AAG Student Travel Grants
Deadline: October 17, 2023
The 2023 AAG Student Travel Grant recipients have been selected and notified.
AAG is pleased to announce that we will be awarding student travel grants of $500 plus the cost of in-person registration to help subsidize travel expenses for students who are presenting at the AAG 2023 Annual Meeting. AAG hopes to award at least 20 travel grants. To be eligible, applicants must meet the following criteria:
- Active student in a degree-seeking program during academic years 2022-2023 at the associate, bachelor’s or graduate level
- Current AAG student member (join here, if you’re not yet a member)
- Presenting a paper, poster, or participating in a panel as part of the AAG 2023 Annual Meeting program
- Must be traveling a minimum of 250 miles to attend the AAG Annual Meeting
- Must not be receiving funding from other sources to cover expenses related to travel to the AAG Annual Meeting [Note: does not include funding for registration through academic department]
- Must present at the AAG meeting as scheduled
All eligible applicants who apply by the deadline will be entered into a lottery system for random selection. The awards will be announced by November 3, 2022, and students will pick up the grant funds on-site in Denver at the AAG Annual Meeting.
Apply now
We encourage students to review AAG’s various awards and grants, including:
- AAG Council Award for Outstanding Student Papers at a Regional Division Meeting
- Community College Travel Grants
- GTU Student Travel Awards
In addition, check with the chair of each specialty group to learn about additional funding options. Here are a few:
Robert Raskin Student Competition
The competition aims to:
- Promote research in topics related to geospatial cyberinfrastructure (CI)/CyberGIS, such as high performance/distributed computing, spatial analysis, geospatial data management, processing, mapping, visualization, analysis and mining, spatial web and mobile services etc.
- Encourage spatial thinking and the development of geospatial CI/CyberGIS in colleges and universities.
- Inspire curiosity about geographic patterns, spatial computing, and CI for students, researchers, and the broader public.
Graduate Research Grant Competition
The AAG Geographies of Food and Agriculture Specialty Group (GFASG) invites proposals for the Graduate Research Grant Competition. The Master’s and Doctoral competitions are designed to support graduate students in the early stages of their research and graduate student experience (whether field, university, or home-based.
GFASG Scholar-Activist Award
This award for outstanding scholar-activist/activist-scholar work is related to geographies of food and agriculture, including work that advances social, economic, and/or environmental justice through food and agriculture. This award will be given out biennially to a person, group, project, or organization that utilizes a scholar-activist/activist-scholar approach in their work to advance equity, justice, diversity, and inclusion in food and agricultural systems.
The David E. Sopher New Scholar Award
The purpose of this award is to promote intellectual inquiry from new scholars into geographies of religions and belief systems through the presentation of papers at the AAG meeting. Papers will be judged on potential contribution to the field of Geography of Religions and Belief Systems, organization, and written composition.
The Wilbur Zelinsky Award
Students are encouraged to apply for this award, which was first presented in 2018. The awardee will receive an official certificate and $200 will be given to the best session of papers that qualifies in the below categories.
Legal Geography Graduate Student Presentation Award
This award recognizes one or more excellent presentations on current research in legal geography and is given to one or more presentations in the “Graduate Voices in the Lawscape” session during the AAG annual meeting. To be eligible you need not be a member of the specialty group, but you must present in the session.
Karl and Elisabeth Butzer Award for Lifetime Achievement in Paleoenvironmental Change
The Karl and Elisabeth Butzer Award for Lifetime Achievement in Paleoenvironmental Change was implemented in 2017 as the premiere award of the AAG Paleoenvironmental Change Specialty Group (PEC). Karl Butzer was a preeminent human-environment scientist and pioneer of geoarchaeology. Elisabeth Butzer is a renowned scholar of historical ecology using archival sources. This award honors the work of scholars who, like Karl and Elisabeth, dedicate their lives to exploring and elucidating paleoenvironmental change.
Ellen Mosley Thompson Award for Best Publication in Paleoenvironmental Change
The award is named after Dr. Ellen Mosley Thompson, Distinguished University Professor in the Department of Geography (Atmospheric Science Program) and a Senior Research Scientist in the Byrd Polar and Climate Research Center (BPCRC) at The Ohio State University. This award recognizes her important contributions to the paleoenvironmental and paleoclimate community during her long, distinguished career.
Learn morePolitical Geography Student Travel Awards
$225 awards will be given to support Political Geography Specialty Group’s (PGSG) student travel to present a paper on a political geography topic at the PGSG preconference and/or the AAG Annual Meeting. Up to 10 awards may be awarded annually.
Alexander B. Murphy Dissertation Enhancement Award
$1000 award is granted to support dissertation field research of PGSG student members. Up to two awards may be awarded annually.
Political Geography Graduate Student Paper Awards
$250 award will go to the best paper on a political geography topic written by MA and PhD students (judged in separate divisions), who are PGSG members.
Political Geography Undergraduate Student Paper Award
$100 award will go to the best paper on a political geography topic written by an undergraduate student, regardless of membership in the AAG or participation at the Annual Meetings.
Julian Minghi Distinguished Book Award
This award will be given to the PGSG author(s) of the best book published during the previous calendar year in the field of political geography.
Virginie Mamadouh Outstanding Research Award
This award will be given to the PGSG author(s) of a journal article or book chapter published in the previous three calendar years that makes an innovative, original contribution to the conceptual and/or methodological embrace of political geography. For journal articles the three year window begin once the article is assigned to a specific print issue.
Stanley D. Brunn Junior Scholar Award
This award will be given to an untenured PGSG scholar who has received her/his Ph.D. within the past ten years, in honor of contributions that have generated new interest in the subfield and/or opened up new areas of inquiry for political geographic research.
Richard Morrill Public Outreach Award
This award will be given to an individual who has used her or his political geographic expertise to affect change (in public thought or public policy) beyond the academy.
Learn more
The Association of American Geographers (AAG) and Gamma Theta Upsilon (GTU) have partnered to raise funds to support student attendance at the AAG annual meeting. The AAG-GTU Student Travel Awards provide travel subsidies of $200 to help undergraduate and graduate student members of GTU attend AAG meetings.
Melvin G. Marcus, past president of the American Association of Geographers and an internationally recognized physical geographer, structured his career around a balance of field work, theory development, teaching, and enjoyment of the geographic endeavor. Making physical geography accessible to everyone with a love of the outdoors, including women, minorities, and the less privileged, was one of Mel’s life-long objectives.