Moderators

Dr. Jon Corbett is an Associate Professor in the Community, Culture and Global Studies Unit at UBC Okanagan. His community-based research investigates Cartographic processes and tools that are used by communities to help express their relationship to, and knowledge of, their territories and resources. Jon has worked with Indigenous communities in Australia, Indonesia, the Philippines and since 2004 with several First Nations communities in British Columbia. Recently Jon has been working with the United Nations International Fund for Agricultural Development in Albania, Kenya, Mali and Sudan to develop a suitable approach to participatory mapping in resource conflict areas. Specialties: Community-based decision-making, training, participatory mapping, participatory geoweb, participatory GIS, Web 2.0, participatory media. LinkedIn profile.

Michael K. McCall (PhD Geography, Northwestern University) is Senior Researcher at the Research Centre for Environmental Geography, UNAM in Morelia, Mexico, and Associate Professor in the ITC, University of Twente, Netherlands. He taught also for 8 years at the University of Dar es Salaam. He is a social geographer by training and inclination who has worked in Eastern & Southern Africa, South and SE Asia, and Mexico. His research areas are in social mapping and participatory GIS with communities – on risks and vulnerability, territories, neighbourhoods and landscapes. He has taught and run workshops in these in Mexico, Colombia, Cuba, Southern Africa, Eastern Africa, South Asia, Netherlands, Brasil, Georgia, etc., and has published on PGIS, community management and planning, and disaster risk management. His understandings have benefitted enormously from a great number of MSc and PhD students. LinkedIn profile.

Giacomo Rambaldi is senior programme coordinator at the Technical Center for Agricultural and Rural Cooperation (CTA) in Wageningen, Netherlands. He has 33 years of professional experience in Africa, Latin America, South Asia, South-East Asia, South Pacific and the Caribbean where he worked for a number of international organizations including FAO, Italian Aid to Development, the European Commission (ASEAN Regional Center for Biodiversity Conservation, ARCBC) and the Asian Development Bank (ADB). He holds a degree in agricultural sciences from the State University of Milan, Italy,holds Fellow status in the US-based Society for Applied Anthropology (SfAA), and is currently conducting a PhD research with the Communication and Innovation Studies Group, Communication Science, Wageningen University, the Netherlands. Giacomo’s first involvement in community mapping dates back to the late 80’s. Giacomo has been developing and promoting Participatory 3D Modelling (P3DM), a community-based mapping method fully integrated with GPS and GIS applications, now widely used in South-east Asia and other parts of the world. In August 2000 he launched Participatory Avenues, a web site dedicated to sharing knowledge on community mapping and collaborative spatial information management. Areas of professional interest include visualizing indigenous spatial knowledge for improving communication, facilitating peer-to-peer dialogue and managing conflicts on issues related to the territory; collaborative natural resource/protected area management; participatory spatial planning; networking and web publishing. Giacomo is the author of a number of publications on these subjects, and the developer of this web site www.ppgis.net and lead administrator of the [ppgis] DGroup. LinkedIn profile.

Dr. Daniel Weiner is Vice Provost at the University of Connecticut (UCONN). His research areas include: political ecology, discourses of development; GIS and Society; and, participatory GIS. In the early 1990s, Dr. Weiner was a principal investigator on a participatory land reform project in South Africa. The project used conventional PRA methods to develop village-based community land reform proposals for a post-apartheid era. Towards the end of this project, the team experimented with geo-spatial technologies and integrated local knowledge into a GIS. This successful experiment stimulated further research into participatory GIS. Dr. Weiner has written extensively on the theory and practices associated with participatory GIS applications, including a co-edited publication entitled Community Participation and Geographical Information Systems (T&F STM publishers, 2003). LinkedIn profile.