Katheryn Twiss is a graduate student in Archaeology at U. C. Berkeley. Her work focuses on the anthropology of food and zooarchaeology in the Neolithic Near East.
Kathy Baylis is a PhD candidate in the Department of Agriculture and Resource Economics at UC Berkeley. She has just returned from a year as the economist in charge of agricultural issues with President Bush's Council of Economic Advisors. Prior to her graduate work, she was executive secretary and director of communications with the National Farmers Union in Canada. She has recently co-authored a textbook on U.S. and Canadian agricultural policy.
Roger Bryne is a Professor of Geography at U. C. Berkeley. His work focuses on historical biogeography, vegetation change, prehistoric agriculture, pollen analysis. He has worked extensively in Mexico and California.
Eric Crystal is an anthropologist who has been involved in research, teaching, and consulting relating to Southeast Asia for over thirty years. An accomplished photographer, he has been committed to documenting both traditional Southeast Asian culture and the processes of social and economic change in the region. Dr. Crystal initiated and directed the first U.C. Education Abroad Program in Hanoi, Vietnam in l999 and in recent years has worked with the national Museum of Ethnology in Hanoi. He retired from his position as Vice-Chair of the U.C. Berkeley Center for Southeast Asia Studies in 2000 to focus on research and part time teaching in the Group for Asian Studies at CAL.
Edan Dekel is a graduate student in the Department of Classics at the U. C. Berkeley where he is studying comparative epic, comparative mythology, and comparative linguistics. He is a popular lecturer in the ORIAS program and received an Outstanding Graduate Student Instructor Award for his work with U. C. Berkeley undergraduates. During the summer he teaches Mythology, Ancient Greek, and Language Studies to pre-collegiate students at the School of Education's Academic Talent Development Program at Berkeley.
Hema Gonzales holds an elementary teaching credential and works as a clinical social worker. She was born and raised in India and is active in South Asian cultural outreach.
Alan Karras is a professor in the International and Area Studies teaching program. He works on political economy of industrial societies wtih a focus on race relations, state formation, migration, and contraband trade.
David N. Keightley is Professor Emeritus of History at the U. C. Berkeley. The author of Sources of Shang History: The Oracle-Bone Inscriptions of Bronze Age China (1978), The Ancestral Landscape: Time, Space, and Community in Late Shang China (ca. 1200-1045 B.C.) (2000), and the editor of The Origins of Chinese Civilization (1983), Keightley has written numerous articles on Neolithic and Bronze-Age China. He is currently at work on a book that deals with Kingship and Religion in the Late Shang.
Rheyna Laney is a professor at the Geographic Information Center at Sonoma State University. She received her Ph D from Clark University. Her world area of interest is Africa south of Sahara, and her research focuses on agricultural change and the relationship between environmental conservation and agricultural practices in Madagascar. Other areas of expertise include ecology with a focus on the political and cultural aspects; third world agricultural systems; and remote sensing. Professor Laney is the Western Regional Councilor for the Cultural Ecology Specialty Group of the Association of American Geographers. Laney was a Peace Corp Volunteer in the Democratic Republic of Congo between 1987 - 1990.
Peggy Macaulay teaches Health, Economics, Modern World History and Nutritional Sciences at Country High School in Vacaville.
Robin Marsh is the Academic Coordinator of of the Center for Sustainable Resource Development, College of Natural Resources, U.C. Berkeley. She is also the Co-director of the Beahrs Environmental Leadership Program that brings environmental and sustainable development professionals and activists to U.C. Berkeley every summer for an intensive, interactive course in Sustainable Environmental Management. Dr. Marsh is an agricultural and development economist (Ph.D., Food Research Institute, Stanford University 1991), with 15 years of experience in international development. Before joining CSRD in 2000, she worked with the Rural Development Division, Food and Agriculture Organization, Rome, leading a global research and policy program on the dynamic interactions between household livelihood strategies, food security and local institutions. Previously, Dr. Marsh was socio-economist with the Asian Vegetable Research and Development Center (CGIAR associate center) in Taiwan and Costa Rica. She conducted research in Asia and Central America on the economic and food security benefits of home and market gardening, and evaluated urban horticulture projects in Africa.
Anuradha Mittal is the Co-Director of the Institute for Food and Development Policy, also known as Food First. Food First is a leading progressive think tank and education-for-action center focusing on food as a human right. She is the co-editor of America Needs Human Rights (Food First Books, 1999). Her articles and opinion pieces on trade, women in development and food security have appeared in numerous national and international news papers and journals.
Carol Murphey is a curriculum specialist with the Bay Area Global Education Program at the World Affairs Council of Northern California.
Sanjyot Mehendale is the executive director of the Caucasus and Central Asia Program within the Institute of Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies at U. C. Berkeley. A lecturer on Near Eastern Archaeology with the Department of Near Eastern Studies, she is a specialist in the art and archeology of the Silk Roads and has conducted extensive field research in Central Asia. She is the director of the Uzbek Berkeley Archaeological Mission (UBAM), is involved with the Electronic Cultural Atlas Initiative at Berkeley, and is one of two editors for the Cultural Atlas of the Silk Roads.
Dr. Jennifer Michael is a folklorist who has written on international and American foodways. She is the Folk Arts Coordinator in the Department of Anthropology at the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco and a lecturer in the American Studies Department at U. C. Berkeley.
Priti Ramamurthy is an assistant professor at University of Washington's Women's Studies Department. Ramamurthy studies gender and agricultural change in south India through research on feminist commodity chains, a methodology she has pioneered. The relationship of gender, nationality and race to socioeconomic inequality and international development are her central concerns. Of her own students Ramamurthy says, "I want them to learn how to read their lives in the context of world events."
Sara Webster is a graduate student in the History Department at UC Berkeley. Her dissertation examines the role of food, cafés and restaurants as a site of upward mobility for British immigrants.
William T. Whitehead is a graduate student in Archaeology at U. C. Berkeley. He is research focuses on the emergence of agriculture in South America: Isotope fractionation of carbon and nitrogen in human diets, identification of ancient plant remains, domestication of plants, the emergence of agriculture, integration of digital technologies in archaeology.