Forum Network

Jeffrey Ravel studies the history of French and European political culture from the mid 17th through the mid 19th centuries. He is the author of The Would Be Commoner: A Tale of Deception, Murder, and Justice in Seventeenth Century France in 2008, and The Contested Parterre: Public Theater and French Political Culture, 1680-1791 in 1999. He was Editor for volumes 35 and 36 of Studies in Eighteenth Century Culture, an annual publication of the American Society for 18th Century Studies.

Jean E. Jackson received her B.A. from Wellesley College in Sociology/Anthropology in 1965, and her M.A. (1966) and Ph.D. (1972) from Stanford University. She began teaching at MIT in the fall of 1972. Her earlier Latin American research interests included small-scale societies, kinship and marriage, gender, and anthropological linguistics. During the past 20 years she has examined indigenous mobilizing in Colombia. She is currently conducting archival research on how Colombia's indigenous communities have been represented in the two national newspapers, 1988-present. She is the author of several books and essays including: *The Fish People: Linguistic Exogamy and Tukanoan Identity in Northwest Amazonia* which was published in 1983. In 2002 she and co-editor Kay B. Warren published *Indigenous Movements, Self-Representation and the State in Latin America*. Recent essays include "Indigenous movements in Latin America, 1992-2004: Controversies, ironies, new directions" co-authored with Kay B. Warren (2005 Annual Review of Anthropology). She has also published various pieces on the Colombian conflict. "Colombia's Indigenous Peoples Confront the Armed Conflict" came out in 2005, as well as "Update on the Colombian Crisis" for the American Anthropological Association Committee for Human Rights.

**Dr. Ceasar McDowell** is President of the Interaction Institute for Social Change. As founder of MIT’s Co-Lab (previously named Center for Reflective Community Practice), he works to develop the critical moments reflection method to help communities build knowledge from their practice or, as he likes to say, “to know what they know.” Through his work at the global civic engagement organization, Engage The Power, he developed The Question Campaign as a method for building democratic communities from the ground up. At MIT, he teaches on civic and community engagement and the use of social media to enhance both. of the Algebra Project. In addition he has developed programs for public discourse and conflict resolution among educators from Northern Ireland and The Republic of Ireland. He also designed a public dialogue process for informing the Boston Foundation's Persistent Poverty project work in Boston.

Jeremy Black studied at Queens' College Cambridge, St John's College Oxford, and Merton College Oxford before joining the University of Durham as a lecturer in 1980. There he gained his PhD and ultimately his professorship in 1994. He joined Exeter University as Established Chair in History in 1996.

Charlayne Hunter-Gault has staked her claim as one of the leading journalists in the US, having won many of the top honors in her field for excellence in investigative reporting. In 1961, Hunter-Gault was one of two black students who first broke the color barrier in higher education in Georgia. While braving the protests of white students during that tumultuous time in American history, she also underwent an important learning experience by observing the styles and techniques of reporters who chronicled the event. Hunter-Gault has built a reputation as a keen investigator of social injustice, especially among African-Americans. She became known to millions of television viewers as the national correspondent on PBS-TV's MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour and has also written landmark articles on subjects ranging from the ravages of heroin addiction to the evils of apartheid in South Africa.

Mr. Kenney is the founder of the Vernal Pool Association and was awarded the 1995 Environmental Law Institute and EPA National Wetlands Award for his vernal pool outreach efforts. His book, co-written with Matthew R. Burne, *A Field Guide to the Animals of Vernal Pools* is widely considered the book to use for identifying animals that live in vernal ponds in the Northeast.