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David Haig, associate professor of Biology in Harvard's Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology, and author of Genomic Imprinting and Kinship, is an evolutionary geneticist/theorist interested in conflicts and conflict resolution within the genome, with a particular interest in genomic imprinting and relations between parents and offspring.

Christopher Ricks discovered Milton at school and was the first in his family to go to university. He became an academic and wrote early reviews of Heaney and Hill. Now based in Boston and married to a photographer, he has published a book on Bob Dylan and won a controversial election to become professor of poetry at Oxford.

Professor Cannadine is author of *Mellon, An American Life*, the prize-winning *Decline and Fall of the British Aristocracy* and many other acclaimed and important books. He has taught at Cambridge and Columbia universities and now is The Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother Professor of British History at the Institute of Historical Research, University of London. Born in Birmingham, England, he was educated at Cambridge, Oxford and Princeton.

Kenneth Baker was born in 1934 and educated at St. Paul's and Magdalen College, Oxford. He entered Parliament as Conservative MP for Acton in 1968, beginning a long Parliamentary career which included serving as Environment Secretary, Education Secretary and Home Secretary. As Education Secretary he was responsible for the introduction of the National Curriculum, City Technology Colleges and Grant-Maintained Schools. Retiring from the House of Commons at the 1997 General Election, he joined the House of Lords. Kenneth Baker's publications include five anthologies of poetry and a volume of memoirs, *The Turbulent Years* and two cartoon histories, *The Prime Ministers* and *The Kings and Queens*. *The Faber Children's History in Verse* was published in Spring 2000 and a new anthology, *The Faber Book of Landscape Poetry* in autumn 2000. Kenneth Baker is founder and Chairman of Belmont Press, a company which specialises in fine limited editions of contemporary writing.

Jessica Cagle is a freelance writer who lives in Springfield, Massachusetts.

John W. Mandelman, Ph.D. Research Scientist (at NEAq in various positions since 2001) B.A. University of Rochester, 1996, Psychology Ph.D. Northeastern University, 2006, Biology Research Interests: stress physiology of elasmobranch fishes (sharks, rays and skates), applied fisheries biology, and physiological ecology of fishes. More specifically: 1) the physiological alterations caused by stress in elasmobranchs and other finfish; 2) the mortality of discarded bycatch in fishing operations; 3) strategies to reduce the incidental capture of elasmobranchs; and 4) movement and distribution of marine finfish around artificial structures (i.e. fish aggregation devices). Current Projects include: The immediate and delayed mortality of western North Atlantic skates due to fishing capture (funded by NOAA Fisheries Northeast Region); impacts studies on the exclusion zones associated with deepwater liquid natural gas (LNG) terminals in Massachusetts Bay (Funded by Excelerate Energy, L.L.C. & Suez Energy North America, Inc.).

Tina Brooks serves as the Commonwealth's housing policy chief within the Deval Patrick Administration's Executive Office of Housing and Economic Development. With more than 18 years of experience in affordable housing finance and development, Brooks is a key architect in expanding affordable housing opportunities in Massachusetts. A Jamaica Plain resident, Brooks most recently served as the director of the Boston office of the Local Initiatives Support Corporation (LISC), a program that provides loans, grants and technical assistance to spur the development of affordable housing, new businesses, recreational facilities, schools, safety programs and other neighborhood institutions. Brooks began her career as a landscape architect with the Pittsburgh firm Environmental Planning and Design, developing site and land plans for various community planning projects. She earned her master's degree in real estate development in 1989 at MIT's Center for Real Estate. Following graduate school, Brooks worked as a development consultant with Greater Boston Community Development, now known as The Community Builders. She moved with TCB to Philadelphia and assisted community-based nonprofit developers in financing and completing affordable housing developments. In 1994 Brooks became the program director for LISC's Philadelphia program, successfully introducing a series of housing and other neighborhood revitalization initiatives relying on effective collaboration with local government and the corporate community on behalf of neighborhood interests.