1990s. My primary objectives are to examine: (1) the temporal associations among ENSO, its climate teleconnections and cholera incidence; and how social vulnerability may have impacted these associations; and (2) to examine the moral dimensions of these relationships. Ethics is an integral part of this research because it bridges the natural and social sciences with humanities to policy and civil society concerns. In my research I address my objectives using a mix of quantitative and qualitative methods and approaches within an integrated framework at multiple scales. From a policy perspective, the usability of my research is to inform capacity building and adaptation strategies to address potential impacts of current and future climate-related hazards on health and society.
Pete Richards - Land Cover Change, Agriculture and the Amazon, and Economic Geography
The world in the 21st century will consume more fuel, meat and processed food, in the process creating new demands for soybeans, with implications for both the global economy and environment. In recent decades the expansion of soy production has been dramatic, and nowhere has a soy supply response been more profound than in the transitional forests of the southeastern Amazon. Between 1990 and 2009, the area of soy production in the Amazon expanded nearly 400 percent, and the Amazon soy industry now accounts for approximately thirty-five percent of Brazil's soy crop, or nine percent of the world's total. However, the expansion of soy in this region has also resulted in degradation to the local environment, a fact that has caught the attention of the general public, and prompted a significant response from interested NGOs, producers, and agribusinesses in the form of a soy moratorium on newly cleared regions.
Gary Schnakenberg - Food Security, Jamaica, Nature-Society Studies
My research focuses on the cultural underpinnings of food security issues facing Jamaica, and traces a burgeoning resistance to aspects of globalization that is gaining impetus from, ironically, one of the main drivers of globalization in the region, tourism. I seek to analyze this reaction to “global food” in the context of traditional religious and cultural values on the
one hand and neoliberal market-based discourses on the other.
Approaching the Treasure Beach area on the road from Black River, the Santa Cruz Mountains rise on the left. The rain shadow caused by this ridge mitigates much of the heavy rain of the wet season, creating perhaps the best area of all Jamaica for the production of vegetables. It is known throughout the country as its “breadbasket.” In the hills above Pedro Cross, fields of onions, scallions, tomatoes, carrots, and melons stretch away from small roads which are badly eroded from past hurricane washouts, but with 60% of Jamaica's budget going to debt service, repair funds are not forthcoming. Some of these tomatoes rot in the sun, but the supermarket at Pedro Cross has cans of Del Monte and Hunts stacked deep on the shelves, and the produce section has some of the same items just passed in the surrounding hills - however, many here are imported from the US, the EU, China, and Canada.
Forty years of IMF, World Bank, and Inter-American Development Bank loans and structural adjustment policies have required Jamaica's participation in a “free trade” regime on a “level playing field” with the world's largest economies. At the same time, discourses of modernity and comparative advantage reinforce a dualism apparent in Caribbean agriculture since the days of the sugar planters - export commodities get support, credit, and assistance while local food production is left to fend for itself. Agriculture not practiced on large holdings using high-cost inputs, technical expertise, and wage labor doesn't quite “count.” Local knowledge of microenvironments and traditional foodways are marginalized by global economic policies and island politics.