2026 AAG Communities Awards

Groups

Africa Specialty Group

Distinguished Emerging Scholar Award in African Geography, Elmond Bandauko, University of Alberta.

Graduate Research Award, Stephanie Efua Yamoah, University of Denver

Kwadwo Konadu-Agyemang Distinguished Scholar Award in African Geography, Timothy D. Baird, Virginia Tech.

Animal Geographies Specialty Group

Graduate Student Research Competition

• Winner – Xiaoyun Neo, University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa
• 2nd place – Sara Toroi
• Honorable Mention – Aberdeen Leary, University of Michigan
• Honorable Mention – David Kalman, University of California, Berkeley

Applied Geography Specialty Group

James R. Anderson Medal of Honor in Applied Geography, Frank Southworth

Student Annual Meeting Award

• Audrey Smith, University of Florida, Landsat to Livelihoods: Social–Ecological Costs of Large-Scale Land Acquisitions in Ethiopia
• Jason Yoo, Geospatial Mismatch between Social Vulnerability and BMP Co-benefits from Chesapeake Bay Watershed Management
• Kristina Fillman, Compounding Injustices: A Political Ecology of Wildfire Smoke, Extreme Heat, and Child Health
• Wenjing Gong, Texas A&M University, Essential Infrastructure or Unavoidable Risk? Modeling Urban Park Visitation under Dual Climate and Crime Stressors with Large-Scale Mobility Data
• Zongrong Li, Texas A&M University, Seeing Green from Indoor in 3D: How Urban Form and Vegetation Shape Window-Level Views of Nature

Asian Geography Specialty Group

Graduate Student Research Fellowship, Sufeng (Sophia) Xiao, Harvard University

AAG Group Keynote Speaker, Miles Kenney-Lazar, University of Melbourne, Sustainability Capitalism in the Age of Extractivism: Southeast Asian Trajectories

Graduate Student Paper Competition

• Dri Tattersfield, University of Minnesota
• Sufeng (Sophia) Xiao, Harvard University

Bible Geography Specialty Group

Amy Mather BGSG Student Scholar Award, Priyadharshini Sakthivel, The importance of topography and urban-rural definition in identifying Surface Urban Heat Islands in semi-arid environments: Case study of Amman, Jordan

Jonathan Lu BGSG Student Travel Enhancement Award, Brody Manquen, The University of Texas at Austin, Reclaiming the Locus Amoenus: historical narrative of post-Roman inundation in early modern Italian wetland drainages

Biogeography Specialty Group

Research Grant, Ph.D. level, Elizabeth Barnes, University of Tennessee, Environmental History and the Megafauna Extinction in Costa Rica

Student Paper Award, Doctoral Category, Wenxin Yang, UCSB, Measuring and monitoring the three-dimensional structure of terrestrial habitats to support biodiversity conservation

Travel grant for AAG meeting attendance, Cole Bristow, Virginia Tech

Black Geographies Specialty Group

Student Travel Award, Sabina Bhandari, University of Connecticut

Clyde Woods Graduate Student Paper Award, Alexis Wiley, Rutgers University – New Brunswick, Plotting Black Agrarian Geographies during the American Agrarian Transition, 1865-1970

Plenary Speaker, Danielle Purifoy, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

AAG Group Keynote Speaker, Elena Serrano

Caribbean Geography Specialty Group

AAG Group Keynote Speaker, Kevon Rhiney

Cartography and Mapping Specialty Group

AAG Group Keynote Speaker, Meghan Kelly, Syracuse University, Boundaries, Placing Feminist Mapping

Master’s Thesis Research Grant

• Abby Whelan, Syracuse University, Data Visualization as a Site of Oppression: What are Maternal Health Dashboards
• Ashwin Adhip Acharya, University of Mumbai, GeoAI-Driven Physics-Guided Ensemble Modelling of Urban Flood Susceptibility under CMIP6 Climate Scenarios in the Mula–Mutha Basin, Maharashtra, India
• Sarah Haedrich, University of Oregon, Cartographies of the Renewable Energy Development: A Critical Analysis of Stakeholder Maps in British Columbia

Student-Organized Session Funding

• Fangsheng Zhou
• Gareth Baldrica-Franklin
• Lily Houtman, The Pennsylvania State University
• Yanbing Chen, Mapping Your Career Path: Mentoring Across Cartographic Trajectories
• Zhaoxu Sui
• Zongrong Li, Texas A&M University

China Geography Specialty Group

Best Student Paper Award, Shize Zhang, The everyday political economy of local governance in China: Bridging relational and territorial thinking

Student Travel Award, Vinci Ying Jia Cheung, The University of Hong Kong, Digital divide or digital dividend? The growth of a digital economy and changes in urban-rural inequality in China

AAG Group Keynote Speaker, Xueguang Zhou, Stanford University, Scale and the Logic of Governance in China

Climate Specialty Group

Paper of the Year Award, Shaina Sadai, Antarctic meltwater alters future projections of climate and sea level

AAG Group Keynote Speaker, Zeke Hausfather, Berkeley Earth, The role of aerosol declines in recent warming acceleration

Student Paper Competition

• Winner – Nishat Tasnim Sumaya, Assessing Climate Trends in Bangladesh Using the Spatial Synoptic Classification
• 2nd place – Afra Sayara Rahman, Whispers in the Wind: Oklahoma Women’s Narratives of Climate Migration Choices and Survival During the Dust Bowl
• 3rd place – Yayun Lin, Atlantic Tropical Cyclone Intensity and Aerosols: A Multiscale Analysis

Coastal and Marine Specialty Group

R.J. Russell Award, Ian Walker, University of California Santa Barbara, Coastal dune restoration as a nature-based solution to improve resilience of California’s beaches to sea level rise

The Norbert Psuty Student Paper Competition

• Winner – Holland Haverkamp, University of Maine, Tidal Infrastructures and Hydrosocial Frictions: Offshore Wind Port Development and Water Justice in Coastal Maine
• 2nd place – Yu-Chia Lin, State University of New York at Buffalo, The blame geography: ocean governance, governmentality, and fishery management on the High Seas

Community College Affinity Group

Darrel Hess Community College Geography Scholarship, Erin Dickey

Critical Islands, Archipelagos, and Oceans Specialty Group

AAG Group Keynote Speaker, Sofia Zaragocin, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, There Are People Too in the Galápagos! A Latin American Decolonial Feminist Perspective on Conservation in the Galápagos Islands

Critical Geographies of Education Specialty Group

Critical Geographies of Education MA Dissertation Award, Jessica Flach, Between Florida and the World: Young People and the Politics of Citizenship

Critical Geographies of Education PhD Dissertation Award, Caroline Loomis, CUNY Graduate Center, Proximity and Partition: Geographies of Childhood, Choice, and Co-Location in New York City

AAG Group Keynote Speaker, Susan Thomas, Syracuse University

Cryosphere Specialty Group

R.S. Tarr Student Travel Award

• Sepideh Jalayer, University of Colorado Boulder
• Zhengrui Huang

Cultural and Political Ecology Specialty Group

Field Study Award, Thao Nguyen, The University of British Columbia, Sustainability Initiatives to De-Risk the Natural Rubber Supply Chain in the Mekong region

Outstanding Book Award, Youjin Chung, University of California, Berkeley,

Outstanding Journal Article, Nathan Green, National University of Singapore, Maximizing Finance for Sustainable Development

Student Paper Award, Ana Lucía Araujo Raurau, The Political Economy of Belonging: Transgender Insights in Ethnographic Fieldwork in Rural Societies

AAG Group Keynote Speaker, Susanna Hecht, University of California – Los Angeles, Not all anthropocenes are the same: Political ecologies and what they can tell us about the myth of 1.5, and the adaptation  complexities of a heating planet

Elsevier Geoforum Community Support Travel Award, Thuy Ho, Indiana University

Scholar-Activist Award

• Jesús Alejandro García, UC Berkeley, Escuela de Agua: Building Popular Water Knowledge, Territorialities, and Governance in the Colombian Massif
• Juan Carlos Jimenez, University of Toronto, Communal Care, Young Adult Rural Livelihoods, and Historic Trauma of War and Agrarian Exits: Towards a Political Ecology of Healing in Chalatenango, El Salvador

Cultural Geography Specialty Group

Denis E. Cosgrove (Ph.D.) Research Grant, Zachary Cudney, University of Washington

Master’s Level Research Award, Samuel Scarborough

AAG Group Keynote Speaker, Rebecca Solnit

Elsevier’s Geoforum Community Support Travel Award, Brian Boyce, University of Tennessee

Cyberinfrastructure Specialty Group

Robert Raskin Student Paper Competition

• Winner – M. Naser Lessani
• 2nd place – Pengyu Chen, University of South Carolina
• 3rd place – Haofeng Tan

Development Geographies Specialty Group

Gary Gaile Travel Award, Audrey Culver Smith, University of Florida, From Landsat to Livelihoods: Socio-Ecological Costs of Large-Scale Land Acquisitions in Ethiopia

Outstanding Paper Award, W. Nathan Green, National University of Singapore, Maximizing Finance for Sustainable Development? Microfinance, Debt-Driven Deforestation, and the Self-Regulation of Environmental Harm

AAG Group Keynote Speaker, Annie Shattuck, Indiana University Bloomington

Elsevier’s Geoforum Community Support Travel Award, Keegan A. Kessler, University of Hawai’i

Student Paper Award

• Irma Losada Olmos, Unimagined Communities Along the Maya Train: Exposing Violence Through Photography
• Jimena Natalia Perez, University of California – Berkeley, Remaking the Los Angeles River

Digital Geographies Specialty Group

(Digital) Racial Justice Award, Elspeth Iralu, The Land, the Earth, the Sky: Mapping Global Indigenous Relations

Software Tool, Platform, or Interactive Map/Visualization Award, Arunima Dasgupta, University of Connecticut, Families, Friends, and Neighborhoods (FFAN) Story Map

Outstanding Dissertation Award

• Winner – Teddy Davenport, Center for Applied Transgender Studies, Theorizing the Political Potential of Care through Digital Spaces of Trans Belonging
• Megan Wiessner, University of Virginia, Digital Timber: Remediating Resource Economies and Automating Sustainable Futures

Student Paper Award

• Dylan O’Donoghue, Rutgers University – Camden, Navigating Employment Issues and Police Encounters: Frictions across the Tech Sector’s Migrant Subcontractor Workforce
• Jillian Crandall, Plotting cryptoeconomic imaginaries and counterplotting the network state
• Zach Cudney, University of Washington, Google Gazes and Digital Seams: Visual Epistemologies between Satellite View and Street View

Disability Specialty Group

Todd Reynolds Student Paper Competition, Suzanne Nimoh, University of Texas at Austin, Unearthing the Zombie: Black, Crip, Animal

AAG Group Keynote Speaker, Kafui Attoh, City University of New York

Economic Geography Specialty Group

Research / Fieldwork Award, Induja Kumar

Travel Award, Clara Lemme Ribeiro, University of Washington

AAG Group Keynote Speaker, Kendra Kintzi, New York University

Elsevier’s Geoforum Community Support Travel Award, Dylan O’Donoghue, Rutgers University-Camden

Energy and Environment Specialty Group

Advancing Diversity and Inclusion Award, Lyric Patterson, University of Michigan

Dissertation Data & Fieldwork Award, Sebastián Solarte-Caicedo, UCLA, The Long Life of Off-Grid Energy Commons: Insights from Thirty-Five Years of Electropalmor

Powershift Award, Sarah Kelly

AAG Group Keynote Speaker, Jennifer Baka, The Pennsylvania State University, Political-Industrial Ecology for Just Energy Futures

Energy Luminary Award

• Winner – Tom Ptak, Texas State University, Repositioning energy geographies in a time of crisis: Arguments from a subdiscipline on the margins of geography (Dialogues in Human Geography)
• Honorable Mention – Chinedu C. Nsude, University of Oklahoma, Renewables but unjust? Critical restoration geography as a framework for addressing global renewable energy injustice (Energy Research & Social Science)

Best Student Paper Award

• Winner – Deniz Mine Öztürk, Clark University, Beneath the surface, injustice boils: Environmental justice struggles against geothermal energy in Turkey
• Honorable Mention – Bruce Baigrie , Syracuse University, Stacking versus Displacement in the Mexican Energy Transition

Environmental Perception and Behavioral Geography Specialty Group

Elsevier’s Geoforum Community Support Travel Award, Jiayin Zhang, University of California – Santa Barbara

AAG Group Keynote Speaker, Daniel Montello, University of California – Santa Barbara

Ethnic Geography Specialty Group

Early Career Award for Scholarship, Teaching, and Service, Weronika Kusek, Northern Michigan University, Distinguished early career contributions to ethnic geography across scholarship, teaching, and service

Distinguished Scholar Award

• Ira Sheskin, University of Miami
• Emily Skop, University of Colorado Colorado Springs

Eurasian Specialty Group

Photo Contest, Sara Maaria Toroi, Impeerii da kirikkö karjalazile keskel Piälinnua [Empire and a church for Karelians in the centre of Helsinki

European Specialty Group

AAG Group Keynote Speaker, Bernhard Kräußlich, German Geographical Society, Geography in Germany and the German Geographical Society

Feminist Geographies Specialty Group

Glenda Laws Student Paper Award, Kayla Roulhac

Rickie Sanders Junior Faculty Award, Elspeth Iralu, University of New Mexico

Susan Hanson Dissertation Proposal Award, Shubhangi

AAG Group Keynote Speaker, Beverly Mullings, University of Toronto, The Curious Resurgence of the Maternal in a World in Need of Care

Jan Monk Service Award

• Marianne Blidon, Paris 1 Panthéon Sorbonne University
• Sarah Elwood

Geographic Information Science and Systems Specialty Group

The Waldo Tobler and Transactions in GIS Distinguished Lecture in GIScience Keynote Speaker, Peter Kedron, UC Santa Barbara, New Directions in Geographic Research on Replication

AAG Group Keynote Speaker, Shawn Newsam, University of California – Merced, Over 25 years of GeoAI: From the Alexandria Digital Library Project to Now

Student Honors Paper Competition

• Winner – Qianheng Zhang, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Spatial Epistemic Collapse: Quantifying Spatial Bias in Generative GeoAI Using Street View Imagery
• 2nd place – Yifan Yang, DamageArbiter: A CLIP-Enhanced Multimodal Arbitration Framework for Hurricane Damage Assessment from Street-View Imagery
• 3rd place – Yuhao Jia, Rethinking Spatial Dependency Modeling with Urban Representations
• Finalist – Andy Qin, Leveraging Reinforcement Learning for Maternity Care Resource Reallocation
• Finalist – Junbo Wang, University of Tennessee – Knoxville, SounDiT: Geo-Contextual Soundscape-to-Landscape Generation
• Finalist – Mahbub Ul Hasan, Texas A&M University, Global Assessment of Grasslands: Three Decades of Shifting Connectivity and Increasing Fragmentation Across Regions and Scales
• Finalist – Meicheng Xiong, A graph-based deep population downscaling model on irregular spatial units
• Finalist – Qian Cao, University of Georgia, Generative AI for Planning Scenario Visualization: A Framework and Benchmark for Controllable Street-Level Image Synthesis
• Finalist – Tao Peng, Contextual Autoencoder: A Self-Supervised Learning Framework for Spatiotemporal Interpolation under Diverse Missing Data Patterns
• Finalist – Xin Jin, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, The Task Utility Gap in Human Mobility Modeling: Evidence from Environmental Exposure Assessment

Geographies of Food and Agriculture Specialty Group

Plenary Panelist Honorarium, Tisina Parker

AAG Group Keynote Speaker, Irene Vasquez,

Book Award

• Winner – Emily Reisman, The Almond Paradox: Cracking Open the Politics of What Plants Need
• 3rd place – Joshua Steckley, Carleton University, The Nightcrawlers: A story of worms, cows, and cash in the underground bait industry

Graduate Student Research Award

• Ibrahim Bahati, University of Texas at Austin, Youth Adaptive Resilience Strategies to Climate Change Shocks in Uganda’s Rural Farming Systems
• Jennie Jiang, Rutgers University, Scaling Ultra-Processed Foods: Chemicalized Capitalism and the Metabolic Pathways of U.S. Empire

Geography Education Specialty Group

Gail Hobbs Student Paper Competition

• Winner – Hunter Hansen, Exploring the Impact and Interdisciplinarity of Geographic Backgrounds among Graduate Students: A Comparative Study
• Participant – Charlotte Milner
• Participant – Chenyu Wang, Western Michigan University
• Participant – Yifan Wang, University at Buffalo – SUNY

Geomorphology Specialty Group

Allan James Msc Award, Itai Bojdak-Yates, Colorado State University

Allan James PhD Award, August Aalto, The University of Texas at Austin

Grove Karl Gilbert Award for Excellence in Geomorphological Research, Gentile Francesco Ficetola, The development of terrestrial ecosystems emerging after glacier retreat

1. Gordon “Reds” Wolman Graduate Student Research Award (MSc), Itai Bojdak-Yates, Colorado State University
2. Gordon “Reds” Wolman Graduate Student Research Award (PhD), Ashley Ford, Colorado State University

Melvin G. Marcus Distinguished Career Award, Sarah Praskievicz

William L. Graf Early Career Award, Zach Hilgendorf, University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire

AAG Group Keynote Speaker, Adriana Martinez, Southern Illinois University Edwardsville, Laws, landscapes, and life on the border: Shaping the Rio Grande at Eagle Pass

Graduate Student Affinity Group

AAG Group Keynote Speaker, Sandra Johnson, Western Michigan University, AAG Student-Leadership Listening Session

Travel Award

• Ali Sorrels, George Washington University
• Jiahua Chen
• Kamrun Nahar Keya
• Mst Sanjida Alam, Clark University
• Wenyu Zhang, Texas A&M University

Hazards, Risks, and Disasters Specialty Group

Gilbert F. White Dissertation Award, Garima Jain, Stanford University, Tangled up in Blue – Patterns, drivers and feedback of aquaculture land and livelihood transitions in coastal India

Gilbert White Thesis Award, Carter Beale, Collaborative relationships and nature-based solutions: Two flood management cases in Hawaiʻi

AAG Group Keynote Speaker, Adelle Thomas

Jeanne X. Kasperson Student Paper Award

• Liyue Zhang, University at Buffalo, Voluntary support and community networks during the 2022 Buffalo blizzard: An online survey of disaster Facebook group members
• Madusha Maha Gamage, The University of Alabama, Wildfire evacuation simulation toolkit (WEST): A web-based platform for modeling wildfire evacuation in the wildland-urban interface communities with transient populations
• Naznin Nahar Sultana, From risk to resilience: Community-engaged disaster management in Chittagong, Bangladesh
• Simran Koul, UC Santa Barbara, Unequal Risks: Coal Mining Hazards and Social Vulnerability in India
• Wenyu Zhang, Texas A&M University, Shops, Shelters, and Survival: A GeoAI-based Assessment of Heat Adaptation Behavior in San Antonio, Texas

Health and Medical Geography Specialty Group

Melinda S. Meade Distinguished Scholarship Award, Valorie Crooks, Simon Fraser University

Mid-Career Scholar Award, Paul Delamater

Emerging Scholar Award, Michael Desjardins, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health,

Health Data Visualization Award – Dynamic/Interactive, Debs Ghosh, Sabina Bhandari, Cheryl Knott, Zev Ross

Health Data Visualization Award – Static, Stephen Liwur, Florida State University

Jacques May Thesis Prize

• Chrishma Perera, Virginia Polytechnic and State University
• Hanlin Zhou, University of Connecticut

Health & Place Travel Award

• Amit Banerjee, The University of Burdwan
• Arunima Dasgupta, University of Connecticut
• Naoki Matsumoto

Peter Gould Student Paper Award

• Bryttani Wooten, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
• Congcong Miao, University of Connecticut
• Meixian Li, University of Illinois Urbana Champaign
• William Jones, Virginia Tech

International Medical Geography Symposium (IMGS) Student Travel Award

• Drumond Dzakuma, University at Buffalo, Access Without Arrival: Rethinking Health Equity Through the Geography of Deferred Car
• Konok Akter, PhD Student, Medical College of Wisconsin, Structural Disinvestment, Neighborhood Heat Exposure and the Mediating Effect of Tree Canopy: A National Study across U.S. Census Tracts
• Lauren Babinetz, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Impact of Tropical Cyclones on Violent Injury Emergency Department Visits by Women in North Carolina
• Samiha Nuzhat, University of South Carolina, Spatiotemporal Determinants and Unintended Consequences of Inequitable Safe Drinking-Water Access in Rural Bangladesh

Human Dimensions of Global Change Specialty Group

JEDI Award, Adriana Zuniga-Teran, University of Arizona

Research Excellence Award, Diana Liverman, University of Arizona

AAG Group Keynote Speaker, Billie Lee Turner II, Arizona State University, Still Contested? Geography’s Place in the Sciences and the Academy

Student Paper Award

• Irma Losada Olmos, Unimagined Communities Along the Maya Train: Exposing Violence Through Photography
• Wenyu Wang, Uncovering Drivers of Federal Disaster Recovery Aid: A Statistical Learning Analysis of FEMA Public Assistance in Hurricane-Affected U.S. Coastal Regions

Indigenous Peoples Specialty Group

Plenary Speaker

• Jeremy Sorgen, Northeastern University
• Leaf Hillman, Karuk Tribe

Landscape Specialty Group

Student Membership Award, Sufeng (Sophia) Xiao, Curating Rurbanity: Platform-Mediated Landscape Transformation in Rural China

Photography Competition Judges, UCSB Photo Club

Landscape Photography Competition – People’s Choice Award, Somnath Nayak, University of Delhi, The Persistent Shore

AAG Group Keynote Speaker, Kat Superfisky, Enhancing Urban Ecosystems, Balancing Biodiversity, and Human Development in Los Angeles, CA

Landscape Photography Competition

• Winner – Aberdeen Leary, University of Michigan, A Forest Underwater
• Winner – Yifan Liang, Doha Daily
• Honorable Mention – Harriet Morkor Quarshie, University of Northern Iowa, Where Mangroves Become Merchandise, Volta Region, Ghana
• Honorable Mention – Lavanya Gupta, Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Confluence Border of India and Nepal
• Honorable Mention – Mitchell Snyder, McGee Creek

Latin America Specialty Group

Student Field Study Awards (MA/MS level), Mariah Smith, What enables marine cultural heritage in MPA governance

Student Field Study Awards (PhD level), Javiera Madrid-Salazar, Rutgers University – New Brunskwick, From “Empty” to Unruly Lands: Geology, Subsoil Politics, and the(Re)Making of Large-scale Mining in Chile

Best Student Paper Award, Irma Losada Olmos, Unimagined Communities Along the Maya Train: Exposing Violence Through Photography

Solidarity Award, Thayré Gómez

AAG Group Keynote Speaker, Marisol de la Cadena, University of California – Davis, Pluriversal Contact Zones

Latinx Geographies Specialty Group

Laura Pulido Research Award, Cinthya Martinez, Article: Migrant Abolition Geographies: Toxic Caging and Cuerpo-Territorio in Adelanto, California

2026 Grad Student Paper Award, Maritza Geronimo, University of California – Los Angeles, Bringing Our Land With Us: Decentralized Gardens, Indigenous Mobility, and Placemaking

2025 Paper Award, Jimena Perez, University of California – Berkeley

AAG Group Keynote Speaker, Kimberly Soriano, Washington University in St. Louis, Our Agenda On Our Own Terms

Legal Geography Specialty Group

Graduate Student Presentation Award, Samantha Saona Sarabia, Columbia University

AAG Group Keynote Speaker, Craig Segall, Environmental and climate law and policy in 2026: Proactive responses to the current moment

Media and Communication Geography Specialty Group

COMGEOG Student Paper Competition, Mei Jiang, Stand-Up, Speak Out: Open-Mic as Feminist Activism in the Sinophone Diaspora

Middle East Specialty Group

AAG Group Keynote Speaker, Hatem Bazian, University of California – Berkeley

Mountain Geography Specialty Group

Chimborazo Student Research Grant Award (PhD), Luke R. Blentlinger, University of Tennessee, Paleohydrology and landscape change across the Little Ice Age and Spanish Conquest in the Tilarán Mountains of Costa Rica

Chimborazo Student Research Grant Award, Elizabeth Barnes, University of Tennessee – Knoxville, Environmental History and the Pleistocene Megafauna Extinction at La Chonta Bog, Cordillera de Talamanca, Costa Rica

Paleoenvironmental Change Specialty Group

Paleoenvironmental Change Student Research Award, Ian Thomas von Weisenstein, University of Tennessee Knoxville, Fire History and Past Vegetation from Soil Charcoal in Tennessee’s Ridge and Valley Province

Best Presentation (PhD Category), Luke Blentlinger, University of Tennessee, A high-resolution lake sediment record of fire history over the last millennium in the Tilarán Mountains of Costa Rica

Ellen Mosley Thompson Award for Best Publication in Paleoenvironmental Change, Qiang Yao, Geographically metachronous pattern of tropical cyclone activity regimes  across the North Atlantic Basin

Karl and Elisabeth Butzer Award for Lifetime Achievement in Paleoenvironmental Change, John W. (Jack) Williams, University of Wisconsin-Madison

Paleoenvironmental Change and Biogeography Specialty Groups

PEC/BSG Best Poster Presentation Award, Bronwen Hardee, Central Washington University, 7000-year anthropogenic fire history reconstruction near Progresso Lagoon in northern Belize

PEC/BSG Best Presentation Award (MS/Undergrad.), Ian von Weisenstein, University of Tennessee Knoxville, Fire History and Past Vegetation from Soil Charcoal in Tennessee’s Ridge and Valley Province

Polar Geography Specialty Group

Research Award, H Rainak Khan Real, The Ohio State University, In-situ before in-silico: Ground-truth data collection for GeoAI-driven mapping of microbial iron cycling

Polar Geography and Cryosphere Specialty Groups

AAG Group Keynote Speaker, Jarkko Saarinen, University of Oulu – Finland, Arctic Tourism Geographies

Political Geography Specialty Group

Alexander Murphy Dissertation Enhancement Award, Kai-Yang Huang, National Taiwan University

PhD Student Paper Award, Troy Brundidge, University of Oregon

Geoforum Community Support Travel Award, Irma Losada Olmos

Student Travel Award

• Aila Bandagi Kandlakunta, University of Nevada, Reno
• Benjamin Asher Kaplan Weinger
• Bryan Samir Castro-Velez, University of Maryland – Baltimore County
• Faisal Bin Islam
• Fernando Lopez Oggier, University of Hawai’i at Mānoa
• Handique, Jublee, Ohio State University
• Keegan Kessler

Protected Areas Specialty Group

Graduate Paper Award, Nancy Donald, UC – San Diego, Rewilding and the Remaking of Aysén, Chilean Patagonia: The National Huemul Corridor and the Contradictory Pursuit of Tranquilidad

AAG Group Keynote Speaker, Jeffrey Jenkins, University of California – Merced, Changing Geographies of Visitor Use of Protected Areas in California

Qualitative Research Specialty Group Award

• Ambra Bergamasco, University College Dublin – Ireland
• Hayes Hart-Thompson, University of Colorado, Boulder
• Pancho Lewis, University of Durham

Recreation, Tourism, and Sport Specialty Group

Discussant grant, Kathleen Adams, Univ of London

Early Career Researcher Award, Joshua Merced, Northern Arizona University – Merced, Joshua Z. and Scarborough, S. (2025). De‐Pale the Ale: Preserving Black Brewing Culture Through Beer Festivals, Geography Compass, https:/doi.org/10.1111/gec3.70036

John Rooney Award, Jillian Rickly, University of Nottingham

Roy Wolfe Award, Kathleen Adams, Univ. of London and Loyola University Chicago

Student Paper Award

• Xiaoyun Neo, Elephant Economics: Conditions for benefiting from Elephant Tourism Market in an upland Karen (Paganyaw) village
• Ali Mert Ipek, The University of Manchester, A ‘Green Road’ to Rural Development: State, Infrastructure, and Tourism in Turkey’s Eastern Black Sea Region

Recreation, Tourism, and Sport, and Political Geography Specialty Groups

AAG Group Keynote Speaker, Vernadette Vicuña Gonzalez, University of California, Detours as Decolonial Method and Counterarchive

Regional Development and Planning Specialty Group

Ashok K. Dutt Outstanding Graduate Student Paper Award, Yuchen Wang, Texas A&M University, Toward Equitable Access to Campus Digital Twins

Emerging Scholar Award, XIAO HUANG, Emory University

Remote Sensing Specialty Group

Early Career Scholar in Remote Sensing Award, Yuchi Ma, Stanford University

John Jensen Distinguished Lecture & AAG Group Keynote Speaker, Philip Dennison, University of Utah, Exploring drought, wildfire, greenhouse gas emissions, and economically valuable minerals through shortwave infrared remote sensing

Outstanding Contributions in Remote Sensing Award, Le Wang, The State University of New York at Buffalo

Student Honors Paper Competition Award

• Winner – Fangyi Wang, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, TillSight: Large-Scale Ground Reference Generation for Tillage Intensity of the U.S. Midwest Using Multi-Source Imagery and Vision-Language Foundation Models
• 2nd place – Hao Tian, Texas A&M University, Leveraging Deep Learning and Distributed Acoustic Sensing for Real-Time Traffic Monitoring
• 3rd place – Zhang Chen, University of Connecticut, Coupling Streetscape Atmosphere with Social Vulnerability and Community Resilience

Student Illustrated Paper Competition Award

• Winner – Babak Heidari, Texas State University
• 2nd place – Md Jakirul Islam Jony Prothan, Comparing Rule-Based and AI-Driven Methods for Active Fire Detection: A Case Study of the 2022 Calf Canyon–Hermits Peak Wildfires
• 3rd place – Srijana Shrestha, Analyzing Crop Phenology Responses to Climate Variability Using Multi-Source Satellite Data in the U.S. Corn Belt

Rural Geography Specialty Group

Just Rural Futures Blog Award, Global South Category, Shreya Ojha, Kansas State University, Role of Social Networks in Adapting to Climate Change: Insights from the Rural Desert Community of India.

Just Rural Futures Blog Awards, Georgia Lavigne, Early Career Category and Global North Category

Student Paper Presentation, Anika M. Rice, University of Wisconsin Madison, Landscapes of Debt: Land titling and migration loans in the Guatemalan highlands

Socialist and Critical Geography Specialty Group

AAG Annual Meeting Travel Award

• Clara Lemme Ribeiro, University of Washington
• Nirvana Heidarian
• Stefanos Milkidis
• Vishavjeet Dhanda, University of Delhi
• Will Baker, University of Arkansas
• Yimeng Yang, Northeastern University

Spatial Analysis and Modeling Specialty Group

Travel Award, Shiv Yucel, University of Oxford

AAG Group Keynote Speaker, Mei-Po Kwan, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Neighborhood Effect Averaging Revisited: Why It Matters in Geographic, Social Science and Environmental Health Research

John Odland Award

• Winner – Victor Irekponor, University of Maryland
• 2nd place – Xinyang Zhang
• 3rd place – Chintan B. Maniyar, University of Georgia

Student Travel Award

• Chaehyeon Lee
• Min Jeong, The University of Texas at Dallas
• Qian Cao, University of Georgia

Stand Alone Geographers Affinity Group

SAGE Innovation Award, Lakeshia Wright

Transportation Geography Specialty Group

Edward L. Ullman Award, Ronald Buliung, University of Toronto Mississauga

The Fleming Lecture, Joe Weber, University of Alabama, The Streetcar Revolt and Politics of Resentment in America: Implications for Transportation Equity

Outstanding PhD Dissertation Award, Anastasia Soukhov, Reuniting Accessibility Measures with Spatial Interaction Principles

AAG Group Keynote Speaker, Joe Weber, The University of Alabama, The Streetcar Revolt and Politics of Resentment in America: Implications for Transportation Equity

Outstanding Master’s Thesis Award

• Winner – Lily Heidger
• Honorable Mention – Fabiha Rahman

Student Travel Award

• Mandela Gadri, University of Illinois Urbana Champaign
• Seung Jae Lieu

Undergraduate Student Affinity Group

Travel Grant for USAG Board

• Alex Bucher
• Sara Conner

Urban Geography Specialty Group

Alternative Modes of Scholarship Award, Jiaying Li, Tufts University, The Coastal Multiple Hazard Risk (CMHR) platform

Graduate Student Fellowship

• Winner – Kang Li, University of Utah, Seas into Cities: Global China and the socio-ecological dynamics of urbanization in Malaysia
• Honorable Mention – Yimeng Yang, Northeastern University

Graduate Student Paper Award

• Winner – Yihan Yan, The University of Manchester, Borrowing Space, Buying Certainty: Dog Caregivers’ Tactics and the Redistribution of Publicness in Urban China
• Honorable Mention – Queenie Collins, Central Connecticut State University, Immersion and Inequality: An Ethnography of Language, Privilege, and Belonging at Middlebury

PhD Dissertation Award

• Winner – Sharif Wahab, Indiana University Bloomington, Refugee Habitats: Producing And Maintaining Displaceable Rohingya Refugees in Bangladesh
• Honorable Mention – Aila Bandagi Kandlakunta, University of Nevada, Reno
• Honorable Mention – Billy Southern, University of Oregon

Student Access Award

• Jaxon Slaney
• Kelly Haggerty, Temple University
• Soo Yeon Lim, Rutgers University
• Tshui Mum Ha, The Ohio State University
• Vishavjeet Dhanda, Department of Geography, University of Delhi

Water Resources Specialty Group

Distinguished Career Award​, Heejun Chang​

Matthew-Dwyer Fund, Miriam Yupanqui, Nuestra Casa de East Palo Alto, Nuestra Casa Assistance with Coastal Resilience

Posthumous: Distinguished Career Award​, Sarah Praskievicz

Paper Award, Kate Cullen​, UC Berkeley, Navigating Power, Sustaining Access: Chile’s Community-Managed Drinking Water Systems Under Extreme Drought​

AAG Group Keynote Speaker, Sasha Harris-Lovett, San Francisco Estuary Partnership, Navigating a One Water Approach to Water in the San Francisco Bay Area

Olen Paul Matthews and Kathleen A. Dwyer Fund for Water Resources Award

• Lucy Everett, King’s College London, Water Shutoffs, Extreme Heat, and the Human Right to Water in New York City​
• Monique Assuncao​, Queens University, Governing Water Access Through Credit: Racialized Household Impacts in São Paulo, Brazil​

Presentation Award

• Harman Singh, Penn State University, Extending Protection Motivation Theory: Ownership Appraisal, Spatial Exposure, and Household Flood Preparedness in Bengaluru
• Skyy Corral, Engaging the Waters: Stormwater Infrastructure, Environmental Justice, and Community Engagement in the Southeastern United States​

Research Proposal Award

• Andrea Cass, Investigating whether voluntary buyouts constitute transformative adaptation: a comparative case study of managed retreat in rural West Virginia​
• Laine Sullivan​, University of Colorado Boulder, Embodied Toxicity: Community Experiences of Lead Exposure in Chicago​

Wine, Beer, and Spirits Specialty Group

Graduate Student Paper Award

• Winner – Brock Burford, Texas State University, Turning water to wine: An analysis of Texas wine industry water efficiency
• Honorable Mention – Kennedy Gould, San Diego State University, Influences of climate change on wine varietal choice in Southern California