Diversity Amid Globalization: World Regions, Environment, Development

Les Rowntree is a Visiting Scholar at the University of California, Berkeley, where he researches and writes about environmental issues. This career change comes after three decades of teaching both Geography and Environmental Studies at San Jose State University in California. As an environmental geographer, Dr. Rowntree’s interests focus on international environmental issues, biodiversity conservation, and human-caused global change. He sees world regional geography as a way to engage and inform students by giving them the conceptual tools needed to critically assess global issues. Dr. Rowntree has done research in Iceland, Alaska, Morocco, Mexico, Australia, and Europe, as well as in his native California. Current writing projects include a book on the natural history of California’s coast, as well as textbooks in geography and environmental science.

Martin Lewis is a Senior Lecturer in History at Stanford University. He has conducted extensive research on environmental geography in the Philippines and on the intellectual history of global geography. His publications include Wagering the Land: Ritual, Capital, and Environmental Degradation in the Cordillera of Northern Luzon, 1900–1986 (1992), and, with Karen Wigen, The Myth of Continents: A Critique of Metageography (1997). Dr. Lewis has traveled extensively in East, South, and Southeast Asia. His current research focuses on the geographical dimensions of globalization. In April 2009 Dr. Lewis was recognized by Time Magazine as a favorite lecturer.

Marie Price is a Professor of Geography and International Affairs at George Washington University. A Latin American specialist, Marie has conducted research in Belize, Mexico, Venezuela, Cuba, and Bolivia. She has also traveled widely throughout Latin America and Sub-Saharan Africa. Her studies have explored human migration, natural resource use, environmental conservation, and regional development. She is a non-resident fellow of the Migration Policy Institute, a non-partisan think tank that focuses on immigration. Dr. Price brings to Globalization and Diversity a special interest in regions as dynamic spatial constructs that are shaped over time through both global and local forces. Her publications include the co-edited book Migrants to the Metropolis: The Rise of Immigrant Gateway Cities (2008, Syracuse University Press) and numerous academic articles and book chapters.

William Wyckoff is a geographer in the Department of Earth Sciences at Montana State University specializing in the cultural and historical geography of North America. He has written and co-edited several books on North American settlement geography, including The Developer’s Frontier: The Making of the Western New York Landscape (1988), The Mountainous West: Explorations in Historical Geography (1995) (with Lary M. Dilsaver), Creating Colorado: The Making of a Western American Landscape 1860–1940 (1999), and On the Road Again: Montana’s Changing Landscape (2006). In 2003 he received Montana State’s Cox Family Fund for Excellence Faculty Award for Teaching and Scholarship. A World Regional Geography instructor for 26 years, Dr. Wyckoff emphasizes in the classroom the connections between the everyday lives of his students and the larger global geographies that surround them and increasingly shape their future.