Each research site has several faculty members to broaden the range of methods taught and to protect the integrity of the training program at each site should mishaps strike a faculty. Below we provide a brief description of the faculty that would be involved in the work and a sample of their more recent and relevant publications.
[A]. BOLIVIA
[1]. Ricardo Godoy: His research interests include economic development, the use of experimental research design for causal identification, and tropical rain forest conservation. Theoretical interests include the evolution of rates of private time preference, intra-household discrimination, the private and social returns to modern and traditional human capital, and the effect of market economies on human welfare and conservation.
[2]. Tomas Huanca: Has worked on Aymara traditional healers and, more recently, for his PhD on how tropical rain forest Amerindians use ethnobotanical knowledge to manage and increase the productivity of fallow rain forests. He has worked continuously among Tsimane’ Amerindians, the location of the Bolivia research site, since 1997.
[3]. William Leonard: Is a physical anthropologists who has done research on the influence of nutrition and economic status on childhood growth and how markets influence the nutritional status of children. With funding from NSF, Leonard has done research on the health of Siberian herders, the influence of nutrition and economic status on childhood growth among smallholders in Ecuador, and biological adaptation of Aymara Amerindians to high-altitude in Peru. With Godoy, Leonard organized an NSF-funded interdisciplinary workshop in 2003 on best practices for collecting panel data.
[4]. Thomas McDade: A biomedical anthropologist, McDade has developed and validated minimally invasive methods to collect data on biological markers to measure human health in remote populations undergoing cultural and economic transitions. McDade has received four NSF awards, including a PECASE award. He has developed and validated minimally invasive methods to measure human health in remote populations undergoing cultural transitions. The CAREER award provides laboratory and field-training opportunities for graduate, undergraduate, and high school students.
[5]. Victoria Reyes-Garcia: A cognitive anthropologist, she has collected and analyzed panel data on ethnobotanical knowledge, focusing on the reliability of different data collection formats and on empirical estimates of the determinants of ethnobotanical knowledge. She received an NSF doctoral dissertation award and two subsequent NSF awards. A recent PhD (2001), she is the lead author in a recent Science article on ethnobotanical knowledge. Fluent in the Tsimane’ language, she has written a book on ethnobotanical knowledge with and for Tsimane’ Amerindians. Her work in progress centers on the social returns to local knowledge.
[6]. Vincent Vadez: Agronomist and plant physiologist, his research centers on how market exposure affects subsistence farming and the conservation of natural resources among indigenous peoples. He uses experimental research design to evaluate the effects of farming innovations on people’s welfare. He has years of experience working on the complementarities between modern and indigenous farming among Bolivian Amerindians and the effect of market openness on agricultural diversity. Fluent in Tsimane’, Vadez, with World Bank funding, has used an experimental research design to assess whether the introduction of new leguminous crops enhance nutrition among lowland Amerindians. His participation is pending.
[B]. ZAMBIA
[1]. Lisa Cliggett: Her research focuses on practical questions relating social and cultural change to political-economic structures at multi levels (local to international). Her earlier work includes a study of aging and intergenerational relations amidst scarcity in Zambia, migration in relation to labor markets and agricultural change in Zambia, and mother–child health and community participation in rural Haiti. These research interests draw on anthropological theories of household economy, political ecology, and social demography.
[2]. Jon Unruh: A human geographer, Unruh’s research has addressed questions of environmental change and land tenure throughout Africa and Latin America, using survey and interview data, and linking these data through SPSS and GIS software.
[3]. Deborah Crooks: Crooks' research focuses on social and cultural influences on child growth and nutritional status as households and communities engage ever-changing environments to produce well-being. Combining method and theory from biological, nutritional and medical anthropology within a combined human adaptability/political-economic framework, Crooks' past research has taken place among rural populations in Belize, Kentucky, and the Philippines.