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Zaid Abdeen
Hayat Abu-Saleh
Samer Alatout
Saleem Ali
Jeff Albert
David Alkan
Alean Al-Krenawi
Rachelle Alterman
Imad Atrash
Reem Attieh
Jeremy Benstein
David Brooks
Tamar Dayan
Elizabeth Dickson
Yaakov Garb
Michael M.J. Fischer
Calvin Goldscheider
Ayana Goren
Itay Greenspan
Steven Hamburg
Shlomo Hasson
Marwan Hatabeh
William Hewes
Jad E. Isaac
Tally Katz-Gerro
Rassem Khamaisi
Nurit Kliot
Jessica Lerner
Ilana Meallem
Rachel Morello-Frosch
Ronit Nativ
Fida Obeidi
Brian C. O’Neill
Daniel Orenstein
Donald Pryor
Khaldoun Rishmawi
Stuart Schoenfeld
Khalil Shikaki
Deborah Shmueli
Tariq Talahmeh
Peter J. Taylor
Richard Wetzler
Michael White
Tanhum Yoreh

Ziad Abdeen - Ziad is the Director of the Al-Quds Nutrition and Health Research Institute (ANAHRI). He is associate professor in the Department of Community Health at Al-Quds University and in the Department of Public Health Sciences at the University of Toronto. Ziad has an MPH in epidemiology from Johns Hopkins University and an M.Sc. and Ph.D. in clinical chemistry from Manchester University. His research combines interests in nutrition, epidemiology, human biology, and statistics through studies of the nutritional well-being of populations, particularly refugees in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, and focuses on four main topics: child growth, food insecurity, nutritional programs, and nutritional assessment. His other areas of research include determinants of asthma among Palestinian children and the influence of different social structures on risk behavior patterns among school children in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

Hayat Abu-Saleh - Hayat completed her graduate degree in environmental studies at York University in March, 2001. Her research focused on �Gender, Public Policy and Development� in which she examined the role of International Aid Agencies in promoting higher education of Palestinian women in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Currently, Hayat works as program assistant at the Public Affairs Office at the US embassy in Tel-Aviv as a principal liaison between the department and the Arab minority in Israel .

Samer Alatout - Samer recently joined the Department of Rural Sociology at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. He completed his Ph.D. in the Department of Science and Technology Studies at Cornell University and spent the past year as a visiting assistant professor of the Modern Middle East in the Department of Near Eastern Studies at Cornell. His research focuses on the co-production of spatial-hydrological and political identities in Palestine/Israel between the early 1930s and the present. His dissertation, “Imagining the Hydrological Boundaries, Constructing the Nation-State: A ‘Fluid’ History of Palestine/Israel, 1936-1959,” has formed the basis for several articles, including “Water Balances in Palestine: Numbers and Political Culture in the Middle East,” in David B. Brooks and Ozay Mehmet (eds.), Water Balances in the Eastern Mediterranean. Ottawa, Canada: IDRC, 2000. His broader interests include: water, power, and globalization; space and identity politics; colonial and postcolonial constructions of nature and the environment; geographic representations and power; and science, technology, development, and globalization.

Saleem Ali - Saleem is assistant professor of environmental studies at the University of Vermont’s School of Natural Resources and a research fellow at Brown University’s Watson Institute. Saleem received his doctorate in environmental planning from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and an M.E.S. in environmental law and policy from Yale University. He is currently involved in various research projects focusing on the causes of environmental conflicts between indigenous communities and mining companies and has authored a forthcoming book, Ore Conflicts: Mining, the Environment and Aboriginal American Development. He has traveled extensively in the Middle East and taught a training module on environmental conflict resolution for students in the University of the Middle East Project (www.ume.org).

Jeff Albert - Jeff is an environmental scientist with expertise in water resource management and digital spatial modeling. He currently teaches geographic information systems and science at Brown and is engaged in several research projects, including studies of salinization patterns in the coastal aquifer of Israel and vegetation dynamics in the Great Basin region of the western United States. He completed his Ph.D. in 2002 at the School of Forestry and Environmental Studies at Yale University. Prior to that, he worked as an analyst at the Israel Water Commission and also participated in several Israeli-Palestinian and Israeli-Jordanian projects. In 1999, he co-edited Transformations of Middle Eastern Natural Environments: Legacies and Lessons, a volume that was an outgrowth of a conference of the same name at Yale University in the fall of 1997.

David Alkan - David is a senior official at the Planning Division of the Israel Water Commission, the central water planning and allocation body of the Israeli government. His work entails the initiation, planning and construction of wastewater collection, treatment and reclamation projects on local, regional and inter-regional scales, including riparian wastewater (contaminant & potential resource). He is also involved in efforts to resolve transboundary water issues.

Alean Al-Krenawi - Alean, Ph.D. is Senior Lecturer at the Department of Social Work and Director of the Bedouin Center for Studies and Development, at Ben Gurion University of the Negev. He obtained an MA degree from the Hebrew University , Jerusalem , and a Ph.D. in social work and cross-cultural mental health from the University of Toronto . He is an international authority on mental health and social work, has completed a book on ethno-psychiatry in the Middle East and is working on his third book, co-edited with John Graham. Alean is the author of numerous book chapters and over 40 academic peer reviewed articles, including recently published works that appear or will appear in Affilia: Journal of Women and Social Work , American Journal of Orthopsychiatry , British Journal of Social Work , Child Welfare , International Journal of Cultural and Social Anthropology , Psychotherapy , and World Health Forum , among others.

Rachelle Alterman - Rachelle is the David Azrieli Professor of Town Planning at the Technion - Israel Institute of Technology and associate dean of the Faculty of Architecture and Town Planning. She holds degrees in planning and in law from the University of Manitoba, Canada, the Technion, and Tel-Aviv University, specializing in urban planning, comparative land-use law, housing, and property rights. Rachelle is a member of the Israel National Planning and Building Board, an advisor to the Knesset on planning legislation, and is frequently cited as an authority by the Israel Supreme Court. She is also a member of the Israel-Palestine co-national planning team “Israel 2020- Palestine 2015”, a member of the cross-border planning research project for the Government of Israel, and a consultant for the World Bank on refugee-oriented housing. Rachelle’s most recent books include Planning in the Face of Crisis: Land Use, Housing, and Mass Immigration in Israel (London: Routledge 2002), and Conflict and Consensus in the Hands of Language: The changing attitude of urban and regional plans towards the Arab sector in Israel (Tel Aviv University, Steinmetz Center for Peace Studies, 2001, Hebrew).�

Imad Atrash - Imad has been the Executive Director of the Palestine Wildlife Society since he helped establish the organization in 1998. For the past 6 years, he has been surveying and monitoring the wildlife across many sites in Palestine, using this information to enrich environmental knowledge at both national and international levels. The Palestine Wildlife Society has contributed to publications such as “Threatened Birds of the World” by Birdlife International 2000, and the organization collected the information for the book of the IBA in Palestine. The Palestine Wildlife Society also collects related information for brochures and posters, providing environmental information about sites in Palestine, and has participated in the preparation of the Biodiversity Strategy Action Plan for Palestine with the Environmental Quality Authority.

Reem Attieh - Reem is currently completing the second year of her PhD in the department of Sociology at York University, Toronto, Canada. She is primarily interested in issues relating to Palestinian identity. Reem plans to focus her research on the social and economic impact of the separation wall on the lives of Palestinians, especially farmers whose land is confiscated in the process of building the wall.

Jeremy Benstein - Jeremy is the educational director of the Heschel Center for Environmental Learning and Leadership in Tel Aviv. He coordinates the Center’s Environmental Fellows program, serves on the editorial board of “HaKadur BeYadenu” journal of social-environmental education, and edited the 400-page Hebrew language anthology of environmental thought, “Makom LeMachshava” (translated as “One Earth, Many Worlds”). He has lectured in environmental ethics, and religion and the environment at the Arava Institute for Environmental Studies. He is also a doctoral candidate in environmental anthropology at the Hebrew University, where he is researching the cultural and political dynamics of joint Jewish- Palestinian environmental initiatives within Israel. Under the auspices of the Heinrich Boell Foundation, he has authored a report entitled: “Between Earth Day and Land Day -New Directions for Environmental Activism between Palestinians and Jews in Israel.” His other interests include critiques of advertising and consumerism, Jewish and religious thought and environmental issues, and the relationship between cultural/linguistic diversity and biodiversity.

David Brooks - David is a natural resource economist whose main interests lie in the linkages between environmental protection, on the one hand, and the use of minerals, energy and water, on the other. David was educated in geology at MIT (SB 1955) and Cal Tech (MS 1956), and in economics at the University of Colorado (PhD 1963). Between 1988 and 2002, he worked as a research director for Canada’s International Development Research Centre. After retiring from IDRC in May 2002, David became Director of Research for Friends of the Earth - Canada on a part-time basis. In recent years, much of Dr. Brooks’ research has focused on environmental and natural resource issues in the Middle East, and particularly in Israel and Palestine. David is author of Zero Energy Growth for Canada (McClelland and Stewart 1981) and Water: Local-Level Management (IDRC 2002); he is co-author of Water: The Potential for Demand Management in Canada (Science Council of Canada 1988); and Watershed: The Role of Fresh Water in the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict (IDRC Books 1994). He has been elected to the International Water Academy, based in Oslo, Norway, and has served on the Canadian delegations to those parts of the Middle East Peace Talks focusing on water resources and on the environment.�

Tamar Dayan - Tamar is an Associate Professor in Zoology at Tel Aviv University and heads the Institute for Nature Conservation Research. She is also the director of the national collections of natural history. She has a Ph.D. and M.Sc. in Zoology, and a BA in Archeology from Tel Aviv University. She is the Chair of the Israel Man and the Biosphere UNESCO committee, and is a member of the Board of Directors of the Society for the Protection of Nature in Israel. She is the author or co-author of 48 articles published in refereed scientific journals (Ecology, American Naturalist, Annual Review of Ecology and Systematics, Paleobiology, Journal of Archaeological Science, Physiological and Biochemical Zoology, and others) and 20 book chapters.

Elizabeth Dickson - Elizabeth Dickson-- Elizabeth is an undergraduate student in the class of 2007 at Brown University . Her planned concentration is International Relations with a focus in Global security, and she is also considering a second concentration in Community Health. She is currently working on the MEEF project, specifically addressing the environmental impacts of the prolonged conflict between the Bedouin of the Northern Negev and the Israeli state.

Michael M.J. Fischer - Michael is professor of anthropology and science and technology studies, and former director of the Science, Technology, and Society Program, at MIT. He was formerly director of the Center for Cultural Studies at Rice University, and has also taught at Harvard University and the University of Chicago. His work in the Middle East has primarily been on Iran, and he has written on local narrative and interpretive strategies as they intersect with larger national and global forces: Iran: From Religious Dispute to Revolution (1980, 2nd edition 2003); Debating Muslims: Cultural Dialogues in Postmodernity and Tradition (with Mehdi Abdi, 1990); and Mute Dreams, Blind Owls, and Dispersed Knowledges: Persian Poesis in the Transnational Circuitry (forthcoming 2003). He has also been active in developing new ethnographic methods for changing times: Anthropology as Cultural Critique (with George Marcus, 1986, 2nd edition 1999); Emergent Forms of Life and the Anthropological Voice (forthcoming 2003). He has most recently returned from a June exploratory trip to the West Bank and Israel, and is interested in the interface between local narratives and environmental informatic systems.

Yaakov Garb - Yaakov is an interdisciplinary analyst of environmental issues, drawing on training in the sciences, the social sciences, and the humanities. Subsequent to receiving his doctorate (Berkeley, 1993), he studied in the Science, Technology, and Society (STS) program at MIT, and held post-doctoral positions at Harvard, The Institute for Advanced Studies (at Princeton), and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Currently, he is an Adjunct Professor at the Institute of Urban and Regional Studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He is also director of European Programs for the Institute for Transport and Development Policy ( New York ) where he is conducting and supervising research and advocacy on sprawl containment and city center revitalization in four Central European countries. He is also a researcher at the Floersheimer Institute for Policy Studies, where he has published a series of reports on transport and urban planning issues.

Calvin Goldscheider - Calvin is Professor of Sociology and the Ungerleider Professor of Judaic Studies at Brown University. He is a Faculty Associate of the Population Studies and Training Center and formerly Chair of the Department of Sociology at Brown. Before coming to Brown, he was Professor of Sociology and Demography at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and Chairman of their Department of Demography. He was Visiting Professor at the Center for Women's Studies at Stockholm University, carrying out research on immigrant families in Sweden. His publications have focused on the sociology and demography of ethnic populations, historically and comparatively, with a particular emphasis on family and immigration. He has also edited eight collections of original scholarly research in demography, including "Population and Social Change in Israel" and "Population, Ethnicity, and Nation Building." Calvin’s major books on Israel include: "The Population of Israel," "Israel's Changing Society: Population, Ethnicity, and Development," and "Cultures in Conflict: The Arab-Israeli Conflict."

Ayana Goren - Ayana is Senior Lecturer at Tel Aviv University’s Sackler School of Medicine, in the Department for Epidemiology and Preventative Medicine. As an environmental epidemiologist, her research interests are focused mainly on health effects resulting from community exposure to air pollution. She deals with both short-term and long-term effects of air pollution on the health of different populations (e.g. rural vs. urban), as well as different segments of the population (e.g. day care centers for children, schoolchildren and adults in day clubs). She was responsible for a long-term follow-up program of populations residing in the vicinity of the first coal-fired power plant in Israel. She was also part of the EU-APHEA-project, dealing with daily changes in air pollution and mortality, and is an active partner in the EU-APHEIS-project, in which she deals with short- and long-term effects of air pollution on morbidity, mortality as well as calculations of YLL (Years of Life Lost). These projects are tracking changes in exposure to air pollution and awareness of air pollution problems, as well as studying the willingness of populations to cooperate with relevant field research (e.g. filling out health questionnaires for themselves and for their children), and the willingness of people to pay in order to prevent air pollution health effects.

Itay Greenspan - Itay is currently a graduate student in the faculty of Environmental Studies at York University and has been appointed as the York graduate assistant for the MEEF project. He has completed his B.A. with Honors in the department of Geography of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in 2001, and completed a one-year program at the Arava Institute for Environmental Studies (AIES) in the 2002. His work experience includes appointments at the Jerusalem Institute for Israel Studies (JIIS), the National Council for the Environment in Israel, and a mediation project with the Joint Environmental Mediation Services (JEMS). His current research interests include public participation, especially in the planning process, environmental and social justice, and mechanisms for dispute resolution such as consensus building and mediation.

Steven Hamburg - Steve is Ittleson Associate Professor of Environmental Studies and director of the Global Environment Program at the Watson Institute for International Studies at Brown University. He received his M.F.S and Ph.D. degrees in forest ecology from Yale University, working on the effects of land-use history on ecosystem structure and function, and is a former faculty member at the University of Kansas. For the past ten years Steve’s research has focused in part on international ecosystem management issues. He has been heavily involved in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the East Asia and Pacific Region International Long-Term Ecological Research Network, among other professional workgroups. He is currently working on research on air pollution effects in New Hampshire and Taiwan and climate change effects in New England and Mongolia

Shlomo Hasson - Shlomo is a professor at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, where he teaches at the Geography Department, the Center for Conflicts Settlement and the Institute of Urban and Regional Studies. He is the deputy director of the Floersheimer Institute for Policy Studies, a senior researcher at the Jerusalem Institute for Policy Studies, and serves as co-chair of the New Israel Fund, an organization devoted to promote democracy, individual and minority rights in Israel. His most recent studies include: Geopolitical Solutions to the Jerusalem Problem (2000), Divided Regions: A Comparative Perspective (with Moshe Hirsh and Alexander Wiengrod) (2000), The Struggle for Hegemony in Jerusalem: Secular and Ultra-Orthodox Jews in Urban Politics (2001), State, Religion and Society in Israel: Possible Futures (2002), How to Make an Impact: Researchers and Policy Makers (With Abraham Friedman) (2003), Sustainable Jerusalem (with Maya Choshen and Israel Kimchi) (2003), Jerusalem Between Separation and Integration (2003), Social Sustainability in Israel (2003).

Marwan Hatabeh - Marwan is a President Clinton Scholar, pursuing a Masters Degree in Urban Planning and Land Development at Morgan State University. He has a BA in Architectural Engineering from Birzeit University. He has worked as a planner for the local government ministry of Ramallah and in the Halhul municipality. He has also worked for private engineering firms and on historical architecture conservation. His research interests include the impact of public policy and political ideology on housing and land use in Jerusalem and employing GIS applications in planning management.

William Hewes - Will is in his third year of undergraduate studies at Brown University . He is concentrating in International Relations with a focus on global environmental issues as well as German. Over the course of his studies at Brown Will has spent a semester at Cheikh Ante Diop University in Dakar , Senegal . Will is currently working on a paper for the MEEF project and is also helping update the website.

Jad E. Isaac - Jad is the director general of the Applied Research Institute-Jerusalem (ARIJ), a leading Palestinian institute that conducts research on agriculture, environment, and water. He received his B.Sc. from Cairo University, his M.Sc. from Rutgers University, and his Ph.D. from the University of East Anglia in the United Kingdom. He is the former Dean of Science at Bethlehem University. He has published several articles and books including: The Environmental Profile for the West Bank and the Atlas of Palestine. Jad headed the Palestinian delegation for the environmental working group in the multilateral talks and is an advisor to the Palestinian negotiating team on final status negotiations.

Tally Katz-Gerro - Tally is assistant professor in the department of Sociology and Anthropology at the University of Haifa, Israel. She has a Ph.D. in sociology from the University of California at Berkeley. Her main areas of research are sociology of consumption, sociology of culture, social inequality, and environmental attitudes and behavior. Currently, she is involved in three research projects: The Determinants of Pro-Environmental Attitudes and Behavior in Israel; State Policies, Economic Status and Environmental Behavior in Comparative Perspective; and “Darling, don’t forget to sort the garbage before you put it in the bin”: Who Determines Environmental Behavior in the Family? During April 2003 she was involved in designing and coordinating the administration of a questionnaire that included a variety of questions about environmental behavior. The questionnaire was administered by students at the University of Haifa through phone interviews to a nationally representative sample of Israeli Jewish citizens.

Rassem Khamaisi - Rassem is Senior Lecturer in the department of Geography and a member of the Galilee Institution for Applied Research at the University of Haifa. He has a Ph.D. in Geography from Hebrew University, an M.Sc. in Town and Regional Planning from the Technion - Israel Institute of Technology, and a BA in Geography and Urbanization from Ben Gurion University. Besides his planning activities with various Arab municipalities, Rassem has done intensive work with Arab council members on the importance of developing planning tools and techniques. Some recent publications include: “Expanding Municipal Boundaries in Arabs Localities in Israel” (2002), “Shaping a Culturally Sensitive Planning Strategy: mitigating the impact of Israel’s proposed trans-national highway upon Arab communities” (with D. Shmueli), and “The Distorted Imposed Urbanization: the reality of the Arabs-Palestinians in Israel.”

Nurit Kliot - Nurit is Full Professor at the University of Haifa, Department of Geography, and Department of Nature Resource Management. Her areas of research include: water resources management, environmental politics and resource management, geography and environment, and population geography. She is currently analyzing population policy of Israel and the Palestinian Authority in relation to limited natural resources. Recent publications include “Transboundary Environmental Pollution and Transboundary Resource Cooperation” and “Environmental Security and Environmental Conflicts: Israel and the Palestinians.”

Jessica Lerner - Jessica is a graduate student at the Center for Environmental Studies at Brown University. Coming from an English and Sociology background, she is most interested in public perception and values, sense of place, environmental narratives, and oral environmental histories, both locally and abroad.

Ilana Meallem - Ilana spent August, 2004 at Brown University, utilizing the university's resources to prepare her graduate research proposal.  She worked as part of the MEEF team alongside Brown MEEF interns, Elizabeth Dickson and Will Hewes, and developed her research ideas with them, Brown faculty members and other MEEF researchers.   She will be completing her graduate research through the joint master's program at the Arava Institute for Environmental Studies and Ben Gurion University of the Negev.

Rachel Morello-Frosch - Rachel is an assistant professor at the Center for Environmental Studies and the Department of Community Health, School of Medicine at Brown University. Rachel completed her bachelor’s degree in development economics, a master of public health degree in epidemiology and biostatistics, and her Ph.D. in environmental health sciences at UC Berkeley. Her research examines race and class determinants of the distribution of health risks associated with air pollution among diverse communities in the United States. Her current work focuses on comparative risk assessment and environmental justice, developing models for community-based environmental health research, science and environmental health policy-making, children’s environmental health, and the intersection between economic restructuring and environmental health. Rachel, along with several colleagues, is currently working on a community-academic research partnership with Communities for a Better Environment in Los Angeles on “Air Pollution, Toxics and Environmental Justice.” Rachel is also collaborating with scientists at the US Environmental Protection Agency on children’s health and air toxics research, and recently completed a project with the Center for Third World Organizing in Oakland on transportation justice, access to health care, and food security.

Ronit Nativ - Ronit is an associate professor in the department of Soil and Water Sciences at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. She has a Ph.D. in Geography from The Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, an M.Sc. in Hydrology and a BA in Geography and International Relations from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. She is a member of the Steering Committee for Regulating Water Preserving Construction with the Ministries of Construction and Housing and Agriculture and is a member of the Hydrological Advisory Committee to the Israel Water Commissioner. Her research is currently focused on: (1) contaminant transport in porous, fractured formations, (2) the impact of urbanization on water resources, (3) the origin and hydrodynamics of brackish water and brine in deep aquifers and (4) the hydrology and hydrogeology of arid areas. Some relevant publications include: Can the desert bloom? Lessons learnt from the Israeli case (in review); Salinization and dilution history of groundwater discharging into Lake Tiberias, Israel (with G. Bergelson and A. Bein), and Separation of groundwater-flow components in a karstified aquifer using environmental tracers (with G Gunay, H. Hotzl, B. Reichert, and L. Tezcan).

Fida Obeidi - Fida is an atmospheric and environmental chemist. She is a professor of chemistry at Metropolitan State College at Denver. Fida holds a B.Sc. in industrial chemistry from Jordan University of Science and Technology and a Ph.D. in analytical/environmental chemistry from Brigham Young University. She has been involved in a number of research projects regarding air pollution. Following her post-doctoral research at Harvard University, she served as a professor at the Center of Chemical and Biological Analysis at Al-Quds University in Jerusalem. She also worked as a project manager at the Peace Research Institute in the Middle East. She has published several articles in the field of atmospheric and environmental chemistry.

Brian C. O'Neill - Brian received his doctorate in earth systems science from New York University, and spent two years as a staff scientist with the Environmental Defense Fund in New York, before joining the Watson Institute for International Studies at Brown University. His research focuses on population-environment interactions and the science and policy of global climate change. His articles have appeared in Science, Climatic Change, Population and Development Review, Environment, Tellus, and in encyclopedias of global change and of social and behavioral sciences. He is the author of Population and Climate Change, written with F. L. MacKellar and W. Lutz (Cambridge University Press, 2001). Professor O’Neill is also a faculty associate at the Population Studies and Training Center at Brown. He is currently on partial leave of absence at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA), Austria.

Daniel Orenstein - Daniel is a Ph.D. student at the Center for Environmental Studies at Brown University. He completed his B.Sc. in Environmental Biology (University of California, Davis) and his M.Sc. in Ecology (Ben Gurion University of the Negev). He was a lecturer for 6 years at the Rothberg International School at Hebrew University, teaching environmental studies in the Israeli context. He was also a faculty member at the Arava Institute for Environmental Studies, teaching an interdisciplinary seminar on environmental sustainability in deserts and a course on population and environment in Israel, Palestine and Jordan. His current research focuses on land use/land cover change in Israel, exploring demographic, economic and policy drivers of change and the ecological/environmental implications.

Donald Pryor - Don is a visiting scholar at Brown, where his current work is directed toward a synthesis of nutrient issues and restoration in Narragansett Bay and its watershed. He is a graduate of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the University of Maryland. He has extensive experience with environmental issues, particularly coastal and ocean science, technology, and policy. In the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Don developed bathymetric mapping technology and led its use in exploration of the U.S. Exclusive Economic Zone. He was responsible for strategic planning of NOAA's navigation programs and integration with the agency's coastal stewardship efforts. In two assignments with the White House Science Office, his work focused on interagency coordination of environmental monitoring, sustainable development, and energy policies.

Khaldoun Rishmawi - Khaldoun is currently the director of the Water and Environment Research Unit at the Applied Research Institute - Jerusalem (ARIJ). He has B.Sc. from the Jordan University of Science and Technology and an M.Sc. from the Mediterranean Agronomic Institute of Chania in Greece. His research interests are environmental modeling (integrated land and water optimization modeling) and land degradation mapping. He has experience in GIS programming, data integration and harmonization. His recent research has involved the analysis of environmental policies, derivation of surface parameters from remotely sensed data, burned area and fire severity mapping in Mediterranean forests, the development of a spatially referenced database for the sustainable development of the Dead Sea Basin, the use of high resolution satellite images to map urban areas in the West Bank, and the programming of customized user-friendly GIS applications.

Stuart Schoenfeld - Stuart is associate professor and chair of the department of Sociology, Glendon College, York University in Toronto. After working for twenty years in the sociology of ethnic identity and the sociology of religion, he decided to put most of his energy into responding to the environmental crisis. He has taught courses on the sociology of environmental issues at the undergraduate and graduate levels, and has authored an internet publication on “The Environmentalists’ Narrative,” which deals with the problems of telling the story of the environment to the public and offers suggestions. In 1996 he began research on alumni of the Arava Institute for Environmental Studies in Israel, culminating in a paper on the alumni entitled, “A Social Movement in the Form of an Educational Institution: An Open Systems Analysis of an Environmental Institute and its Alumni.” He is a member of the Arava Institute’s international academic advisory board and the Academic Advisory Board of the York University Centre for Applied Sustainability.

Khalil Shikaki - Khalil is director of the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research (Ramallah). He received his Ph.D. from Columbia University in 1985 and has taught at several universities including Bir Zeit University, al-Najah National University, the University of Wisconsin (Milwaukee), and the University of South Florida (Tampa). He spent Summer 2002 as a visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington DC. Dr. Shikaki has conducted more than 90 polls among Palestinians in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip since 1993. His recent publications include Building a State, Building a Peace: How to make a Roadmap that Works for Palestinians and Israelis, (forthcoming); The Israeli-Palestinian Peace Process: Oslo and the Lessons of Failure (2002); “Self-Serving Perception of Terrorism Among Israelis and Palestinians” (co-editor with Robert Rothstein and Moshe Ma’oz), and “Determinants of Reconciliation and Compromise among Israelis and Palestinians,” (with Jacob Shamir).

Deborah Schmueli - Deborah Shmueli is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Geography at the University of Haifa . She is a planner specializing in environmental policy issues related to water, land use, transportation and solid waste. A strong focus of her efforts is towards environmental and public sector conflict management and community and institutional capacity building. She received her Ph.D. in Architecture and Urban Planning (1992) at the Technion, Israel Institute of Technology, and her M.C.P. and B.S. in Urban Planning from the MIT (1980). She is a member of the Israel Water Research Institute, the International Association of Conflict Management, the Association of American Geographers and the American Planning Association. In Israel , she is a member of the Environmental Planning Association, Association for Architects and Engineers, and serves on the management boards of NGO's involved in environmental policy issues. Relevant publications (both singly and co-authored) include: Real and Ideal Institutional Frameworks for Managing the Common Arab-Israeli Water Resources ( with N. Kliot); Approaches to Water Dispute Resolution: Applications to Arab-Israeli Negotiations; Shaping a Culturally Sensitive Planning Strategy: Mitigating the Impact of Israel's Proposed Trans-national Highway upon Arab Communities (with R. Khamaisi) ; Institutions for Management of Transboundary Water Resources: Their Nature, Characteristics and Shortcomings (with N. Kliot and U. Shamir); The Potential of Framing in Resolving Environmental Conflict (with M. Ben-Gal) ; Stakeholder Frames in Mapping of the Lower Kishon River Basin Conflict (with M. Ben-Gal) .

Tariq Talahmeh - Tariq is a graduate student in environmental studies at York University and co-founder and co-director of the Rural Center for Sustainable Development, Palestine (RCSD). RCSD works to incorporate environmental considerations into development and resource issues in Palestinian villages, particularly in the southern Hebron region. He received his B.A. in biology from Birzeit University in 1997 and was a student at the Arava Institute for Environmental Studies in 1999-2000. Tariq has worked extensively with non-governmental organizations in Palestine and Israel, serving as director of the Culture Future Center, a Palestinian NGO and serving on the faculty of the Arava Institute for Environmental Studies. Tariq was trained in the field of management and planning in turbulent environments, and has extensive experience as a consultant and moderator in local environmental conflicts as a member of the Joint Environmental Mediation Service (JEMS). His current research interests focus on the role that political ideology plays in creating environmental crises and natural resource scarcities.

Peter J. Taylor - Peter has been an associate professor in the Critical and Creative Thinking (CCT) Program in the Graduate College of Education (GCOE) at UMass Boston (UMB) since 1998. Through collaborations, Peter seeks to promote a vision of critical science and environmental education that extends from improving the teaching of scientific concepts and methods to involving citizens in community-based research. Recently, he has begun to take these interests in a new direction through historical and sociological analysis of social epidemiological approaches that address the intersections of environment, health, and development.

Richard Wetzler - As an ecologist, Richard's research interests encompass biological processes that generate larger scale (e.g. landscape or biogeographic) patterns. His research applies basic science to such key policy concerns as biosafety of genetically modified organisms, regulation of invasive species introductions, pollution prevention, and the maintenance of biological diversity. He has published in Ecology, Journal of Animal Ecology, Applied & Environmental Microbiology, Bulletin of the Ecological Society of America , BioScience and Ecological Modeling. Richard's teaching and research appointments include Yale (awarding his masters and doctoral degrees), Cornell, Toronto and Tufts (as Environmental Studies Director and Founding Director, GIS Center ). At Brown since 1999, Richard is currently Associate Professor (Research) in the Watson Institute's Global Environment Program. Collaborating with Steven Hamburg, he leads the ongoing mid-career curriculum for postgraduate environmental leaders from developing nations�the Watson International Scholars of the Environment.

Michael White - Michael holds a B.A. from Harvard University and Ph.D. from the University of Chicago . He came to Brown in 1989 and is currently Professor and Chair, Department of Sociology. He is also a Faculty Associate of Brown's Population Studies and Training Center . Michael is a social demographer whose research specialty is population distribution. His research extends from the study of residential segregation in the United States to the study of the relationship between economic development and migration in low-income countries. His current research includes the study of urbanization and environmental change in coastal Ghana . In Spring, 2001 he was a Fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington , DC .

Tanhum Yoreh - Tanhum recently graduated from McGill University with a B.A. in Environmental Studies. Over the duration of this degree he attended two other institutions: Hebrew University for one year, and University of Toronto for one semester. He intends to begin graduate work in Israel in Environmental Management, Planning and Policy. He is currently working on an article with David Brooks on the topic of water forecasting in Canada and intends to begin a project that measures and compares consumption (ecological footprints) of people from various different backgrounds and religious affiliations.

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