Anthropologist to Discuss the Musical Heritage of Appalachia During Sept. 29 Lecture at UVa-Wise

Anthropologist Betsy Taylor will discuss "Picking and Talking: Building Democracy through Participatory Research on Musical Heritage in Appalachian Kentucky" during a lecture set for Monday, Sept. 29 at The University of Virginia's College at Wise. The lecture, which is free and open to the public, begins at 1 p.m. in the Chapel of All Faiths.

Taylor is a cultural anthropologist who specializes in Appalachian studies. In her writings and teaching during the last 20 years, Taylor has focused particularly on understanding networks of neighborliness and mutual support in coalfield and farming communities in West Virginia, eastern Kentucky and western North Carolina.

For the past several years, Taylor has studied new kinds of community revitalization efforts in the mountains. She coordinates the Civil Society Research Project of the UK Appalachian Center, which has developed a database of several hundred grass-root and nonprofit organizations in central Appalachia, and works to understand causes of success or failure in their community development work through in-depth interviews and annual surveys.

Taylor is particularly interested in researching best practices for building citizen/ academic/ government partnerships that give maximum decision-making control to local communities. She is Director of the Common Knowledge Network of the UK Appalachian CenterÑa network of partnerships among communities, academic institutions, schools and civil society organizations for participatory action research to support local community development projects.

Born in India to medical missionary American parents, she has wide international experience. She has visited over 40 countries and has done ethnographic work in India, Nepal, the Philippines. She has taught at University of North Carolina, Albion College and Goucher College.

Her primary research interests include gender studies, development studies, civil society and the constitution of public space, the construction of identity (gender, class, place, ethnicity, religious), environmental imaginaries and poetics, land-use management and social forestry, GIS technology in emerging systems of knowledge construction/sharing.

As Senior Social Scientist for Future Generations Institute (1995-98), she initiated a state wide project in Arunachal Pradesh in northeast India, for multi-sectoral development with a focus on health, women's empowerment, income generation and sustainable forestry and highly participatory, community definition of problems, assets and needs assessments through annual inventories of village well-being (ecological, medical, socio-economic, cultural). She received her Ph.D. in Cultural Anthropology from the University of Michigan.