William F Fisher  [wfisher@clarku.edu]

William F Fisher is an Associate Professor and the Director of the Department of International Development, Community, and Environment at Clark University. From 1992 to 2000, Professor Fisher taught in the Department of Anthropology at Harvard University, where he was Director of Graduate Studies in Anthropology and a Dillon Fellow at the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs. He also taught at Princeton University and Columbia, where he served as assistant director of Columbia's Center for South Asian Studies and directed the Economic and Political Development specialization at Columbia's School of International and Public Affairs.

His research centers on the social and environmental impact of large dams, forced displacement, transnational advocacy, competition over natural resources and non-governmental organizations. His research and work for such agencies as CARE, USAID, and the UNDP have taken him to several continents. Other research activities, mostly in South Asia, include ethnic associations, competition for natural resources, non-governmental associations, and the role of participation and community-based institutions in development planning and action.

Selected Publications:

Fluid Boundaries: Forming and Transforming Thakali Identity in Nepal. Columbia University Press.

Toward Sustainable Development? Struggling Over India's Narmada River (ed.) M.E.Sharpe Publishers, 1995.

"Sacred Rivers, Sacred Dams: Visions of Social Justice and Sustainable Development along the Narmada," Hinduism and Ecology. Chrisopher Chapple and Arvind Sharma (eds). Harvard University Press, 2000.Ê

"Going Under: Indigenous Peoples and the Struggle against Large Dams," Cultural Survival Quarterly. Fall 1999.

"Doing Good? The Politics and Anti-Politics of NGO Practices." Annual Review of Anthropology, Volume 26, 1997.

"Grands barrages, flux mondiaux, et petites gens," Critique International, no. 13, October 2001, pp.123-138.

Thomas Ponniah  [Thomas.Ponniah@gmail.com]

Thomas Ponniah is a Ph.D. candidate at the Graduate School of Geography at Clark University. His dissertation is focused on World Social Forum alternatives to contemporary globalization. His research interests include critical global studies, development theory, philosophy, social theory, social movements, cultural studies, and nature-society relations. Since 1994, he has been a lecturer and researcher at Toronto City College. He has also been a teaching assistant for the "Global Society" and "Political Economy of Third World Development" courses at Clark University. He is currently a teaching assistant at Harvard University. He is the winner of the 2003 Antipode Graduate Scholarship and the 2003 Davis-Putter Scholarship.

He holds a M.A. in Comparative Literature from Rutgers University, an M.Soc.Sci in Cultural Studies from the University of Birmingham, and a B.A. from the Liberal Arts College at Concordia University. He worked for 5 months as an intern and researcher with the World Social Forum Secretariat in Brazil and as an intern with the Asian Social Forum Secretariat in India.

Selected Publications:

Peet, Richard with Thomas Ponniah et al, Unholy Trinity: The International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and the World Trade Organization. 2003. London: Zed Books.

Ponniah, Thomas and William F.Fisher. "The World Social Forum, or, the Reinvention of Democracy". In Another World is Possible: popular alternatives to globalization at the World Social Forum. 2003 London: Zed Books.