Barbara D. Miller is Professor of Anthropology and International Affairs, and Director of the Culture in Global Affairs (CIGA) Research and Policy Program, at The George Washington University. She received her Ph.D. in anthropology from Syracuse University in 1978. Before coming to GW in 1994, she taught at the University of Rochester, SUNY Cortland, Ithaca College, Cornell University, and the University of Pittsburgh.

For thirty years, Barbara’s research has focused mainly on gender-based inequalities in India, especially the nutritional and medical neglect of daughters in northern regions of the country. In addition, she has conducted research on culture and rural development in Bangladesh, on low-income household dynamics in Jamaica, and on Hindu adolescents in Pittsburgh. Her current interests include continued research on gender inequalities in health in South Asia, the role of cultural anthropology in informing policy issues, and cultural heritage and public policy, especially as related to women, children, and other disenfranchised groups. She teaches courses on introductory cultural anthropology, medical anthropology, development anthropology, culture and population, health and development in South Asia, and migration and mental health. In addition to many journal articles and book chapters, she has published several books: The Endangered Sex: Neglect of Female Children in Rural North India, 2nd ed. (Oxford University Press, 1997), an edited volume, Sex and Gender Hierarchies (Cambridge University Press, 1993), a co-edited volume with Alf Hiltebeitel, Hair: Its Power and Meaning in Asian Cultures (SUNY Press, 1998), and a text co-authored with Bernard Wood, Anthropology (Allyn & Bacon, 2006).

Penny Van Esterik is professor of anthropology at York University, Toronto. She graduated from the University of Toronto (B.A.) and the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana (M.A., Ph.D.) and currently teaches nutritional anthropology, advocacy anthropology, and feminist theory. Her primary fieldwork has been done in Southeast Asia (Thailand, Indonesia, and Lao PDR). Past books include Beyond the Breast-Bottle Controversy (on infant feeding in Thailand), Taking Refuge: Lao Buddhists in North America (on the reintroduction of Buddhism by Lao refugees in North America) Food and Culture: A Reader, edited with Carol Counihan (updated second edition in 2008) and Food Culture in Southeast Asia (Greenwood Press, 2008). Together with John Van Esterik, she worked on an exchange program on gender and development in Thailand and has published jointly with him. She is a founding member of the World Alliance for Breastfeeding Action (WABA) and has been active in developing articles and advocacy materials on breastfeeding and women’s work, breastfeeding and feminism, and contemporary challenges to infant feeding such as environmental contaminants and HIV/AIDS. In 2007, she received the Weaver-Tremblay Award for applied anthropology from the Canadian Anthropology Society/La Societe Canadienne d’Anthropologie (CASCA).

John Van Esterik is a retired senior scholar of anthropology at York University. He graduated from the University of Toronto (B.A., M.A.) and from the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana (Ph.D.). For several years, he taught in and managed programs for Southeast Asian refugees in Indiana and upstate New York. In 1985, he began teaching at York University and, with Penny Van Esterik, managed a linkage program on gender and development between York University and universities in Thailand. His research has been on changes in Thai Buddhist practice and Lao refugees in North America. He has published articles on refugee issues, Theravada Buddhism, and gender and development in Thailand including an edited volume with Penny Van Esterik entitled Gender and Development in Thailand.