Adams, King Named Editors for Annals of the American Association of Geographers

Paul Adams is the new editor for Human Geography, and Brian King is the new Nature & Society editor at the Annals of the American Association of Geographers, effective January 2024. They will replace Kendra Strauss and Katie Meehan, respectively.

Paul AdamsAdams is the longtime director of the Urban Studies Program at the University of Texas, first in the UT Department of Geography and the Environment now in the Department of American Studies. His service to AAG includes founding the Media Geography Specialty Group (now Media and Communication). From 2015 to 2020, he served as associate professor II at the University of Bergen, funded by the Research Council of Norway. In 2001, he was a Fulbright fellow at McGill University and University of Montreal, Quebec. His current research focuses on sociospatial and political aspects of digital media, digital humanities, and culturally specific understandings of environmental risk and climate change.

Adams is the author of three monographs: The Boundless Self: Communication in Physical and Virtual Spaces (Syracuse University Press, 2005); Atlantic Reverberations: French Representations of an American Election (Ashgate Press, 2007); and Geographies of Media and Communication: A Critical Introduction (Wiley-Blackwell, 2009), which received the 2009 James W. Carey Media Research Award from the Carl Couch Center for Social and Internet Research, and has been translated into Chinese. He has also served as co-editor of four volumes: Textures of Place with Steven Hoelscher and Karen E. Till (University of Minnesota Press, 2001); the Ashgate Research Companion to Media Geography with Jim Craine and Jason Dittmer (Routledge, 2014); Disentangling: The Geographies of Digital Disconnection with André Jansson (Oxford University Press, 2021); and the Routledge Handbook on Media Geographies with Barney Warf (2021).

Adams will devote his editorship in Human Geography to illuminating “the synthetic potentials” of cross- and interdisciplinary explorations in geography: “Emerging geographical approaches, including feminist geography, decolonial geography, studies of affect and emotion, embodied theory, political ecology, and others are not so much ‘specializations’ as new encounters with central questions of the discipline, and as such they offer new ways to synthesize diverse perspectives on the world.” As AAG’s flagship journal, the Annals’s unique task of representing the full breadth of geography can be applied to embracing, rather than entrenching, the disciplinary and methodological differences in the field: “Geography is growing but not necessarily growing apart,” says Adams. “The Annals is key to promoting this process.”

Brian KingKing is professor and head of the Department of Geography at the Pennsylvania State University. His affiliations range across the university, as a faculty research associate with the Population Research Institute, research affiliate with the Earth and Environmental Systems Institute, and faculty affiliate with the School of International Affairs and Consortium on Substance Use and Addiction. King is an honorary research associate with the African Climate and Development Initiative at the University of Cape Town and was selected as a National Academy of Sciences Kavli Fellow in 2017. He previously served from 2021 to 2023 as co-editor of Human Geography and Nature & Society for the Annals. King’s research, teaching, and outreach focuses on livelihoods, conservation and development, environmental change, and human health, centering in Southern Africa. King’s laboratory group (HELIX: Health and Environment Landscapes for Interdisciplinary eXchange) is examining how COVID-19 is transforming the US opioid epidemic. His book, States of Disease: Political Environments and Human Health University of California Press, 2017), received the Julian Minghi Distinguished Book Award.

King’s goals as editor include making sure the review process is timely and efficient, acting from his knowledge of the process as a reviewer and as an editorial board member of African Geographical Review, Geoforum and Health & Place. He also seeks to expand the range of the publication to include even more work in emerging directions, and to address underrepresented content areas that can advance the future of nature and society geography.

Related to this commitment is King’s interest in broadening the scope of contributors’ disciplinary backgrounds. “One of the unexpected outcomes of my research in health and environment are the ways that I am increasingly engaging with other disciplines, particularly anthropology, sociology, rural sociology, and biobehavioral health,” he says. King plans to leverage his many commitments and professional contacts outside of geography to widely promote the Annals to potential contributors.

The AAG thanks outgoing editors Kendra Strauss, Distinguished Professor in the Department of Sociology & Anthropology and associate member of the Department of Geography at Simon Fraser University, as well as director of the Labour Studies Program and the SFU Morgan Centre for Labour Research; and Katie Meehan, Reader in Environment and Society in the Department of Geography at King’s College London and Co-Director of King’s Water Center, for their dedicated editorship.

kendra straussStrauss brought to the role of editor their significant publications in economic and labor geographies, feminist theory, migration studies, legal geographies, environmental change, urban political ecology, and critical urban theory. With extensive publications in geography, social science, and law journals, Strauss has also served on six editorial boards and been a reviewer for many papers in and beyond geography. Strauss’s tenure with the Annals was characterized by encouragement of paper submissions from outside of North America and in diverse topics areas “that still evidence a commitment to engagement with geography and geographical debate.”

Katie MeehanMeehan is a broadly trained human-environment geographer with expertise in urban political ecology, environmental justice, water policy, mixed methods, and science and technology studies. She is co-author of Water: A Critical Introduction (Wiley, 2023), with Naho Mirumachi, Alex Loftus, and Majed Akhter. She is co-editor with Kendra Strauss of Precarious Worlds: Contested Geographies of Social Reproduction (University of Georgia Press, 2015). In 2023 she won the European Research Council’s Consolidator Grant award to support her research on household water insecurity and water shutoffs in high-income countries. During her time at the Annals, Meehan sought to democratize knowledge and expand the audiences for the journal, beyond the geography discipline and beyond academia. She encouraged the use of Annals as a platform for key debates in the discipline and worked with the other editors to bring human-environment topics into the foreground, especially work that focused on racialized natures and environmental justice. “I have been thrilled to work with the editorial board, my co-editors, AAG staff, and the AAG Council to shepherd the very best geographic scholarship to the pages of the Annals,” Meehan says.

Find out more about the Annals of the American Association of Geographers and other AAG journals.

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AAG Among Eighty Geography Societies Worldwide Calling for Climate Action

October 21, 2021…The American Association of Geographers is among 80 geography societies and organizations worldwide who have signed a Joint Declaration of International Geographical Societies on the Climate and Biodiversity Emergencies. Citing the “unique opportunities and responsibilities” of geographers, the letter urges the geographic community to go beyond analysis of the challenge of climate change, to pursue the “kinds of thought and action that can deliver a better tomorrow for every person on Earth.”

The statement highlights the series of consequential global meetings in October and November–the UN Biodiversity Conference and UN Climate Change Conference–addressing the world’s biodiversity crisis, habitat loss, and loss of species; and considering ways to stem the compounding impacts of climate change–expressing the expectation and hope that the world’s leaders will place the highest priority on the protection of nature and a livable climate, establishing ambitious targets for 2030.

“Geographers, whether as students, researchers, educators, writers, explorers, practitioners in business or policy, or as engaged and curious travelers, encourage our leaders to make ambitious commitments to place the protection of nature and a livable climate at the centre of the world’s economics and politics at this critical juncture. Accordingly, we pledge that our institutions will redouble our efforts to apply the unique attributes that are the hallmark of the learning, teaching, and practice of geography to the global environmental challenges that have drawn together the world’s governments to these vital meetings this year. We commit to doing all that we can to apply geography’s potent capabilities to the task of making the coming decade one of hope and of positive action.”

Please share and retweet using the hashtag #Geo4Earth.

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AAG Among Eighty Geography Societies Worldwide Calling for Climate Action

October 21, 2021…The American Association of Geographers is among 80 geography societies and organizations worldwide who have signed a Joint Declaration of International Geographical Societies on the Climate and Biodiversity Emergencies. Citing the “unique opportunities and responsibilities” of geographers, the letter urges the geographic community to go beyond analysis of the challenge of climate change, to pursue the “kinds of thought and action that can deliver a better tomorrow for every person on Earth.”

The statement highlights the series of consequential global meetings in October and November–the UN Biodiversity Conference and UN Climate Change Conference–addressing the world’s biodiversity crisis, habitat loss, and loss of species; and considering ways to stem the compounding impacts of climate change–expressing the expectation and hope that the world’s leaders will place the highest priority on the protection of nature and a livable climate, establishing ambitious targets for 2030.

“Geographers, whether as students, researchers, educators, writers, explorers, practitioners in business or policy, or as engaged and curious travelers, encourage our leaders to make ambitious commitments to place the protection of nature and a livable climate at the centre of the world’s economics and politics at this critical juncture. Accordingly, we pledge that our institutions will redouble our efforts to apply the unique attributes that are the hallmark of the learning, teaching, and practice of geography to the global environmental challenges that have drawn together the world’s governments to these vital meetings this year. We commit to doing all that we can to apply geography’s potent capabilities to the task of making the coming decade one of hope and of positive action.”

Please share and retweet using the hashtag #Geo4Earth.

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Integrative Geospatial Institute Secures $15 million NSF Grant

Overview of I-GUIDE’s six interrelated areas of focus.

The National Science Foundation has established the new Institute for Geospatial Understanding through an Integrative Discovery Environment (I-GUIDE, one of five centers to meet the goal of harnessing the data revolution. AAG is among the partners supporting the new effort.

Led by University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign with an NSF award of $15 million, I-GUIDE will “create an integrative geospatial discovery environment that harnesses geospatial data to understand interconnected interactions across diverse socioeconomic-environmental systems — with a goal of enhancing community resilience and environmental sustainability.” The institute will generate a new set of analytic tools that carefully address data interdependencies to help better estimate and predict risk and anticipate impacts from disasters or climate change.

“This is unprecedented level of support from the National Science Foundation, a victory lap for geographers,” said Shaowen Wang, head of the Department of Geography and Geographic Information Science at U of I and founding director of the CyberGIS Center for Advanced Digital and Spatial Studies (CyberGIS Center), which will lead the institute and with which AAG is also a partner. “The establishment of this institute is an important recognition of geographers as a leading force in the data revolution.”

Geography and geographic data are critical to understanding and visualizing the many interacting causes and impacts of climate change,” said Gary Langham, Executive Director of the American Association of Geographers. “I-GUIDE provides a new, vital framework which supports research partnerships and accelerates data sharing and analyses. 

I-GUIDE, under Wang’s leadership, will receive the funding over five years to work with a broad range of partners and communities, creating a shared geospatial tool for better understanding the risks and impacts of climate change and disasters.

“The goal is to revolutionize theories, concepts, methods, and tools focused on data-intensive geospatial understanding for driving innovative cyberGIS and cyberinfrastructure capabilities to address the most pressing resilience and sustainability challenges of our world such as biodiversity, food security, and water security,” said Wang.

I-GUIDE will bring together about 40 researchers initially, along with a variety of partners, to transform data practice across many fields from computer, data, and information sciences to atmospheric sciences, ecology, economics, environmental science and engineering, human-environment and geographical sciences, hydrology and water sciences, industrial engineering, sociology, and statistics.

“I-GUIDE nurtures a diverse and inclusive geospatial discovery community across many disciplines by bridging disciplinary digital data divides with broader impacts amplified through a well-trained and diverse workforce and proactive engagement of minority and underrepresented groups,“ said Wang of the Institute’s approach and vision.

Because the challenging issues of sustainability and resilience call for interdisciplinary expertise, I-GUIDE is intended to play a central role in bridging disciplines, creating partnerships and frameworks for collaboration across domains. I-GUIDE will also work with community consortia such as Consortium of Universities for the Advancement of Hydrologic Science (CUAHSI), Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC), and the University Consortium for GIScience (UCGIS) to build consensus and establish priorities for developing a community-oriented and integrative I-GUIDE platform. The institute will also foster open collaboration among diverse communities, bridging the digital divide that hinders participation from underrepresented communities. I-GUIDE will also offer education and training programs, as well as access to cutting-edge geospatial data capabilities (e.g., CyberGIS, GeoEDF, and HydroShare).

I-GUIDE is organized across six interrelated focus areas: (A) Convergence Science Catalysts; (B) Geospatial Artificial Intelligence (AI) & Data Science; (C) Core CI Capabilities & Services; (D) Education & Workforce Development; (E) Engagement & Partnerships; and (F) Evaluation & Knowledge Transfer. I-GUIDE brings together leaders in scientific research, technical development, education, knowledge transfer, and engagement through focus area teams. This strategy ensures that research, education, broadening participation, and knowledge transfer activities are deeply integrated across the institute from individual teams to the leadership.

For more information, visit the I-GUIDE website.

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AAG Welcomes New Annals Editor

Brian King has been named a co-editor of Human Geography and Nature & Society for The Annals of the American Association of Geographers

King is a professor and Head of the Department of Geography at the Pennsylvania State. His research, teaching, and outreach focus on livelihoods, conservation and development, environmental change, and human health, centering on Southern Africa. More recently, his laboratory group (HELIX: Health and Environment Landscapes for Interdisciplinary eXchange) is examining how COVID-19 is transforming the US opioid epidemic. Beyond the university, his affiliations span numerous departments at Penn State and other institutions. At Penn State, he is a Faculty Research Associate with the Population Research Institute, Research Affiliate with the Earth and Environmental Systems Institute, and Faculty Affiliate with the School of International Affairs and Consortium to Combat Substance Abuse. King is also an Honorary Research Associate with the African Climate and Development Initiative at the University of Cape Town and was selected as a National Academy of Sciences Kavli Fellow in 2017.

King served on the Editorial Board of the Annals from 2016-2019, as well as on the Editorial Boards of African Geographical Review since 2019 and of Geoforum since 2014. His book States of Disease: Political Environments and Human Health (University of California Press, 2017received the Julian Minghi Distinguished Book Award, and was reviewed in April 2019 in The AAG Review of Books. An active member of several AAG Specialty Groups, including the Cultural and Political Ecology and Development Geographies specialty groups, he has also served in leadership roles, including successive terms as Director, Vice Chair, and Chair of the Developing Areas Specialty Group (which changed its name to Development Geographies in 2008).

King joins Human Geography editor Kendra Strauss of Simon Fraser University and Nature & Society Editor Katie Meehan of King’s College London to respond to the ongoing challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic, including an increase in manuscript submissions and a decrease in reviewer availability. He will also support the editors’ ability to devote additional attention to upcoming special issues of the Annals. He will serve in the capacity of co-editor through December 31, 2023.

 

 

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AAG Announces Undergraduate Program Excellence Awards

The American Association of Geographers (AAG) has named two recipients of the 2021 Award for Bachelors’ Program Excellence in Geography: The Geographic Science Program at James Madison University (JMU) in Virginia, and the Department of Geography and Anthropology at Kennesaw State University in Georgia.

The annual award and cash prize for Bachelors’ Program Excellence is one of three subcategories in AAG’s Program Excellence Awards, honoring Geography departments and Geography programs within blended departments that have significantly enhanced the prominence and reputation of Geography as a discipline and demonstrated the characteristics of a strong and engaged academic unit. The Bachelors’ Program award honors non-PhD-granting Geography programs at the baccalaureate level. Such programs play an important role in educating future geographers and promoting the discipline to a wider world, but tend not to be included in national rankings within the Academy.

JMU’s Geographic Science Program has shown remarkable growth over the last nine years, increasing from 156 to 240 majors, and employing 9.5 full-time tenure-track faculty. The program has invested in high-impact teaching practices that engage undergraduate students in field experiences in water resources, advanced cultural geography, and biogeography, often in the context of community engagement and service learning, both locally and abroad, and project-based instruction with partners such as Shenandoah National Park. The program is also known for its collegiality and maintenance of connections with its alumni.

Kennesaw State University’s Department of Geography and Anthropology has shown extraordinary energy and success in its promotion of geography on and off campus, since its founding in 1997. Offering six degree tracks — a Geospatial Sciences B.S., a Geography B.A., a Geography Minor, an Environmental Studies Minor, a Certificate in Geographic Information Sciences, and a Certificate in Land Surveying–the program serves about 7,000 students per year with 15 full-time faculty, 4 limited term full-time faculty, and 9 part-time faculty. Emphasizing experiential learning, professional experiences, high-impact practices, community engagement, internships and co-ops, teaching assistantships, and study abroad opportunities, the department tailors its coursework for students based on their educational interests and career goals.

“Undergraduate programs in Geography are the lifeblood of the discipline,” said Gary Langham, Executive Director of AAG. “These programs open so many doors to students, preparing them for careers in every sector and virtually every imaginable field, from environmental science to public health to business logistics, and so much more. We commend James Madison University and Kennesaw State University for their innovation in attracting and engaging students and their communities.”

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2021 AAG Honors Announced

Each year, the AAG invites nominations for AAG Honors to be conferred in recognition of outstanding contributions to the advancement or welfare of the profession. The AAG Honors Committee and the AAG Council are pleased to announce the following AAG Honorees.

2021 AAG Lifetime Achievement Honors

Dr. Carol Harden, University of Tennessee Knoxville

Carol Harden, the 2021 recipient of the AAG’s Lifetime Achievement Honors, is the quintessential field scientist, professional association leader, and effective science communicator. She has been at the forefront of advancing geography’s role in the natural sciences, whether in the AAG, National Research Council, National Geographic Society, or National Science Foundation. Over a half-century career, Harden has established herself as one of the leading figures in contemporary physical geography and environmental science. More broadly, she has had a tremendous influence across our entire discipline, owing to the many roles she has played at the University of Tennessee, AAG, National Research Council, and National Geographic Society, and as editor of Physical Geography.

Since the 1980s, Harden has done fieldwork in the Andes, including a year on a Fulbright to Ecuador. Her commitment to international fieldwork and diversity in geography and other field disciplines and her encyclopedic knowledge of physical geography allows her to evaluate critically, and advocate for support of, fieldwork, especially by diverse scholars from around the world. In addition to her Latin American research, she has generated a substantial body of research in the U.S., mainly in Appalachia, on soil erosion, watershed hydrology, water quality, and human impacts.

Harden is currently the Chair of the Geographical Sciences Committee and a Member of the Board on Earth Sciences and Resources, both for the National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM). She was recently a member of the prestigious and influential Committee on Research and Exploration of the National Geographic Society. She has also served as a member and Chair of the Nominations Committee, Geology, and Geology Section, American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). Harden was a member (2017) and then Chair (2016-2020) of the Geographical Sciences Committee (GSC-NASEM). In 2010-2012, Harden served first as Vice President and then as President of the American Association of Geographers. She is a compassionate listener and a fair-minded leader. Harden is a mentor with an impact on cultivating new and early-career disciplinary leaders. She does this with a clear vision of geography’s role in science, higher education, and society, allowing her to see and realize new opportunities and build new initiatives. A strong sense of collegiality and caring has allowed her to engage in constructive and productive dialog across several disciplinary divides. For these qualities and achievements, the AAG recognizes Carol Harden as the 2021 recipient of the AAG Lifetime Achievement Honors.

2021 AAG Distinguished Scholarship Honors

Cindi Katz, City University of New York (CUNY)

Cindi Katz is internationally renowned for her scholarship on social reproduction, children’s geographies, political ecology, global economic restructuring and the connections between the production of space and nature. As a pioneering scholar of Marxist feminist theory, Katz was one of the first geographers to investigate the important contributions of feminist theory to questions of space and time in the discipline. Her academic record testifies to her history of innovative work, theory-driven insights, and field-shaping interventions.

One of Katz’s most influential scholarly contributions lies in the realm of social reproduction. Her scholarship has convincingly shown how capitalist accumulation depends heavily on the unpaid or low paid labor of women. This feminist insight, which Katz highlighted and made prominent in geographical scholarship, has been one of the most critical ideas in Marxist feminist theory of the past three decades. Katz has compelling demonstrated the uneven effects of capitalist accumulation from the relational standpoint of women, children, and marginalized communities who bear the burdens of social reproduction even as their lives and livelihoods become increasingly precarious.

In a series of theoretical interventions and empirical studies, Katz also helped to establish and develop the field of children’s geographies. Her work interprets the political economy of development in relation to personal development (from childhood to adulthood), arguing that neither form of development can be understood without the other. Her seminal contributions in this area include improved understandings of how place and space shape children’s lives, and in terms of how the gendered, raced and classed experiences of children shape place and space. Katz has also made sustained and significant epistemological contributions to Marxist feminist theory, developing two theoretical concepts that have had far reaching impacts on geography and cognate disciplines. The first of these is the concept of “minor theory” which engages with the ways power and authority shape how geographic knowledge is practiced and produced. Here Katz’s theorization is noteworthy for offering a way of working through the contradictions and limits of mainstream theory to develop more engaged and accurate accounts of the everyday world. Her other theoretical advancement is that of counter-topography, which is a means of recognizing the historical and geographical specificities of particular places while recognizing their analytic connections to specific material social practices. These theoretical contributions illustrate one way in which Katz’s scholarship has shaped the course of debates within the discipline, as well as influencing the research agendas and inter-subjective practices of other scholars.

In sum, Katz’s has made an immense impact on contemporary human geography. Her theoretical and empirical contributions to geography and beyond are of the highest quality. Her enthusiasm for her field and relentless efforts to identify and transform exploitative power relations have had a profoundly positive influence on geographic theory, practice, and education. Katz’s scholarship is among the most significant in the discipline. For these reasons, the AAG recognizes Cindi Katz as the 2021 recipient of the AAG’s Distinguished Scholarship Honors.

James Tyner, Kent State University

James A. Tyner models the best practices of engaged and relevant scholarship in critical human geography. In more than two decades of professional work, the majority of them at Kent State University in Ohio, Tyner’s academic productivity has been prolific—more than twenty books; at least one hundred and twenty refereed articles; and myriad conference presentations, panels, and keynotes. The distinction of his scholarship extends beyond conventional quantitative assessments, however; Tyner’s evolving scholarship has provided a powerful moral and ethical voice for those who study social justice, conflict, and violence.

His book War, Violence, and Population: Making the Body Count provides a grounded analysis of violence and conflict in Vietnam, Cambodia, and Rwanda. It received the prestigious Meridian Book Award in 2010. Tyner’s work on conflict and violence has become more focused on South East Asia, specifically Cambodia. He provides novel and innovative analyses of the places, landscapes and experiences of violence. Tyner’s approach to this work is profound as he couples a continued theoretical journey with, as one essayist, Sabina Lawreniuk in the AAG Review of Books, puts it, “the fortitude to trace meticulously through the material, nonmaterial and never materialized fragments of Cambodia’s past—texts, landscapes, bodies, bones and memories” to ask how Cambodia’s violence was made. Explorations of memory and memorialization appear elsewhere in Tyner’s individual and shared work, always with an insistence and invitation for moral and ethical analysis on the part of the reader. As one of the letters of support noted, his “broader research trajectory takes the lives of the marginal and vulnerable seriously.” Reviewers of his work, elsewhere, describe it as accessible, powerful, timely, vivid and compelling.

Tyner’s approach to scholarship reveals an engagement with place-based fieldwork, archival work, but also, the applications of remote-sensing and hydrological analyses. His research has been supported by two significant National Science Foundation grants and has been recognized repeatedly by his peers inside and outside of Geography. He has also been recognized as a researcher by several AAG Specialty groups and has received both the Glenda Laws Award, the Jim Blaut Award, and the Julian Minghi Book Award.

A complement to Tyner’s powerful and relevant academic scholarship is his public scholarship at Kent State University and beyond. Tyner has been recognized by his colleagues at Kent State for his leadership in organizing scholarly events related to memory, violence and conflict. He was recently appointed as Director of the Institute for the Study and Prevention of Violence. Tyner’s commitment and generosity extends to his mentoring and encouragement of graduate students and junior scholars, which has been repeatedly recognized at his home institution. The professional pathway of Tyner reveals a significant and enduring contribution to transformative and grounded research, an indefatigable productivity for formal academic and public scholarship, and a deep and enduring commitment to social justice and human dignity. For these reasons, James A. Tyner is the 2021 recipient of AAG’s Distinguished Scholarship Honors.

2021 Ronald F. Abler Distinguished Service Honors 

The AAG awards the Ronald F. Abler Distinguished Service Honors for 2021 to Joseph Oppong for his exceptional service and commitment to the discipline of geography and geographers. Oppong has served generously and effectively in numerous support and leadership roles within the AAG and beyond. Oppong’s service, research, teaching, and graduate advising has focused energy and attention on the geography of Africa and on the superb work of African scholars from around the world. He is further
credited, through his own research and tireless support of numerous organizations and individuals, with having played a key role in helping to bring medical geography to the forefront of our discipline in recent years.

Oppong’s contributions to the AAG’s African Specialty Group (ASG) are difficult to capture in a few words, but suffice it to say that he has been a pillar of the ASG since the early 1990s. He helped to popularize the group, expand participation, and further internationalize membership for both the ASG and for the entire AAG. Under Oppong’s leadership, the ASG become not only a preeminent forum to discuss scholarship on the geography of Africa, it quickly became the preeminent place to meet and discuss African geography with African scholars and students. Oppong has helped guide the ASG to become one of the more active specialty group communities within the AAG as well as a dynamic professional bridge between AAG members and African geographers from around the world. While serving in leadership roles in the ASG, Oppong also helped in the effort to revive the scholarly journal the East African Geographical Review, renaming it the African Geographic Review and quickly establishing the journal as a robust and preferred forum for cutting-edge research related to Africa.

Oppong also played a key role in the recent expansion of medical geography through his own research, his graduate advising, and his unflagging service to the AAG’s Medical Geography Specialty Group (MGSG). Oppong served as chair of the MGSG from 2002-2005 and he has been an active member ever since. His own pioneering work on HIV/AIDS in Africa remains critical to the subfield. In short, Oppong’s medical geography research is fashioned as a therapeutic to a public health crisis that continues to ravage communities around the world, but with particularly egregious effects on the people of Africa. In addition to his unique contributions to the ASG and MGSG, Oppong has served on the editorial board of the Professional Geographer, served on multiple NSF panels, and been a steering committee member and US representative, for the International Geographers Union’s Commission on Health and Environment. Oppong’s commitment to our discipline, to supporting its practitioners, and to supporting the AAG’s internationalization, especially among African geographers, stands as an example to all AAG members and therefore warrants the 2021 Ronald F. Abler Distinguished Service Honors.

Patricia Solís, Executive Director of the Knowledge Exchange for Resilience (KER) and Research Associate Professor at Arizona State University

The AAG’s Ronald F. Abler Distinguished Service Honors for 2021 is awarded to Patricia Solís, Executive Director of the Knowledge Exchange for Resilience (KER) and Research Associate Professor in the School of Geographical Sciences and Urban Planning at Arizona State University. Solís is an international leader in facilitating geospatial collaborations around local and global sustainability in novel ways that involve partners in higher education and institutions around the world.

Solís is truly innovative in her approach to develop and execute transformative programs. She has developed more than 50 programs promoting innovations in research, education, and community collaboration, funded by substantial support from federal agencies. Many of these programs seamlessly combine service to local and global communities with advancing the discipline of geography. One example of this is Solís’ work to fund and co-found YouthMappers, an international network of university students and faculty working to support the creation and use of open geospatial data for humanitarian and development assistance. In YouthMappers, Solís strives to help youth develop their leadership skills through mentoring and training in geospatial techniques. Meanwhile, these youth leaders join what Solís refers to as the geospatial revolution, which supports improving the quantity and quality of open geospatial data and geographic knowledge to support improved decision making and policies that lead toward greater resilience.

Solís is now serving as director of KER, where she once again demonstrates her innovative programming. KER is a program that aims to build community resilience in Maricopa County, Arizona, by linking multi-sector community needs with research innovations. Most recently, KER worked to bridge the community and university to improve the area’s resilience to COVID-19.

Solís has served the AAG for many years, including as Deputy Director, Director of Research and Outreach, and Director of Strategic Initiative. In these roles she implemented activities—including revitalizing specialty groups, supporting developing regions, and embracing diversity and inclusion––that transformed the organization, caused membership to surge, and aligned geography within the context of major global challenges such as climate change and sustainable development. During this time, she also played a part in establishing a multimillion-dollar endowment for the AAG, improving the organizations’ productivity and visibility—yet another way in which she has contributed to be transforming the lives of youth and advancing geography. As Ron Abler himself said of Solís’ service: geography’s future will “continue to brighten thanks to her manifold contributions throughout the Americas.”

2021 AAG Gilbert White Distinguished Public Service Honors

Timothy Trainor, US Bureau of the Census

Timothy Trainor, the 2021 recipient of the AAG’s Gilbert F. White Public Service Honors, has devoted more than four decades to public service. He worked at the U.S. Census Bureau from 1980 to 2018, rising from a senior cartographer position to become chief of the geography division and chief geospatial scientist. Over that time, Trainor helped develop and refine multiple waves of innovations that consistently delivered statistically sound collection, integration, and application of geographic and demographic data for those who use this critical public resource. His accomplishments served as the basis for continuous improvements in the work of the census bureau and provided a model for work carried out in numerous nations around the world.

Especially noteworthy during Trainor’s career at the census bureau, he championed the creation and enhancement of the Topologically Integrated Geographic Encoding and Referencing (TIGER) System, the first seamless, topologically integrated map of the nation. He promoted the publication of TIGER data through multiple media, and he instituted the ongoing update of the bureau’s Master Address File (MAF), a national list of all housing units in the nation. He led efforts to ensure each address record in the MAF was linked to a geospatial coordinate in TIGER. These datasets build the foundation for accurate census and survey taking and the production of reliable statistics at local levels of geography across the United States.

Concurrent with his work within the census bureau, Trainor actively and consistently engaged colleagues in open, collaborative, and productive ways. He played a key role in advancing the organization and activities of the Federal Geographic Data Committee, and he was an effective voice for
both the federal and commercial sides in inspiring and advancing the Geospatial Data Act of 2018.

Trainor made strong contributions to international efforts to advance geographic methods and inquiries. He held leadership positions in a number of international organizations, including the International Cartographic Association, of which he was vice president from 2007 to 2015 and is president from 2019 to 2023. He also helped institute the United Nations Committee of Experts on Global Geospatial Information Management, which he co-chaired from 2015 to 2018. Following his retirement from the census bureau, Trainor continues to serve as a consultant to the United Nations, helping to guide the development of the Integrated Geospatial Information Framework, an effort destined to change the way that countries collect, manage, and disseminate geographic information.

Over his career, Trainor repeatedly provided opportunities for others to learn, grow, and participate in the development of geographic data as a public good. His mentorship to many individuals, including many women and persons of color, enabled many of his colleagues to move into leadership roles and continue to advance the important work he has pursued. For these reasons, the AAG has selected Timothy Trainor as the 2021 recipient of the Gilbert F. White Public Service Honors.

2021 Distinguished Teaching Honors

Barbara “Babs” Buttenfield, University of Colorado-Boulder

Barbara (“Babs”) Buttenfield is an innovator in GIScience education. She established one of the first college curricula in GIScience and has been influential in the development of GIScience certificate programs. Buttenfield was also one of the founding members of the University Consortium for Geographic Information Science (UCGIS) and contributed to the advancement of UCGIS’s educational mission. In recognition of her exemplary contributions to GIScience education, UCGIS awarded Buttenfield the inaugural GIS Educator of the Year award in 2001.

Buttenfield is a gifted educator whose courses are well received by students and peers. She particularly excels in the design and instruction of laboratory classes, where she artfully balances theoretical concepts with technical skills. Her ability to explain complex concepts using examples and metaphors is legendary, and she exudes an infectious enthusiasm for GIScience. Buttenfield delivers cutting edge course content, in part informed by her own highly-regarded research. She also is a dedicated mentor and has advised over 60 PhD and Masters students, many of whom are now leaders in GIScience. Buttenfield is equally committed to undergraduate mentoring, and each semester invites undergraduate students to serve as teaching interns. To date, over 80 students have benefited from the additional experience in GIScience problem-solving and in-service learning available through this opportunity.

Throughout her career, Buttenfield has promoted the training and retention of a GIScience workforce and the development of best practices in GIScience teaching. She also co-edited the popular reference work, Map Generalization: Making Rules for Knowledge. Moreover, she has held leadership roles in GIScience-related professional societies, including serving as President of the Cartography and Geographic Information Society. Buttenfield provides valuable consultation on GIScience, notably as a member of the National Research Council’s Mapping Science Committee and the U.S. Census Bureau’s Scientific Advisory Committee. These activities, coupled with her extraordinary teaching and mentoring and innovations in curriculum design, make Barbara Buttenfield the outstanding 2021 recipient of the AAG’s Distinguished Teaching Honors.

2021 AAG Media Achievement Award

Richard Campanella, Tulane University

The AAG’s Media Achievement Award for 2021 goes to Richard Campanella, Professor of Practice in the School of Architecture at Tulane University, where he also remains the only geographer on campus. As a scholar of New Orleans and the wider Gulf Coast, Campanella has authored seven monographs published by university presses and four popular books as well as dozens of journal articles and book chapters on the historical geography and cultural landscapes of New Orleans, Louisiana, and the Gulf Coast.

Most pertinent to this particular honor, Campanella makes his research accessible to a general audience of avocational geographers, using popular media to engage the public in geographical scholarship. He combines historical maps, GIS, landscape photography, and accessible prose to explain for readers of his essays such quintessentially geographical topics as the origins of neighborhoods, street names, cadastral systems, settlement patterns, architectural styles, topography, hydrological engineering, and many other elements of the local landscape. His nearly 200 essays in the Times-PicayuneThe AdvocateLouisiana Cultural Vistas64 ParishesThe Atlantic, and other popular periodicals testify that the reading public appreciates geographical insights into the places they call home. For those more inclined to view than read, he has created an online video series called The Geographer’s Space, currently up to nine episodes of about five minutes long each, that reprise some of his essays in 64 Parishes, a project of the Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities. Augmenting that prolific output of newspaper columns, magazine essays, and videos, Campanella provides followers of his Twitter feed @nolacampanella near daily insights into the historical emergence of the Crescent City’s landscapes, often placing a street scene from the late nineteenth or early twentieth century in its present context. He is also a popular speaker, delivering not only keynotes at academic conferences such as the National Humanities Conference, but also public talks at venues throughout the region.

As one of his nomination letters puts it, “he has become the unofficial geographer laureate for New Orleans and has reached a broad swath of the local and regional reading public.” In fact, in bookstores all along the Gulf Coast, one will usually find at least one book by Campanella, and often a whole shelf full. He unquestionably exemplifies the letter and spirit of this award to recognize “exceptional and outstanding accomplishments in publicizing geographical insights in media of general or mass communication.” (Photo Credit: Paula Burch-Celentano of Tulane University)

Since 1951, AAG Honors have been offered annually to recognize outstanding accomplishments by members in research and scholarship, teaching, education, service to the discipline, public service outside academe, and for lifetime achievement. The AAG Honors Committee is elected by the AAG membership and charged with making award recommendations for each category, with no more than two awards given in any one category. This year’s Honors Committee members are Julie A. Silva, University of Maryland College Park (Chair); Amy Glasmeier, Massachusetts Institute of Technology; Ronald Hagleman, III, Texas State University; Richard Kujawa, St. Michael’s College; Andrew Sluyter, Louisiana State University; and Julie Winkler, Michigan State University.

For more than 100 years, The American Association of Geographers (AAG) has contributed to the advancement of geography. Our members from nearly 100 countries share interests in the theory, methods, and practice of geography, which they cultivate through the AAG’s Annual Meeting, scholarly journals (Annals of the American Association of Geographers, ​ The Professional Geographer,​ The AAG Review of Books ​ and GeoHumanities​)​, and the online AAG Newsletter. The AAG is a 501(c)3 nonprofit​ organization founded in 1904.

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