Biography: My research focuses on understanding the principles of resilient cropping system design and biologically-based soil management. This includes investigating the multi-functional role of accessory crops such as cover crops in mediating nutrient efficiency, soil function and healthy crop roots. A particular area of interest is the feedback loops in nitrogen and phosphorus availability mediated by plants and associated microbes. Predicting nutrient availability and tradeoffs between mineralization and assimilation processes are important questions my research group and collaborators address in organic and sustainable production systems. To foster outreach and education on soil ecological management I coordinate a website at MSU on applied soil ecology http://www.safs.msu.edu/soilecology/index.htm. I am committed to participatory research and extension approaches with iterative feedback from stakeholders. To this end, I developed the mother and baby trial design to link long-term research trials systematically with on-farm experimentation. Collaborations across social and biological scientists are essential in a rapidly changing world, and I work closely with multidisciplinary teams including scientists, farmers, students, advisors and extension educators to foster farmer innovation and build more sustainable, environmentally-friendly cropping systems. The participatory research methods and on-farm research trial designs I work on have been adopted by agronomists and plant breeders in 16 countries in Africa, Southeast Asia and in Paraguay. Teaching interests include developing a new course with Dr. Phil Robertson addressing Soil Biology CSS 360 and contributing cropping systems and participatory research methodology lectures in CSS and courses such as ANP859, a core requirement of the new Gender, Justice and Environment Graduate specialization. As a core faculty member of African Studies and the Women in International Development program I am committed to education and scholarship in area studies and international development, including promoting south-south linkages and extending the agro-ecology lessons of the field crop LTER to Southern Africa and West Africa

Biography: Terrie Taylor's battle against malaria, which she refers to as the Voldemort of parasites, has been waged since 1986. An internationally recognized scientist and physician, Terrie spends six months of the year in the African nation of Malawi, conducting malaria research and treating patients, the vast majority of whom are children. The Blantyre Malaria Project, established by Terrie and Malcolm Molyneux, has carried out outstanding research and patient care in the area of pediatric malaria, specifically cerebral malaria, a syndrome in which the brain is involved.

Biography: Chantal Tetreault is a linguistic and cultural anthropologist whose recent work has primarily focused on issues of migration and social change in France. Dr. Tetreault's current project addresses the interactional styles whereby French adolescents of Algerian descent construct and express their emergent identities as Arab Muslims and French youth. More generally, her research illuminates how cultural processes of identity construction, primarily relating to gender and ethnicity, are achieved through everyday language use. Professor Tetreault's publications and teaching both challenge naturalized assumptions about the link between identity and language, thereby contributing to new scholarship in linguistic anthropology that rejects the previously common pattern of equating cultural groups and particular language styles.