Meredith W. Watts

Meredith Watts is professor emeritus, having retired from a career teaching Political Science at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, where he specialized in political behavior and research methods.  He has been guest professor at the Heinrich Heine University of Dusseldorf and at the University of Siegen (both in Germany), Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and the University of Wisconsin London Program.  He has also been guest professor at various universities in the United States, including the University of Connecticut and Northeastern University (Boston).  He conducted research on xenophobia in Germany as a Fulbright scholar, and has lectured extensively in Germany and elsewhere.  His publications as a political science are primarily on political behavior and xenophobia, but his recent writing has included a program evaluation for career counseling of persons with HIV/AIDS (published in the Journal of Vocational Rehabilitation), and on dance outreach and community service learning.  His current research is primarily devoted to popular culture in the Northeast of Brazil.

A certified Iyengar yoga instructor, he has studied at the Iyengar Institute of San Francisco and with many advanced teachers in the US and abroad.  He has studied at the Ramamani Memorial Yoga Institute (RIMYI), the center of the Iyengar tradition in Pune, India, and continues to study with advanced teachers in the United States and abroad.  He is also a Registered Yoga Teacher (RYT 500) with the Yoga Alliance.

His training has also included study in India in the Himalayan tradition of Swami Rama and Swami Veda in Rishikesh, and at the Amritapuri ashram in Kerala. He is a member of the Milwaukee Mindfulness Community with regular practice in the Bamboo Forest tradition of Thich Nhat Hanh.

His photographic work has concentrated on dance, Brazilian folklore and popular culture, travel photography, and occasional specialized studio portraiture. In the joint project on Brazilian popular culture with Simone Ferro, she is in charge of all the interesting and artistic parts of the project (movement, choreography, interviewing, videography); Meredith is the resident social scientist and photographer. He is fluent, but rusty, in German, and manages to be semi-literate, but enthusiastic, in Portuguese.