Mobile Work, Mobile Lives: Cultural Accounts of Lived Experiences

Tracy L.Meerwarth has worked as an anthropologist and contract researcher at General Motors Research and Development (GM R and D) since 2001. She graduated with an M.A. in applied anthropology from Northern Arizona University with an emphasis in organizational anthropology. She and her team at GM R and D have published articles in scholarly journals such as Human Organization, Journal of Manufacturing Management, and Space and Culture. Meerwarth has presented at numerous annual conferences including the American Anthropological Association, Society for Applied Anthropology (SfAA), and the Ethnographic Praxis in Industry Conference (EPIC). She has applied her interest in cultural modeling, cognitive, and symbolic anthropology to various projects 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 Collaborative Relationships,” and  received a U.S. Copyright Registration entitled “Collaboration Tools for Designing and Implementing an Ideal Manufacturing Culture in the U.S.” Meerwarth is also a competitive golfer, yogi, and triathlete.

Julia Gluesing is a business and organizational anthropologist and research professor in industrial and manufacturing engineering at Wayne State University, specializing in global teaming and global product development. She is currently principal investigator of an NSF grant to study the diffusion of innovation across the global enterprise by tapping into an organization’s information technology infrastructure. With more than 25 years of industry experience, Gluesing also frequently serves as a consultant and trainer to help business teams develop strategies and skills for working globally. She conducts research in global work practices and in cross-cultural and organizational communication for companies such as Ford Motor Company, Nissan Motor Corporation, Aegon, EDS Corporation, and Sun Microsystems. She has published professionally, most recently as a contributing author in Virtual Teams that Work: Creating Conditions for Virtual Team Effectiveness, Handbook of Managing Global Complexity, and Crossing Cultures: Lessons from Master Teachers. Gluesing received her M.A. (1985) from Michigan State University in organizational communication and her Ph.D. (1995) in cultural anthropology from Wayne State University.

Brigitte Jordan trained as a medical anthropologist (Ph.D., University of California, Irvine). Jordan has carried out ethnographic research for more than 30 years in academic and corporate settings, most recently as a principal scientist at Xerox PARC (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 world under the impact of new communication and information technologies. Her special interests and expertise lie in the adaptation of ethnographic methods to physical, virtual, and hybrid ecologies. She is particularly concerned with the evolution and design of learning and knowledge ecologies that support productive work settings in the society of the future.