Lynn Staeheli

- 2020

Lynn Staeheli

Lynn Staeheli, a professor and former head of the School of Geography and Regional Development at the University of Arizona, passed away December 20, 2020 at her home in Tucson, AZ. Professor Staeheli studied at Penn State and went on to complete her PhD at the University of Washington in 1989. She joined the Geography Department of the University of Colorado-Boulder as an assistant professor in 1989, eventually promoted to full professor. She taught urban, political, and feminist geography and was graduate advisor for over a dozen PhD graduates while at CU. In 2005, Staeheli joined the faculty at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland, and was subsequently a professor at the University of Durham in the UK. In 2015, Staeheli became the head of the School of Geography and Regional Development at the University of Arizona, a post she held for four years. In addition to her distinguished research, she had an admirable commitment to social justice and to mentoring students and early career scholars around the world. Her research focused on what she called the “big, contentious topics” such as the nature and spatial dimensions of democracy, citizenship, and politics. More concretely, her research topics included publicly accessible space, protest and activism, immigration and refugees, and the role of faith, religion, and spirituality in public life. At the time of her death, Staeheli was working on three projects: public life and democracy in the US and UK; youth and politics in divided societies (Bosnia-Herzegovina, Lebanon, and South Africa); and refugees from the MENA region to Europe. She is survived by her husband, retired Professor of Geography, Nel Caine, and her sons.

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