Research and teaching emphases are on the politics of international development and environmental conservation, with a focus on institutional change, property rights, poverty, and biodiversity. Written extensively on 1) indigenous knowledge, 2) community-based conservation, 3) common property, 4) population and resources, and 5) environmental identities. Recent interests include the decentralization of environmental policy (especially forestry and wildlife), and the emergence of environment as a subject of human concern.

Instrumental in establishing the School's Environmental Justice Program that focuses on the differential impact of environmental contaminants on people of color and low-income communities; Founder and Director of the Environmental Justice Initiative for research and retrieval/dissemination conferences and policy briefings. Research and conferences include both a domestic and international foci, particularly on climate justice. Teaching portfolio includes: Introduction to Environmental Justice (Environ. 222), Conception, Practical Issues and Dilemmas in Environmental Justice (SNRE 582), and the Masters Project/NRE 701.

Beth Diamond is a landscape theorist, designer and cultural instigator who believes in landscape architecture as an art form and a visionary medium for social change and evolution. Her interests stem from a fascination with the qualities and expressions of the built world as a mirror of human civilization and her work in landscape architecture focuses on strategies to transform societies in sustainable and culturally affirming ways.

Research and teaching in conservation biology and the ecology and evolution of infectious diseases. Major research projects focus on the impact of diseases on wildlife populations and the environmental causes leading to disease emergence. Other projects examine how habitat fragmentation and global climate change result in species extinction.

Professor Hardin holds a joint position with the Department of Anthropology. Her areas of interest and scientific study include disease emergence, social and environmental change related to tourism and hunting, and concessionary politics involving corporations, NGOs, and local communities in equatorial and southern Africa.

Research on human dimensions of global change, especially focusing on the impact of techoscientific knowledge in building adaptive capacity of water systems to climate variability and change; research on the use of seasonal climate forecasting in environmental governance (water, agriculture and disaster response) in Brazil, Mexico and Chile; research on environmental governance, especially the role technocrats and public participation in environmental policymaking.

Teaching and research interests are focused on environmental justice, public opinion and the environment, and influences on environmental policy making. A founder of the Environmental Justice Program at the University of Michigan. Current research includes understanding the causes of disproportionate environmental burdens in people of color communities and the role that environmental factors play in accounting for racial and socioeconomic disparities in health.

Joan Iverson Nassauer is Professor of Landscape Architecture in the School of Natural Resources and Environment. She has been named a Fellow by the American Society of Landscape Architects (1992) , and a Distinguished Practitioner of Landscape Ecology (1998) by the International Association of Landscape Ecology – US. Teaching focuses on landscape ecology and landscape perception, with applications in design and planning of agricultural and urban watersheds. Current research includes retrofitting cities - particularly brownfields - for ecological function and water quality, perception of ecologically innovative exurban development patterns, using alternative policy scenarios and futures to monitor landscape change.

My areas of teaching include Field Ecology, a graduate seminar in conservation biology (Conservation in Fragmented Landscapes), and an undergraduate course on sustainable development and globalization (Our Common Future). My research focuses on trophic interactions in tropical agroecosystems and ecological succession in tropical regions.

My current research examines the function of biological diversity in the coffee agroecosystem in Southern Mexico.

Teaching areas: institutions for sustainability, political economy of environmental change. Research focus: ecological and social sustainability, overconsumption, sufficiency, ecological economy, institutional design, transnational relations, business and environment, water quantity.

Research interests include social movements; environmental justice; leisure and natural resource use; poverty and urban issues; and race, gender and ethnic relations. Recent researh activities have included a study of racial differences in students' attitudes and perception of the environment, as well as an examination of minority environmental activism in the U.S.