Phil Hirsch has had a longstanding research and teaching involvement in the region, with extensive publication record on development, environment and natural resource management and extensive institutional links with regional universities and resource management agencies. Recent and current work includes projects on watershed management in Lao PDR (IDRC funded project with Dept of Forestry); indigenous fisheries management in Lao PDR (ACIAR/IDRC funded project with Dept of Livestock and Fisheries); community-based resource management in Thailand, Lao PDR and Vietnam in context of political-economic change (funded by Australian Research Council), AusAID project on natural resource management in the Mekong Basin; and a recent AMRC-DANIDA study on water governance in the Mekong region.
Languages: Thai, Lao, Vietnamese.
Email: p.hirsch@geosci.usyd.edu.au
Publications: 2007 2006 2005 2004 2003 2002 2001 2000 1999 1998

Bob Fisher is an anthropologist. His PhD research was a study of human ecology, focusing on strategies for adapting to drought in the Thar Desert in Rajasthan. He specialises in social and political ecological aspects of natural resource management, particularly involving community forestry. After working in Nepal with the then Nepal-Australia Forestry Project in the late 1980s, he taught at the University of Western Sydney, Hawkesbury, before becoming Deputy Director of the Regional Community Forestry Training Center in Bangkok from 1997 to 2001. He has done research or consultancies in a wide variety of countries, including Mozambique, Iran, Kyrgyzstan, Nepal, India, Pakistan, Laos, Vietnam and Cambodia. Among other writing projects, he is currently working on a book on livelihoods and conservation for IUCN The World Conservation Union and another on Adaptive Collaborative Management of forests for the Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR). He aims to combine theoretical and applied interests and has a strong interest in action research and documentary video production.
Languages: Hindi, Nepali
Email:rjfisher@ozemail.com.au
Publications: 2007 2006 2005 2004 2003 2002

Tubtim is a social science researcher specialising in community-based natural resource management. She has extensive experience on research projects in Thailand and Lao PDR. Tubtim completed her BA at Silpakorn University, Thailand in 1989, with a major in Social Sciences for Development. She completed her Master of Sustainable Development in 2001 at the international program of the Regional Centre for Social Science and Sustainable Development, Chiangmai University. Her thesis was on common property as enclosure, involving a participatory study of community-based fisheries management in southern Laos. Tubtim has excellent training and facilitation skills, with extensive experience of community-level processes throughout the Mekong Region.
Languages: Thai, Lao
Email: tubtim@loxinfo.co.th
Publications: 2005

Kate completed her Honours in Human Geography at the University of Sydney in 1997. Since that time she has held a variety of jobs in the public and academic sectors, ranging from Executive Assistant at the Lord Chancellor's Department, London to project work in the NSW Department of Education and Training, and the NSW Department of Ageing, Disability and Home Care. Most recently she was employed at the Research Institute of Humanities and Social Sciences at the University of Sydney. Kate has a strong personal interest in different cultures and societies and recently spent three months in Sri Lanka volunteering for a local NGO. She joined the AMRC in October 2005.
Email: kate.griffiths@geosci.usyd.edu.au