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Michael Ableman | Ken Adelman | Mark Allan | Nora Alter | Giuliano Amato | Molly Anderson | Simon Armitage | Ron Asmus | Bernardo Atxaga

Michael Ableman

Michael Ableman is a farmer, author, and photographer and a recognized practitioner of sustainable agriculture and proponent of regional food systems. He has written several books and numerous essays and articles, and lectures extensively on food, culture, and sustainability worldwide. Michael is currently farming at the Foxglove Farm on Salt Spring Island in British Columbia and developing The Center for Art, Ecology & Agriculture. Fields of Plenty (Michael’s website)  (2009)

May 9, 2009

Ken Adelman

Ken Adelman is a writer, consultant and current member of the Defense Policy Board. He served as a U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations and Arms Control Director under President Ronald Reagan (1981-87); and Assistant to the Secretary of Defense in the mid-1970s. (2003)

Nov 11, 2003

Mark Allan

Mark Allan, LICSW, MBA is Faculty Director of the Health Sector Management Program at Boston University’s School of Management and Principal for Strategic Healthcare Solutions. Mark has a strong record of achievement in public and privately funded non-profit and for-profit managed care and health and mental health service delivery organizations. He specializes in aggressive operational start-ups and development in troubled organizations through highly effective strategic planning, product design and marketing, and proposal development and production. Mark is also adept at financial analysis and use of quantitative tools to evaluate and manage performance. Among Mark’s previously held positions are Executive Director for BMC HealthNet Plan, Director of Business Development at Magellan Public Solutions and Executive Director for Family Service of Greater Boston. (2006)

March 6, 2007

Nora Alter

Nora M. Alter is Professor of German, Film and Media Studies at the University of Florida. She is affiliate faculty in the Programs in European Studies, Jewish Studies, and Woman and Gender Studies. Her teaching and research have been focused on twentieth century cultural and visual studies from a comparative perspective. She is author of Vietnam Protest Theatre: The Television War on Stage (1996), Projecting History: Non-Fiction German Film (2002), co-editor with Lutz Koepnick of Sound Matters:Essays on the Acoustics of Modern German Culture (2004) and Chris Marker (2006). She has contributed essays to collections on film, cultural studies, and visual studies and published articles in journals including Camera Obscura, Cultural Critique, New German Critique, The Germanic Revie, and Film Quarterly. She has been awarded year long research fellowships from the NEH, the Howard Foundation and the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation. In 2005 she was awarded the DAAD Prize for Distinguished Scholarship in German and European Studies and the Florida Blue Key Distinguished Faculty Award. She is currently completely a new book on the international essay film. Dr. Alter also serves on the editorial board of “The Germanic Quarterly” (2009)

October 15, 2009

Giuliano Amato

Giuliano Amato (born in 1938) is former Vice-President of the EU Convention (from 2001 to 2003). He was Member of Parliament from 1983 to 1994; Under Secretary to the Prime Minister’s Office from 1983 to 1987; Minister for the Treasury from 1987 to 1989 and from 1999 to 2000; Minister for Constitutional Reforms from 1998 to 1999; Deputy Prime Minister from 1987 to 1988 and Prime Minister from 1992 to 1993 and from 2000 to 2001. He also headed the Italian Antitrust Authority from 1994 to 1997. (2005)

Sept 24-25, 2005
Sept 24, 2005

Molly Anderson

Molly Anderson is an independent consultant on science and policy for sustainability and principal at Food Systems Integrity. She manages a project through the Henry A. Wallace Center to set up indicators of sustainable food systems, and coordinates research for the Farm & Food Policy Project, a national convening to identify and support policies for the next Farm Bill shared among diverse non-governmental organizations. She serves as Coordinating Lead Author on the North America/Europe section of the International Assessment of Agricultural Science and Technology for Development, an international project to evaluate and make recommendations on the application of future agricultural science and technology.

Between 2002 and 2005, Molly was employed by Oxfam America in the US Regional Office, supporting programs and policy that help poor rural communities in the United States. Before that, she worked at Tufts University for 14 years as a professor, administrator, partnership builder, and researcher. She directed the Tufts Institute of the Environment (TIE) and was a Faculty Fellow in the University College of Citizenship & Public Service. She co-founded and for five years directed the Agriculture, Food and Environment Graduate Degree Program in the School of Nutrition Science & Policy at Tufts, where she now holds an Adjunct Associate Professor appointment.

Molly is on the Governing Board of the Community Food Security Coalition and Editorial Boards of Renewable Agriculture and Food Systems and the Journal of Hunger and Environmental Nutrition. Primary interests related to sustainability: What tools can best motivate changes in human behavior to simultaneously improve environmental integrity and social justice? How can participatory research methods contribute to behavioral change in these domains. (2009)

May 9, 2009

Simon Armitage

Simon Armitage was born in 1963 in West Yorkshire, England. His first book, Zoom! was published by Bloodaxe Books in 1989, followed in 1992 by Xanadu, also by Bloodaxe, and Kid, by Faber & Faber. Further collections by Faber & Faber were quickly forthcoming: Book of Matches (1993), The Dead Sea Poems (1995), CloudCuckooLand (1997), Killing Time (1999), Selected Poems (2001), Travelling Songs (2002), and The Universal Home Doctor (2002). Tyrannosaurus Rex Versus the Corduroy Kid (2006) was published in the US by Knopf in 2008. The Shout, a book of new and selected poems was published in the US by Harcourt (2005), and was short-listed for the National Book Critic’s Circle Award.

Armitage is the recipient of nearly all the top awards for poetry in the UK, including the Sunday Times Young Author of the Year, a Gregory Award, and a Forward Prize. In the US he has received a major Lannan Award.

As a prose writer, Armitage is the author of two novels. His first, Little Green Man (Penguin 2001)—the story of 30-something divorcee Barney and his attempt to relive childhood experiences—explores the darker side of male friendship. His second, The White Stuff, (2004), by turns comic and moving, examines issues of childlessness and identity. Other prose work includes the best-selling memoir All Points North, (Penguin 1998), a collection of essays about the north of England, which won the Yorkshire Post Book of the Year. His dramatised adaptation of Homer’s epic, Homer’s Odyssey – A Retelling, was published in 2006 by Faber & Faber in the UK and by WW Norton in the US. His translation of the Middle English classic poem Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, was commissioned by Faber & Faber, and Norton published it in 2007.

Armitage has also worked extensively in film, radio, television, and theater. He has taught at the University of Leeds and the University of Iowa’s Writers’ Workshop, and is currently a senior lecturer at Manchester Metropolitan University. (2009)

September 21, 2009

Ron Asmus

Dr. Ronald D. Asmus was appointed executive director of the German Marshall Fund’s Transatlantic Center in Brussels in 2005. He previously worked as a senior transatlantic fellow at GMF’s headquarters in Washington, DC. Dr. Asmus has written widely on U.S.–European relations and American foreign policy, as well as security and strategic issues in Central and Northern Europe, the wider Middle East, and the Black Sea region. He is the author of Opening NATO’s Door: How the Alliance Remade Itself for a New Era (Columbia University Press, 2002). Prior to joining GMF in 2002, Dr. Asmus worked as a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. From 1997 to 2000, he served as deputy assistant secretary of state for European affairs in the Clinton administration. During that time he played a key role in developing Alliance policy at the Madrid and Washington NATO summits. Dr. Asmus has also worked as a senior analyst at RAND Corporation and Radio Free Europe. (2007)

September 29, 2004

Bernardo Atxaga

Bernardo Atxaga is the pseudonym of José Irazu Garmendia. He was born in Asteasu, Basque Country, in 1951. He graduated in Economic Science at the University of Bilbao and between 1981 and 1984 he studied Philosophy at the University of Barcelona. He began his professional career as an economist, teacher of Basque, bookseller, print shop employee, radio scriptwriter, etc., before deciding in 1980 to devote himself completely to his literary work. Bernardo Atxaga writes in Basque, and generally translates his texts into Spanish himself. His books have also been translated into many other languages. Official website: Bernardo Atxaga (2009)

May 4, 2009