I braid together study of hman wildlife interactions and health conservancies and concessions. Increasingly, perhaps in response to those bounded and often monetized settings, I also create and study open source software for collaborative learning about environmental and health fields. All of this has been elaborated through my collaborative work and learning in particular with those in:
- The Dzanga Sangha Dense Forest Reserve in southwestern Central African Republic (and neighboring regions of Congo Brazzaville and Cameroon, see archived site for the Sangha River Network).
- The Mpala Research Center and surrounding communities in Kenya’s Laikipia region (for more information, see “Inside M-Cubed“).
- The Royal Bafokeng Nation and its constitutive communities within the Republic of South Africa (for more, see the Royal Bafokeng Nation)
- The Albert Schweitzer Hospital and surrounding communities in Lambaréné, Gabon
Grants and Fellowships
2020: The Mnomen Initiative: Decolonizing Botantical Gardens and University Lands Co-Pi with David Michener, Curator of the Mathai Botanical Gardens and Nicolls Arboretum and many tribal and student/educator partners. The grant provided $10,000 to pursue restoration of Mnomen (wild rice, Zizania aquatica; Z. palustris), a staple food for Anishinaabek peoples.
2017: with Arun Agrawal, PI, and John Vandermeer, Tom Lyon, Rick Riolo, Kathleen Bergen on NSF Coupled Human Natural Systems grant for seven years total funding on the impact of logging concessions on forest cover in the Congo basin, as this relates to the growth and presence of NGOs, international donors, and transnational corporations.
2007: Co-PI on Grants (with Damani Partridge and Marina Welker) for a collaborative international symposium on “Corporate Lives: New Perspectives on the Corporate Social Form.” Wenner Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research, and School for Advanced Research, Santa Fe, New Mexico.
2005: Research on Concessionary Politics in Southern Africa and Coordination of Corporate Lives Panel at the American Ethnological Society Meetings. Center for International Business Education. Supported by $5000 grant from the University of Michigan.
2002: Fellowship for one year research and writing on Concessionary Politics in South Africa; supported by Social Science and Humanities Council, Canada, and McGill University (declined).
2000: Fellowship for postdoctoral research and teaching on environment. Ford Foundation “Crossing Borders” Initiative, Yale Center for International and Area Studies.
1999: PI on grant from Biodiversity Support Program (BSP) $15,000 for production of bilingual version of the Sangha River Network 1997 conference proceedings.
1999: $55,000 grant from United States Agency for International Development (USAID), and BSP/Central Africa Regional Program on Environment (CARPE) to produce bilingual website.
1998: Grants totaling $38,200 from Ford Foundation Crossing Borders Initiative, Yale University Center for International and Area Studies, and USAID BSP/CARPE for operating budget and international meetings on the role of independent research in environmental management of the Western Congo basin, in Orleans, France.
1997: Co-recipient (with S. Rupp and H. Eves) of grants totaling $50,000 from Kempf Memorial Fund at Yale; BSP/CARPE grant; Yale University for a conference on the histories, institutions, and knowledge forms shaping resource use in the Sangha River basin of Equatorial Africa.
1996: PI (with co-PI M. Remis) of grants totaling $12,000 for the regional work sessions for indigenous experts and researchers Central African Republic. Agrarian Studies at Yale; World Wide Fund for Nature, U.S. and BSP/CARPE special grant.
2019: co PI on $10,000 from University of Michigan Graham Institute Catalyst Grant with Lutgarde Raskin for parallel partnerships between researchers and water treatment specialists working in Ann Arbor, Michigan and Lambaréné, Gabon
2015-18 co PI on $3 million grant from University of Michigan Transformations Fund for Global Problem Driven Research (PI: Johannes Schwank, Chemical Engineering) for work on Food, Water, Energy systems in Gabon
2017: Exploring Nutrient-Energy-Water Cycles. CoPI with Nancy Love, Krista Wigginton (UM Civil and Environmental Engineering), Diana Aga (SUNY Binghamton) and Abraham Noe Hayes (Rich Earth Institute Vermont) for NSF INFEWS grant of $3 million to explore safety and social acceptability of urine derived fertilizers in U.S. agriculture (and urine diverting toilets on our campus/in our communities)
2013: PI on grant funded by the Sisters Fund of the Institute for Research on Women and Gender for work on “Effects of Land Management on Q Fever Transmission Across Domesticated Animals, Wildlife and Humans in Laikipia, Kenya.”
2012: Co-PI on funded MCubed innovation award of $60,000 with Johannes Foufopoulos and Joseph Eisenberg (Public Health) for collaborative, cross disciplinary research on Q Fever in Kenyan drylands.
2011: Co-PI with Johannes Foufopoulos, seed grants totaling of $40,000 from Graham Institute, School of Environment, and the Science, Technology, Engineering and Math in Africa initiative toward collaborative funds for Sustainability for research on the emergence of Q- Fever among pastoralists and rural populations in Laikipia region, Kenya.
2011: Co-PI with Joseph Eisenberg and Johannes Foufopoulos on grant from University of Michigan STEM-Africa initiative for Collaborative Research and Learning in East Africa
2005 and 2001: Fellowship for two years of research on emergent disease and environmental change under the auspices of the Academy Fellows Program; Academy Scholars Program, Weatherhead Center, Harvard University.
2003: PI and Chair for an authors meeting toward an edited volume on emergent viral disease in tropical forests at Harvard University. Supported by $30,000 grant from Harvard Academy Scholars Program, and grants totaling $24,000 from U.S. Department of Interior (Fish and Wildlife Service, Great Ape Fund–declined in favor of Harvard funding)2002:
PI and Chair of an international working group on emergent viral disease in tropical forests. Supported by $20,000 grant from the International Society for Ecosystem Health, Center for Applied Biodiversity Science, Conservation International.
1999: One month field research in Central African Republic on emergent viral disease and concessionary politics. Supported by $3,000 grant from Centre National pour la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), Museum National d’Histoire Naturel, Paris.
1998: Fellowship for one year of research (approximately $15,000) at the University of Orléans/IRD Laboratoire ERMES; Conseil Regional de la Region du Centre, France.
Open(ing) Knowledge Systems
2021: Detroit River Story Lab. CoPI with David Porter (Comparative Literature/English), Melissa Duhaime (Ecology and Evolutionary Biology) Maria Alarquon (Architecture and Urban Planning) and Kristin Hass (American Culture) on a grant of $270,000 for partnerships with communities along the Detroit River to co-create learning and narrative based materials about the history and future of the river and its communities.
2016-19 co-PI on $1.7 million grant from University of Michigan Transforming Learning for the Third Century Fund to create new forms of multimodal case based learning on an open access multilingual platform for global use (www.learngala.com
2007: Expeditionary Science, Evolutionary Paradigms, and the Colonial Origins of Environmental Conservation: Critical Debates about Race, Culture, Power. Grants totaling $25,000 raised from the Office of the Vice Provost for Research, University of Michigan, Harvard University’s Academy for International and Area Studies forwork with Miles Coolidge (UC Irvine), Harvard University and Interlock Media to write a script and treatment and conduct preliminary filming for adocumentary film. With collaboration from Brown University’s Department of Anthropology, the New York Botanical Gardens, and the American Museum of Natural History.
2005: Cultural Ecology in the curriculum $8,000 grant to develop materials for environmental anthropology curriculum; Center for Research on Learning and Teaching Grant, University of Michigan.
2000: Chair of a working group and working days on the theme “Environment, Literature, and Public Policy.” Funded by $10,000 grant from Whitney Humanities Center, Council on African Studies, Yale Center for International and Area Studies, Yale University.
1999: Fellowship for one semester study at University of California Humanities Research Institute, University of California, Irvine (declined).
Engaged Research
- I provide faculty support for a student driven digital media learning platform “It’s Hot in Here” for peer education about analog and digital audio and visual production, science communication, and conveying complex information to widely varied audiences. That, in turn, gave rise to the UM funded open access platform Gala, which has revitalized the curriculum at SEAS, and hosts multimedia, multimodal, multilingual sustainabilty science cases for educational use worldwide and anchors a growing face to face community of educators that span organizational, k-12, vocational and higher educational institutions, all adapting, updating and creating cases.
- Masters students I mentored have mapped Africa’s water resources for Coca Cola’s GETF to orient their water philanthropy; others conducted research to bolster the European Union EJOLT project which is an ongoing research tool and community for monitoring and advocacy in environmental conflicts; still others are engaging with CEDER at the School of Education and local k-12 educators to bring sustainability content into classrooms with an emphasis on water, waste and energy management. These are all both professional development and research engagements, and i resist the rigid boundaries between “research” and “teaching” that all too often get imposed.