France and the French Atlantic
Team coordinators:
Peter Sahlins, Professor of History, University of California, Berkeley
Laurent Dubois, Assistant Professor of History, Michigan State University
Fred Constant, Professor and Chair, Department of Political Science, University of the French Antilles and Guyana

Russia Team
Team coordinators:
Ronald Grigor Suny, Professor of Political Science, University of Chicago
Leokadia Drobysheva, Director, Institute of Sociology, Moscow

Thailand/Yunnan Team
Team coordinators:
James C. Scott, Professor of Political Science/Anthropology, Yale University
Janet Sturgeon, Watson Institute for International Studies, Brown University
Chayan Vaddhanaphuti, Director, Ethnic Studies Network, Chiang Mai, Thailand
Xu Jianchu, Director, Center for Biodiversity and Indigenous Knowledge, Kunming

Western China
An associated team of researchers working in China will attend network meetings as observers.
Team coordinators:
Dru Gladney, Professor of Anthropology, University of Hawaii
Yang, Shengmin, Dean, Department of Ethnology, Central Nationalities University, Beijing

Although each team is based in a specific world area, the project's modular structure is intended to allow analysis of findings comparatively across nations and cultures, and historically through defining moments of prior constitutive development. Methods to be employed span an interdisciplinary range from anthropological fieldwork to archival research, all conducted in close cooperation with local researchers and institutions.

Each team consists of working groups investigating specific topics relevant to the team's research agenda. The agenda, the formation of groups, and how their interim objectives fit into the team's overall workplan are discussed at regularly scheduled meetings. Initial meetings in each world area in 2001 set the overall research agenda, established working groups for fieldwork. A second set of meetings, to review interim results and to coordinate the analysis and write-up, will take place in 2002.

A concluding conference will bring together all area-based teams at Yale University's Center for International and Area Studies in 2003 for presentation of findings, for a continued comparative analysis, and for a discussion of the relevance of this sort of international, interdisciplinary collaborative effort for the work of others.