Mobile Work, Mobile Lives

Tracy L.Meerwarth has worked as an anthropologist andcontract researcher at General Motors Research and Development (GMR and D) since 2001. She graduated with an M.A. in appliedanthropology from Northern Arizona University with an emphasis inorganizational anthropology. She and her team at GM R and D havepublished articles in scholarly journals such as HumanOrganization, Journal of Manufacturing Management, and Space andCulture. Meerwarth has presented at numerous annual conferencesincluding the American Anthropological Association, Society forApplied Anthropology (SfAA), and the Ethnographic Praxis inIndustry Conference (EPIC). She has applied her interest incultural modeling, cognitive, and symbolic anthropology to variousprojects at GM, including collaboration, space, and architecture.In 2007, she and her team at GM R and D filed a patent entitled"System and Model for Performance Value Based CollaborativeRelationships," and received a U.S. CopyrightRegistration entitled "Collaboration Tools for Designing andImplementing an Ideal Manufacturing Culture in the U.S."Meerwarth is also a competitive golfer, yogi, and triathlete. Julia Gluesing is a business and organizationalanthropologist and research professor in industrial andmanufacturing engineering at Wayne State University, specializingin global teaming and global product development. She is currentlyprincipal investigator of an NSF grant to study the diffusion ofinnovation across the global enterprise by tapping into anorganization's information technology infrastructure. Withmore than 25 years of industry experience, Gluesing also frequentlyserves as a consultant and trainer to help business teams developstrategies and skills for working globally. She conducts researchin global work practices and in cross-cultural and organizationalcommunication for companies such as Ford Motor Company, NissanMotor Corporation, Aegon, EDS Corporation, and Sun Microsystems.She has published professionally, most recently as a contributingauthor in Virtual Teams that Work: Creating Conditions for VirtualTeam Effectiveness, Handbook of Managing Global Complexity, andCrossing Cultures: Lessons from Master Teachers. Gluesing receivedher M.A. (1985) from Michigan State University in organizationalcommunication and her Ph.D. (1995) in cultural anthropology fromWayne State University. Brigitte Jordan trained as a medical anthropologist(Ph.D., University of California, Irvine). Jordan has carried outethnographic research for more than 30 years in academic andcorporate settings, most recently as a principal scientist at XeroxPARC (now the Palo Alto Research Center). A freelance consultant,Jordan's research and consulting interests revolve around new"lifescapes" she sees emerging in a globalizing worldunder the impact of new communication and information technologies.Her special interests and expertise lie in the adaptation ofethnographic methods to physical, virtual, and hybrid ecologies.She is particularly concerned with the evolution and design oflearning and knowledge ecologies that support productive worksettings in the society of the future.