2026 AAG Communities Awards
Each year, our Communities—Regional Divisions, Specialty Groups, Affinity Groups, and Communities of Practice, lead the nomination and selection of awards that recognize outstanding members. This communities‑driven approach reflects the values, priorities, and expertise of those closest to the work. These awards support the mission of each community and honor scholars for their meaningful contributions within their specialty, affinity, or region. In doing so, they celebrate excellence, elevate peer‑recognized leadership, and advance the collective work of our community members. Below are this year’s award recipients for each community.
Regional Divisions
Association of Pacific Coast Geographers (APCG)
AAG Council Outstanding Student Paper Award, Graduate, Caitlyn Linehan, UC Santa Barbara, Who Gains, Who Loses? Equity Impacts of Park Closures and Open Streets
East Lakes Regional Division (ELDAAG)
AAG Council Outstanding Student Paper Award, Undergraduate, Margarete Brady, Grand Rapids Community College
AAG Council Outstanding Student Paper Award, Graduate, Theodora Mary Fletcher, University of Toledo
Student Poster/Presentation Award
- Anthony Randall Poynter
- Benjamin Britton
- Cyenna Ulrich-Cech
- Elizabeth Blakley-White
- Harrison Frenken
- Jennie Golaszewski
- Margarete Brady
- Tuhin Chowdhury
- Michelle Medved
- Oluwadamilola Salau
- Peter Berdo
- Ruija Hu
- Sage Lail
- Sara Conner
- Theodora Mary Fletcher
Great Plains Rocky Mountains Regional Division (GPRM)
AAG Council Outstanding Student Paper Award, Graduate, Stephen Adebisi, South Dakota State University, Do Self-Restored Peatlands Stabilize Soil Organic Carbon? An Enzyme Assay Approach to Evaluating Carbon Stability at the Marcell Experimental Forest, Minnesota, USA
Middle Atlantic Regional Division (MAD)
MAD-AAG Advancing Geography Meritorious Award (MAGMA), Maya Clark, Towson University, Urban Canopy Equity: Assessing Socioeconomic Disparities in Tree Cover and Quantifying Urban Forest Changes in Baltimore
AAG Council Outstanding Student Paper Award, Graduate
- Max Gundling, Salisbury University, The Fractured Metropolis: Gentrification, Exclusion, and Spatial Inequality in the Washington-Baltimore Corridor
- Haijun Li, University of Maryland – College Park, Agricultural expansion and intensification in Brazil: A literature synthesis of dynamics, drivers, and implications
Middle States Regional Division (MSAAG)
AAG Council Outstanding Student Paper Award, Undergraduate, Valerie Davidheiser, Kutztown University, The Influence of climate change on dew point temperatures in Pennsylvania
AAG Council Outstanding Student Paper Award, Graduate, Naznin Nahar Sultana, University of Delaware, Post-Displacement Adaptation Practices of Internally Displaced People: Reproduction of Vulnerability in Urban Informal Space
Undergraduate Student Paper Competition
- Winner – Valerie Davidheiser
- 2nd place – Padmini (Raven) Vijayakumar
Graduate Student Paper Competition
- Winner – Naznin Nahar Sultana
- 2nd place – Caitlyn Linehan
Graduate Student Poster Competition
- Winner – Kripa Shrestha
- 2nd place (tie) – Arafat Hassan & Hilda Afelu-Amenyo
New England / St. Lawrence Valley Regional Division (NESTVAL)
AAG Council Outstanding Student Paper Award, Undergraduate, Delaney Gardner, Mount Holyoke College, Coastal Resilience Planning and Policy in Florida
AAG Council Outstanding Student Paper Award, Graduate, Gianna Dejoy, University of Maine, Reconceiving rural distance: Mothers’ narratives of health resource loss and access to maternity care in Maine
Southeast Regional Division (SEDAAG)
AAG Council Outstanding Student Paper Award, Graduate, Nicko Tovar, University of North Carolina – Greensboro, Variation in Bus Transit Infrastructure Provision, Ridership, and Equity: Evidence from North Carolina
Southwest Regional Division (SWAAG)
AAG Council Outstanding Student Paper Award, Undergraduate, Carolina Cambron & Katie Dusek, Texas State University, For Peat’s Sake? An Environmental Geography Analysis of Peatland Carbon Markets in Scotland
AAG Council Outstanding Student Paper Award, Graduate, Adriana Montoya, Texas State University, Rectifying a River: A Critical Case Study of Engineering Control on the Rio Grande in El Paso, Texas
Undergraduate Student Paper Competition, Katie Dusek and Caroline Cambron (co-authors)
Graduate Student Paper Competition
- Winner – Katelyn Cooke
- 2nd place – Brock Burford
- 3rd place – Elizabeth Kubacki
Undergraduate Student Poster Competition
- Winner – Jaydon Allison
- 2nd place – Helen Wagner
Graduate Student Poster Competition
- Ashok Gahatraj
- Sahar Rezaei
World Geography Bowl Scoring Leaders
- Winner – Jaydon Allison
- 2nd place – Hardt Bergmann
- 3rd place (tie) – Brock Burford, Raynee Bacorn
West Lakes Regional Division (WLDAAG)
AAG Council Outstanding Student Paper Award, Undergraduate, Jake Plasky, Depaul University
AAG Council Outstanding Student Paper Award, Graduate, Kei Kato, University of Illinois
Undergraduate Student Paper Competition
- Winner – Joshua Elliot
- 2nd place – Grant Kerpsack
- 3rd place – Evan Frawley & Marko Nikolovski
Master’s Student Paper Competition
- Winner – Thea Brenner
- 2nd place – Isaac Eshun & Brianna Sas-Perez
- 3rd place – Derek Asiamah
PhD Student Paper Competition
- Winner – Christine Dennis & Hilary Hunt
- 2nd place – Gyudae Kim
Undergraduate Student Poster Competition
- Winner – Jared Saef
- 2nd place – Ellie Strand
- 3rd place – Rachel Loftus
Graduate Student Poster Competition
- Winner – Md Saqib Shahriar
- 2nd place – Harriet Quarshie
- 3rd place – Yiming Zhang
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
- Gordon “Reds” Wolman Graduate Student Research Award (MSc), Itai Bojdak-Yates, Colorado State University
- 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
Distinguished Professor Mark D. Schwartz, of the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee, is internationally recognized for founding the subdiscipline of phenoclimatology—the integrative study of relationships between seasonal biological activity and climate. Over four decades, his pioneering work has transformed understanding of vegetation phenology and its central role in assessing and predicting global environmental change. A prolific and influential scholar, Dr. Schwartz has authored more than one hundred peer-reviewed publications, edited three landmark editions of Phenology: An Integrative Environmental Science, and sustained continuous support from the National Science Foundation. His development of the “Spring Indices” revolutionized how scientists and agencies track the onset of the growing season, establishing indicators now used by the U.S. Global Change Research Program, the Environmental Protection Agency, and the USA National Phenology Network, which he co-founded. Through visionary research, mentorship, and leadership, Dr. Schwartz has elevated phenology from a niche topic to a core dimension of climate science. His work exemplifies geography’s power to bridge disciplines and connect data-driven inquiry with environmental understanding.
Dr. Seth Appiah-Opoku is honored with the AAG Distinguished Teaching Award for his exceptional contributions to geographic education over nearly three decades. A professor at the University of Alabama since 2002, he has demonstrated a deep commitment to student learning, curriculum innovation, and mentorship. His teaching blends interdisciplinary perspectives with experiential learning, including international field programs in Ghana.
Dr. Derek H. Alderman, Chancellor’s Professor of Geography at the University of Tennessee, has received this year’s Gilbert F. White Distinguished Public Service Award. Dr. Alderman has three decades of experience advancing the field of social and cultural geography through public engagement and transformative leadership. He is a Fellow and former President (2017-18) of the AAG, having used his presidency to advocate for outreach, media engagement, and community partnerships as core professional responsibilities. He is equally dedicated to geographic education, earning the George J. Miller Award for Distinguished Service to Geographic Education (2023) and the Susan Hardwick Excellence in Mentoring Award (2024) for his extraordinary work mentoring graduate students and supporting K–12 teachers.
Dr. Karen Barton, Professor of Geography, GIS, and Sustainability at the University of Northern Colorado, is the inaugural awardee of the Public and Engaged Scholarship Honors. Given her outstanding community engagements, Professor Barton exemplifies the qualities celebrated by this honor—collaborative knowledge production; the integration of research, teaching, and service; and long-standing relationships with community partners around the world. Her community-engaged research is rooted in and extends the values shared by geographers and humanitarian scholars, cultivating environmental sustainability with community partners in places as varied as Senegal, Nepal, Nicaragua, and Norway. Whether teaching or engaged in community-based research and practice, Karen Barton embodies the ideals of Public and Engaged Scholarship. Her collaborative, inclusive, and responsive approach to research and teaching is exemplary of how geographers can create knowledge with, not merely about, communities. For more than two decades, Dr. Barton’s research on humanitarian disasters, environmental issues, and social challenges has earned international recognition and the deep respect of those with whom she works. Through numerous grants, including twelve Fulbright awards, she ensures that research translates into tangible, lasting benefits for the communities, students, and colleagues involved. This combination of initiative and stewardship has propelled innovation in her own teaching and spurred the purposeful evolution of the Geography, GIS, and Sustainability program at the University of Northern Colorado.
Dr. Nina Siu-Ngan Lam is the E. L. Abraham Distinguished Professor at Louisiana State University, and Wei Lun Professor at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. She has made transformative and enduring contributions to the field of geography for over four decades. As pioneering scholar in Geographic Information Science, spatial analysis, and environmental studies, Dr. Lam’s seminal research on spatial interpolation, scale, and fractal analysis established foundational principles that continue to shape contemporary GIScience and spatial modeling. Her innovative applications of these methods to topics of environmental health, disaster resilience, and sustainability have significantly advanced the understanding of human–environment systems. Notably, her Resilience Inference Measurement (RIM) framework provides a rigorous, data-driven approach for assessing community resilience to natural hazards.
Dr. Paul Robbins has profoundly shaped geography through his transformative scholarship, exceptional academic leadership, and sustained public engagement. His pioneering work in political ecology has redefined how geographers understand human–environment relationships. His book Political Ecology: A Critical Introduction remains a foundational text in geography and beyond—spanning wildlife ecology, urban planning, and sustainability science—with more than 6,700 citations. His Lawn People—a highly original and witty exploration of the everyday political ecology of suburban landscapes—was honored with the AAG James Blaut Award and cited nearly 1,000 times.
Dr. He Yin, Associate Professor of Geography at Kent State University, is honored with the AAG Media Achievement Award for his impactful and globally reaching research on the environmental consequences of armed conflicts and land abandonment. Dr. He Yin successfully translated sophisticated geospatial analysis into actionable insights that guide both humanitarian response and financial decision making.
Dr. Qunying Huang is known for exceptional scholarship, exemplary dedication to training the next generation of geographers, significant contributions to the field of geography, and a strong commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion. She leads an internationally recognized research program on geospatial big data and GeoAI at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and has established herself as a leading scholar in geocomputation and big-data sensing techniques for real-time emergency response and Earth observation. Dr. Huang is committed to high-quality teaching and mentorship, as evidenced by her recognition as a Madison Teaching and Learning Excellence Faculty Fellow at the University of Wisconsin, where she has made her courses accessible to over 700 students annually from diverse academic and cultural backgrounds. She is a sought-after advisor and has shepherded dozens of master’s and doctoral graduate students who have gone on to academia, government, and industry. She has served in various capacities for the AAG, including multiple roles within the AAG Cyberinfrastructure Specialty Group (CISG), and has organized and chaired numerous sessions at the AAG annual meeting. Her scholarly work has been dedicated to revealing and addressing social issues of underrepresented and marginalized groups, exploring access inequality, and developing evidence-based strategies for increasing equity and inclusion.
Dr. Peter Kedron is a leading geographer whose work advances fundamental understanding of spatial processes, innovation diffusion, and the dynamics of human-environment systems. As a faculty member at the University of California Santa Barbara, he is recognized for his methodological rigor and theoretical contributions to spatial data science and economic geography. Dr. Kedron’s research integrates spatial econometrics, geographic information science, and various forms of geospatial analytics to examine how ideas, technologies, and policies evolve across space and time. His pioneering studies on replication and reproducibility in geographic research have elevated the discipline’s commitment to scientific transparency and open scholarship. An active leader in the American Association of Geographers (AAG), Dr. Kedron has strengthened the link between geographic theory and data-driven policy solutions. His scholarship exemplifies the fusion of spatial thinking, computational innovation, and interdisciplinary collaboration that defines geography’s expanding role in addressing complex societal challenges.
Dr. Abigail H. Neely is associate professor of geography at Dartmouth College, where she is recognized for her scholarship in political ecology, health, and social justice in sub-Saharan Africa. Her award-winning book Reimagining Social Medicine from the South (Duke University Press, 2021) reframes social medicine through ethnographic and archival work in rural South Africa, examining how human and more-than-human forces shape health and inequality. She has published widely in leading journals such as Social Science & Medicine and Progress in Human Geography, with research supported by major NSF and Yale fellowships. Dr. Neely has also played a key role in disciplinary service, including editorial work for Environment and Planning E and leadership of the AAG Working Group on Research Partnerships for Targeted Mentoring Networks. At Dartmouth, she advances socially engaged scholarship as the School House Professor, leading one of Dartmouth’s six house communities, as a former Senior Fellow in the Society of Fellows and as a committed mentor to students and early career scholars.
Dr. Godwin Arku has made significant contributions to the discipline of geography and to the AAG community through impactful scholarship, dedicated mentoring, and wide-ranging service. As professor and Western Faculty Scholar at Western University in Canada, he works in the field of urban geography, including examining the planning and management of cities, and assessing the lived experiences of urban residents, consistently foregrounding equity, institutional accountability, and the need for context-sensitive planning. Dr. Arku is deeply committed to mentorship and capacity building, having supervised many doctoral students who now hold academic and professional positions around the globe. Dr. Arku has made sustained contributions in foregrounding marginalized voices, including work on informal urban communities in Africa and racialized essential workers in Canada, and has been recognized with the Robbins-Ollivier Excellence in Equity Award. Dr. Arku served as the Chief Editor of the African Geographical Review, an official journal of the AAG published on behalf of its Africa Specialty Group. He has served the AAG in multiple other capacities, including as vice chair of the Africa Specialty Group, member of the Government Data and Employment Committee, and current member of the AAG Honors Committee.
Dr. Marilyn A. Brown is a leading geographer and energy policy expert whose work has shaped national and global approaches to sustainable energy and climate solutions. A Regents’ Professor at the Georgia Institute of Technology’s School of Public Policy, she integrates geographic analysis with technology and policy research to advance understanding of energy transitions, innovation, and environmental equity. Previously at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Dr. Brown led pioneering studies on renewable energy, efficiency, and the spatial dynamics of technological change. Her service on National Academies’ committees and contributions to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) highlight her leadership in linking geography, science, and policy. Elected to the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) and the National Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine (NASEM), and a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Dr. Brown’s research continues to inform pathways toward a low-carbon, resilient, and equitable energy future.
Dr. K. Maria D. Lane is a professor of Geography and Environmental Studies and Dean of Graduate Studies at the University of New Mexico, where she has advanced the discipline through innovative scholarship, institutional leadership, and community engagement. An internationally recognized historical geographer, she is the author of Geographies of Mars: Seeing and Knowing the Red Planet (2011) and Fluid Geographies: Water, Science, and Settler Colonialism in New Mexico (2024), both with the University of Chicago Press. These books illuminate how scientific and cartographic practices shape environmental knowledge and power. As department chair from 2014 to 2019, Dr. Lane launched the state’s first joint PhD in Geography, founded the R.H. Mallory Center for Community Geography, expanded faculty ranks, and redesigned the undergraduate curriculum. Her leadership in securing major NSF funding has strengthened graduate education, supported community-engaged research, and advanced climate change and geovisualization initiatives. She has also served as editor of both Historical Geography and the Journal of Historical Geography and continues to lead public scholarship projects such as the Indigenous Cartographies Symposium and the Native Trails geovisualization collaboration with the National Park Service.
Dr. David López-Carr has conducted ground-breaking research on the intersecting issues of poverty, hunger, deforestation, and health in the Americas. A professor at University of California Santa Barbara, López-Carr’s pioneering work in land change science has deepened our understanding of the relationships between population dynamics and tropical deforestation, and the complicating influences of gender, local economics and remittances, and climate-driven impacts. International agencies and community organizations have benefited from his work documenting place-based ecological and socioeconomic drivers of environmental injustices faced by diverse communities across the globe. An inspiring teacher and visionary leader, Dr. López-Carr has mentored underrepresented scholars, advocated for equitable hiring, and shaped institutional practice by improving representation, recruitment, and retention.
Dr. Jerry Mitchell, department chair and professor at the University of South Carolina, is a renowned expert in, and advocate for, geographic education. His extensive leadership, community outreach, and scholarly contributions combine a rigorous understanding of what geographic learning and teaching should aim for with creativity and entrepreneurial spirit to promote that intellectual vision. Through his two decade-long coordination of the South Carolina Geographic Alliance (SCGA), more than 40,000 teachers have received training, networking opportunities, and pedagogical support, making SCGA one of the most successful and innovative alliances in the U.S. As editor of the Journal of Geography, and president of the National Council for Geographic Education, he spearheaded efforts to strengthen and diversify geographic education scholarship; to increase involvement of early-career scholars; and to advance inclusion within the discipline. His many honors and awards, including the AAG’s Gilbert H. Grosvenor Honors in Geographic Education, are a testament to his transformative efforts to advance geographic education at all levels and to shape its future nationally and internationally.
Dr. Joann Mossa is a highly productive fluvial geomorphologist who researches physical geography through a lens of human environment dynamics. Dr. Mossa has produced influential studies that examine coastal plain river systems as sources of water and assess the geomorphic consequences of mining, hydropower, floodplain alterations, and dredging. This work provides not only a scientific understanding of these processes but also a framework for evaluating their social and environmental tradeoffs. As an award-winning teacher and mentor at the University of Florida, her unwavering commitment to advancing discipline and mentoring the next generation of geographers is truly exemplary. She has been active in the AAG, SEDAAG, her state, university, and department, including service as president of SEDAAG and the Florida Society of Geographers. Dr. Mossa has received the AAG Geomorphology Specialty Group’s Mel Marcus Distinguished Career Award, the Richard J. Russell Award from the AAG’s Coastal and Marine Geography Specialty Group, SEDAAG’s Lifetime Achievement Award, SEDAAG Research Honors in 2022, and the inaugural Lifetime Achievement Award from the UF Geography department. The AAG is honored to recognize Dr. Joann Mossa as a Fellow.
Dr. Michael Pretes, University of North Alabama, has balanced heavy teaching and mentoring responsibilities with impactful scholarship, extensive service to AAG and the profession, and meaningful public outreach, while still actively publishing research across a broad range of topics. He has taught more than fifty different courses covering human geography, physical geography, regional geography, and geographical methods. He has demonstrated a sustained commitment to advance justice, diversity, equity, and inclusion in the discipline, including recruiting colleagues and supporting students from varied backgrounds. Dr. Pretes has received numerous major teaching, advising, service, and scholarship honors including those from AAG, SEDAAG, APCG, NCGE, and his home university, and he served as the Distinguished Visiting Professor of Geosciences at the United States Air Force Academy in 2024-25. He has demonstrated exemplary service to the AAG, actively participating in the leadership of both SEDAAG in the region where he currently teaches, and APCG, his original home region, where he is serving as their Regional Councilor to AAG and has contributed as President, Awards Committee Chair, Archivist, and Chair of the Latina/o/e American Travel Scholarship Committee. With his incredible creativity and unwavering commitment to teaching, research, and service, the AAG proudly recognizes Dr. Michael Pretes as a Fellow.
Dr. Patricia Solís is an influential geographer whose career bridges research, education, and global collaboration to advance the applied and socially engaged dimensions of geography. As research professor in the School of Geographical Sciences and Urban Planning and executive director of the Knowledge Exchange for Resilience (KER) at Arizona State University and co-founder of Youth Mappers, she has created innovative platforms connecting geographic scholarship with community resilience, open data, and youth empowerment worldwide. Dr. Solís’s work exemplifies how geospatial technologies and participatory mapping can address pressing challenges such as disaster preparedness, migration, sustainability, and social equity. Through leadership in the AAG and international initiatives, she has expanded opportunities for geographic learning and global engagement. A recognized advocate for inclusive and transformative geography, Dr. Solís has inspired a new generation of geographers to apply spatial thinking for social good—making geography a vital force for resilience, justice, and collective problem-solving in communities around the world.
Dr. Barney Warf is a prolific scholar whose work probes and reveals the dynamic forces of change in political and economic geographies. His many books and articles have expanded the field to instill geographic insights into social and economic dimensions of modern life, including the transformative impacts of digital technologies and media, and the emergence of cosmopolitanism and post-truth geographies. A professor at the University of Kansas, Dr. Warf’s diverse contributions, including a prize-winning encyclopedia, have made geographical concepts and research findings accessible to academic and policy audiences, while increasing participation of early-career scholars who have benefited from his mentorship and editorial skills. In editorial positions at the Professional Geographer, GeoJournal, and other leading publications, and through longstanding AAG committee service, Dr. Warf has shaped the future of our discipline by expanding participation of diverse scholars, advancing a steadfast commitment to academic freedom and freedom of speech, and highlighting the responsibility that geographers bear in the public sphere.
This award is presented in recognition of Sarah Elwood’s outstanding and sustained scholarly contributions, specifically her work on participatory, collaborative, and community-based GIS, relational poverty, and the broader dedication of her research and scholarship to social justice in the contemporary world. She is professor and chair of Geography at the University of Washington, doing research that focuses on digital technologies, urban geographies, and creative politics forged by structurally disadvantaged peoples fighting for equity, self-determination, and everyday thriving. Dr. Elwood has studied the use of geographic information systems (GIS) by neighborhood groups fighting gentrification and racial dispossession, interactive online mapping by children whose spatial knowledge and agency often go unseen, digital apps used in low-barrier employment by unsheltered people living and working in public space, and visual poverty politics advanced by unsheltered people and their allies. Works published from these lines of research have opened theoretical and methodological horizons in urban and digital geographies, relational poverty studies, critical and qualitative GIS, visual politics and mixed methods.
Nik Heynen has earned the Presidential Achievement Award in recognition of his work on urban social justice, ecological restoration, and his collaborative work with the Geechee community on Sapelo Island in Georgia, all of which reflect the broader dedication of his research and scholarship to social justice in the contemporary world. He is a Distinguished Research Professor in the Department of Geography at the University of Georgia, a visiting scholar in Food Studies at Spelman College, and the director of education for the Athens-based nonprofit organization Shell to Shore. His research interests sit at the intersection of economic, environmental, climate, and racial justice. For just over a decade, he has been working with members of the Saltwater Geechee in the Hogg Hummock community on Sapelo Island on the restoration of traditional agricultural practices and flood mitigation made necessary as a result of descendants losing their land to development pressure and increasing sea-level rise leading to more frequent flooding. Through this work he co-directs UGA’s Cornelia Walker Bailey Program on Land, Sea and Agriculture with Maurice Bailey.
Dr. Jonathan (Jon) Foley is the Executive Director of Project Drawdown, and independent and internationally trusted organization that provides science-based guidance to climate solutions and strategies. A world-renowned environmental scientist, sustainability expert, and public speaker, Foley focuses on understanding our changing planet and finding new solutions to sustain the climate, ecosystems, and natural resources we all depend on.
The American Association of Geographers recognizes Professor Sarah Holloway with the Susan Hardwick Excellence in Mentoring Award for her longstanding commitment to supporting students and colleagues, and her role in fostering a positive, inclusive academic environment. Over more than 30 years at Loughborough University, she has contributed to meaningful improvements in departmental and institutional culture through her teaching, mentorship, and dedication to equitable practices.
Dr. Rachel Goffe is a human geographer whose work sits at the intersection of social reproduction, carceral geographies, Caribbean Studies and Black Geographies. In a time when these issues are absolutely vital, Dr. Goffe is concerned with the state regulation of dispossession from life and land. While her work is situated in her native Jamaica, the work applies to us all, particularly via the global ramifications of considering racial capitalism, gentrification, placemaking, boundary writing, and how policy and the state help shape claims to the idea of home. Dr. Goffe also has a strong record of community engagement and service both in and out of the academy, including organizing writing circles for graduate students from conflict zones and supporting grassroots organizations that fight for Justice in Jamaica. As someone emphasizing the effects of today’s inequities and fighting to lessen them, Dr. Rachel Goffe should be recognized for continuing the legacy of Dr. Glenda Laws and her exemplary commitment to social justice and social policy.
Dr. Xiao Huang is a data and environmental scientist who combines these two interests into work on disaster mitigation, human-environment interactions, disaster remote sensing, urban studies, and other areas. Rather than study data for data’s sake, he wants to put data to work studying and solving human problems. He shows that research, public service, and community engagement are not mutually exclusive endeavors. His research dossier advocates that “computational urban science needs to go beyond computational”: he considers how human mobility affects people’s lives how we can map floods in real time with social media, heat risk assessment in urban areas, and much more. His work has been featured in the popular media, showing the public how important geography is for solving social problems. Dr. Huang also has an extensive record of leadership in and service to the discipline. A true public scholar, Dr. Xiao Huang should be recognized for continuing the legacy of Dr. Glenda Laws’s exemplary commitment to social justice and social policy.
Dr. Jayajit Chakraborty is a Professor and Mellichamp Chair in Racial Environmental Justice at the Bren School of Environmental Science and Management in the University of California, Santa Barbara, whose research has analyzed spatial and social inequalities associated with environmental hazards and disasters, as well as informed public policies that address environmental injustices. His extensive body of scholarly work, which includes many co-authored publications with graduate students, is well-cited both within and outside the academy. He has contributed to science research, writing, and advocacy, often as the only geographer, as a member of multiple US Environmental Protection Agency advisory committees. Dr. Chakraborty was recently included in the Stanford-Elsevier ranking of the world’s most cited researchers who are in the top 2% in their academic subfield (geography). He has mentored dozens of graduate and undergraduate students (including first-generation and minority students), taught undergraduate and graduate courses across various geographic subfields, served on the editorial boards of several Geography and Environmental Science journals, and chaired AAG committees.
Dr. CindyAnn Rose-Redwood, Teaching Professor of Geography at the University of Victoria, is recognized for her exceptional dedication to teaching excellence, inclusive pedagogy, and student mentorship. Widely recognized as an inspiring instructor and innovative educational researcher, she has received prestigious awards from the Canadian Association of Geographers, the University of Victoria, and the American Association of Geographers, as well as several teaching and learning grants. Dr. Rose-Redwood’s pedagogical creativity is evident through her course design and leadership in integrating anti-racism and social justice into geography curricula, advancing the discipline’s capacity to engage urgent contemporary issues. Beyond the classroom, she has been a transformative mentor to undergraduate and graduate students, serving as a dedicated faculty advisor for student organizations and creating empowering environments for international and first-generation students. Her mentorship has nurtured the next generation of geographers, activists, and community leaders. Also significant are her scholarly contributions to understanding international student experiences. In addition to several refereed articles, her two widely recognized co-edited books reposition international students as critical social actors in shaping higher education, migration, and cultural politics.
Dissertation: “From adaptation to entrapment: Evidence of aquaculture-induced salinity feedback in coastal India”
Alison Mountz and Kira Williams offer a dramatic and important reworking of the disciplinary history of geography itself with Let Geography Die: Chasing Derwent’s Ghost at Harvard (MIT Press, 2025). Not only does this important book re-examine a crucial story in the discipline’s institutional trajectory within the U.S. academy, it also offers a creative and compelling model for blending together scholarly history with the reflexive practices of contemporary disciplinary critique. Combining a new reading of archival sources with new questions about queer identity and academic politics, Let Geography Die isn’t just an exhumation of a particular painful moment in geography’s past, but also an inquiry into the discipline’s present and future. It makes compelling reading for any geographers who wish to reflect on how scholarly effort and personal longing fit into the broader systems of disciplines and institutions.
What would our streets, cities, and neighborhoods look like if urban plans took geographers and their studies seriously? With Reclaiming the Road (University of Minnesota Press), David Prytherch shows us the promise of communities planned, designed, and built for humans, rather than solely cars. Through rich case studies, extensive historical-geographical contexts, and delightful prose, the book offers an indispensable guide for re-engineering urban space through best practices, human-centered designs and policies, and abiding attention to intersectional concepts of equity and justice. In-depth interviews with transportation advocates, city planners, and community leaders across nine U.S. cities meld with interdisciplinary yet accessible theoretical discussions to ground the analysis in both lived experience and insightful scholarship. Immersed in dialogues linking practice, advocacy, and scholarship, Reclaiming the Road wields the powers of geography to ask more of urban design and to reimagine our communities as spaces of mobility and justice.
Jennifer Mapes is the recipient of this year’s John Brinckerhoff Jackson Prize from the AAG. Mapes is an astute reader of the cultural landscape, deploying her skills in reading and interpreting the American small town and its evolution. Attentive to the social and political forces that shape places and landscapes, The New American Small Town (West Virginia University Press) challenges stereotypical perceptions and offers a new interpretation by highlighting the diversity among American towns, based in part on the lived experience of their residents. Mapes introduces a typology to show differences among small towns and discusses images ranging from the nostalgic ideal of the “real” America to stale and declining places to towns struggling to respond to rapid growth. With approachable and engaging writing, the book should be interesting to a wide range of readers, equally appealing for a graduate seminar and a general audience. The New American Small Town addresses a big theme in American geography and will encourage readers to think about these places in new ways.
Professor Jiquan Chen has received the 2025 AAG Distinguished Scholarship Honor in recognition of his transformative impact on geography and environmental science. With over 600 publications and more than $30 million in research funding, Dr. Chen has made significant advances in understanding global ecosystems and the interactions between humans and nature. His groundbreaking SESometry framework has provided a new approach to measuring and analyzing the socioecological impacts of climate change, influencing both policy and scientific research worldwide.
Dr. Xinyue Ye was awarded the AAG Distinguished Scholarship Honor for his transformative work at the intersection of geography, urban planning, and data science. As the Harold L. Adams Endowed Professor at Texas A&M University, he has built an extensive research portfolio that spans multiple disciplines, including geography, urban planning, computer science, engineering, medicine, and public policy. His establishment of pioneering research labs, such as the Urban AI Lab and Computational Social Science Lab, has significantly advanced urban informatics, employing innovative tools like digital twin infrastructures and virtual/augmented reality to enhance urban planning and resilience.
Dr. Scott Greene is recognized with the 2025 Gilbert Grosvenor Honors for Geographic Education Award, celebrating his remarkable dedication to advancing geographic education. Known for his tireless commitment, Dr. Greene’s teaching excellence has earned him several awards including the University of Oklahoma’s highest teaching honor, the prestigious Regents Award for Superior Teaching.
The American Association of Geographers awards the AAG Lifetime Achievement Honors to Dr. Victoria Lawson for her outstanding contributions to geographical research, teaching and mentoring, and disciplinary service. Lawson has published pathbreaking research at the intersection of feminist economic and social geography. Lawson’s initial work was on migration and informal work in Ecuador. Lawson’s ensuing research focuses on rural poverty issues in the United States, leading to the formation of the Relational Poverty Network that charted a new course for geographical relational poverty thinking. Over her 40-year career, Lawson played a leading role in helping to advance feminist care ethics approaches in geographical research.
The American Association of Geographers awards the 2025 Lifetime Achievement Honors to Dr. Rickie Sanders. For four decades, her scholarship, transformative teaching, and visionary leadership have reshaped multiple disciplines and had an influence well beyond academia. Sanders, Professor Emerita in Geography at Temple University, is the first Black woman in the United States to earn a Ph.D. in Geography and the first Black woman in the United States to earn the rank of Professor in the discipline. Sanders was among the first to integrate race and gender in geographic research. Sanders has held significant leadership roles, including heading Temple’s Geography and Urban Studies Department and Women’s Studies Program, and has received grant funding to support her innovative work in geographic education.
The 2025 Media Achievement Award is presented to Dr. Cary Mock for his exceptional and outstanding communication of geographical and climatological insights to broadcast, print, and social media. He has given well over 200 interviews since 2000 to a wide range of local, national, and international media outlets, ranging from local newspapers to the Washington Post, the Guardian, Reuters, and the Associated Press. He has spoken on radio, including Voice of America, and appeared on numerous television stations in the US, Canada, and the United Kingdom. Professor Mock is highly regarded for his ability to convey climate information in ways that are compelling and relatable to varied audiences and he is especially sought after for his ability to not only explain the science of current weather patterns, but also to put current events in historical contexts. His detailed, thorough archival research of climate history enables him to authoritatively compare current climate extremes to historical events. Through decades of carefully communicating climate knowledge, Cary Mock has developed networks of trusted relationships with media and become a reliable, informative voice and excellent role model.
Dr. David Cairns is a respected and innovative biogeographer who integrates diverse field studies to understand how ecological and geomorphic patterns and processes are shaped by gradients in environmental conditions, disturbance regimes, and climate change. His work straddles specialty groups and scientific communities, and he has received honors from several, including the Henry C. Cowles Award from the American Association of Geographers (AAG) Biogeography Specialty Group. He is also a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Cairns’ research focus in the high Arctic has been a significant part of his career, and he currently serves as president of the Board of Directors of the Arctic Research Consortium of the United States, which coordinates international and interdisciplinary work in the Arctic, and was integral to the development and activities of the International Polar Year research program. He served in various capacities for the AAG, including serving as chair and board member for the Biogeography Specialty Group, and as a reviewer on AAG journals and student paper competitions. He made impressive efforts to implement equity and diversity policies at Texas A&M University. Dr. Cairns has provided a model of mentorship and collaboration that elevates all of the voices in a room, and has a laudable track record of teaching and mentoring. The AAG is very proud to recognize Dr. David Cairns as an AAG Fellow.
Dr. Gang Chen has an exemplary track record of leadership and service at multiple levels. This includes, among other things, leadership of the Landscape Specialty Group to service on the Southeastern Division of the AAG (SEDAAG) Program committee to the editorship of the journal Remote Sensing of Environment. A professor in the Department of Earth, Environmental and Geographical Sciences, University of North Carolina at Charlotte, Dr. Chen’s scholarship spans environmental sustainability, geospatial analytics, and remote sensing. Dr. Chen’s research has contributed to the development of novel geospatial models and datasets that advance Earth observation, big data analytics, and enhanced accessibility of geographic services to underserved communities. Dr. Chen is a beloved mentor who has served as faculty advisor to 46 students, from high school sophomores to postdoctoral fellows. Passionate about justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion, Dr. Chen has strived to improve representation of women within the male-dominated field of remote sensing and has undertaken numerous professional development initiatives, workshops, and community outreach events to support the next generation of geographers. These efforts span advising two NGOs – Sustain Charlotte and TreesCharlotte in environmental protection using green infrastructure, giving ‘Science Saturdays’ talks at the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences for K-12 students and their families, and developing remote sensing workshops for urban planners and students in Bangkok, Thailand. The AAG is very proud to recognize Dr. Gang Chen as an AAG Fellow.
Dr. Lorraine Dowler has played a significant and sustained role in advancing geography through her exceptional research, service, and teaching innovations. She has shaped the field of feminist geography by mentoring a generation of feminist scholars and documenting the ties between the gendered spaces of daily life and state politics, power, and militarization. Internationally renowned for her work on feminist geopolitics, Dr. Dowler raises key questions about the gendering of identities in geopolitics, the power dynamics underpinning them, and the blurred boundaries between public and private spaces. She has had a central role in efforts to advance and improve our discipline through her service on AAG Council and Finance committee and her leadership of initiatives like the Task Force for a Harassment-Free AAG. Within her university, she has held a range of leadership positions, from overseeing initiatives around justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion to the headship of Women’s Studies. An exceptional and dedicated mentor, Dr. Dowler is diagnosing obstacles to access and exposing bias and harassment while mentoring new generations of geographic scholars at the intersection of her department, college, and profession. Recipient of teaching and mentoring awards, she has initiated innovations in undergraduate curriculum such as the Apocalyptic Geographies course, which challenges students to use a geographic perspective in analyzing contemporary global justice issues.
Dr. Dupigny-Giroux is a University Distinguished Professor of Geography and Geosciences at the University of Vermont. She is also the state climatologist of Vermont and a recognized leader in hydroclimatic natural hazards, climate literacy and climate services. Her research intersects climate science, hydrology, remote sensing, and geographic information science. She was lead editor of “Historical climate variability and impacts in North America,” a first monograph of its kind that uses documentary and ancillary records in analyzing climate variability and change. She has contributed to all five National Climate Assessments, and served a major role on the 3rd and 4th National Climate Assessments. A highly sought-after speaker, Dr. Dupigny-Giroux has focused on climate literacy to help citizens, municipalities and legislators understand how climate science can inform decisions and improve quality of life. Her numerous leadership roles include serving as president of the American Association of State Climatologists, member of the American Meteorological Society’s Applied Climatology Committee, member of the NOAA Science Advisory Board Climate Working Group, and member of three committees/boards of the National Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine. A Fellow of the American Meteorological Society, she was also an AAG National Councilor and Chair of the Climate Specialty Group, which has honored her with the Lifetime Achievement Award. The AAG is very proud to recognize Dr. Lesley-Ann Dupigny-Giroux as an AAG Fellow. (Photo: Steve Exler, VT EPSCoR program, University of Vermont)
Dr. Timothy Hawthorne’s career has been focused on community, from his pioneering research in community geography to his leadership in student engagement with participatory research. His innovative vision, creating mobile GIS labs to bring geoscience technology to high-need schools and communities, has made GIS an accessible science and tool for communities. These efforts have advanced geography as a participatory, citizen science. Dr. Hawthorne has been a leader within Applied Geography and geographic education, and he has been an award-winning mentor during his career. Just as his research has been focused on community engagement, his teaching and mentorship has been dedicated to advocating for geography students and providing opportunities for students to get involved in the field, showing them that geography is a discipline engaged in the real world with real peoples’ lives. His publicly engaged research in Belize illustrates how Dr. Hawthorne unites his research, teaching, and mentorship in a participatory, community project. Through long-standing research with a community with which he has built strong ties, Dr. Hawthorne invites students to participate in publicly engaged research. This combination of community research, innovative geographic mobile labs, and student-centered, and participatory field work research both in the US and abroad shows that Dr. Hawthorne is the quintessential scholar-teacher. The AAG is very proud to recognize Dr. Timothy Hawthorne as an AAG Fellow.
Dr. Joshua Inwood’s career has centered on developing theoretical frameworks to study racism, white supremacy, and the legacies of social justice movements while ensuring this research is accessible and impactful to multiple audiences. His work has positioned him as a leading voice in examining white supremacy within the field of geography, illustrating how geographic concepts and practices both perpetuate racial oppression and serve as tools for resistance. At the core of Dr. Inwood’s scholarship is an exploration of power dynamics in social and political discourse, alongside a commitment to understanding how grassroots resistance movements challenge systems of oppression and demand accountability. Dr. Inwood is widely recognized as one of geography’s most effective advocates and communicators. Through public forums, he demonstrates the critical role of geographic storytelling and perspectives in addressing pressing social issues. A prolific writer, he contributes extensively to both scholarly publications and broader public research platforms, bridging the gap between academia and the wider community.
Dr. John Kupfer is a highly productive landscape ecologist working at the interface between biogeography, ecology, and geographical information sciences. He has published over 70 papers addressing how ecological patterns and processes are shaped by gradients in environmental conditions, by disturbances such as floods and fires, and by human activities. His research is policy-relevant and actional science. In this way, he is leading biogeography into environmentally important and exciting areas for the 21st century. His research has been recognized twice by the Henry Cowles Award for Excellence in Publication from the Biogeography Specialty Group of the AAG. He is also an award-winning teacher. Additionally, he has provided valuable service to the AAG on numerous committees that include the Governing Council, the Search Committee for the Executive Director of the AAG, the Presidential Taskforce on the State of AAG Regions, and the Honors and Publications committees. He was also president of the Biogeography Specialty Group. The AAG is very proud to recognize Dr. John Kupfer as an AAG Fellow.
Dr. Zhenlong Li is an associate professor in the Department of Geography at Pennsylvania State University and leads the Geoinformation and Big Data Research Laboratory. He is a leading scholar in GIScience focusing on geospatial big data, spatial computing, and geospatial AI. His research aims to enhance knowledge discovery and decision-making regarding hazards, public health, population mobility, and climate change. His work is widely recognized with over 100 well-cited articles published in top-tier international journals, supported by extensive research grants from prestigious sponsors including NSF and NIH. Dr. Li emphasizes equipping future GIScientists with strong problem-solving abilities by integrating spatial and computational thinking in his teaching and advising, and a number of his mentees have secured prominent academic and professional positions. He currently serves as an associate editor of the International Journal of Digital Earth and International Journal of Applied Earth Observation and Geoinformation. Previously, he served as the Chair of the AAG Cyberinfrastructure Specialty Group and co-Chair of Earth Science Information Partnership (ESIP) Cloud Computing Group. Dr. Li’s significant contributions to the advancement of GIScience and his role as a rising leader in the discipline make him a valued member of the geography community and a deserving recipient of the AAG Fellow distinction. The AAG is very proud to recognize Dr. Zhenlong Li as an AAG Fellow.
Dr. Corene Matyas has dedicated their career to producing exceptional, community relevant climate research and communication, guiding and mentoring the future generations of geography and climatology scholars, and creating space for marginalized peoples in the discipline. Dr. Matyas’ research studying the precipitation patterns within hurricanes is critically important as we increasingly need to understand heavy precipitation landfalls and how human perceptions of perceived risk impact assessments and actions in the face of these storms. Dr. Matyas’ research is coupled with their exceptional teaching. They have won teaching awards at both the college and disciplinary level and winning the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences Teacher of the Year Award and the SEDAAG Excellence in Teaching Award a decade apart is a testament to the sustained impact Dr. Matyas has made in teaching and guiding students. It is this dedicated service to the future of our discipline that is a throughline for Dr. Matyas’s career. Their service as a judge for student competitions, organizer for specialty groups and societies that make space for marginalized, underrepresented scholars in geography, and their consistent mentorship of students in the classroom as well as involving them in research is inspiring. They also communicate science to diverse audiences through visual arts. The AAG is very proud to recognize Dr. Corene Matyas as an AAG Fellow.
Dr. Myint is a leader in the use of remote sensing and geographic information science to understand coupled human-environment systems in the context of natural hazards, land change, urban sustainability, and environmental management. He has won accolades from organizations including the United States Geological Survey, the University Consortium of Geographic Information Science, and the American Association of Geographers (AAG) Remote Sensing Specialty Group. Dr. Myint has made great efforts to sustain and advance justice, diversity, equity, and inclusion in geography including giving talks at minority-serving schools in under-resourced communities and serving as the founding Chair of his school DEI committee. Dr. Myint has an extensive record of service to the AAG Remote Sensing Specialty Group, including chair, vice chair, director, special session organizer, and judge for student paper competitions (2009, 2015). He was also invited by AAG to help lead a joint workshop organized by AAG, NASA, and USAID as part of the My Community Our Earth (MyCOE) fellowship initiative that focused on climate change and sustainable landscapes in Asia. Dr. Myint has a long and distinguished track record of teaching and mentoring. The AAG is very proud to recognize Dr. Soe Myint as an AAG Fellow.
Chris S. Renschler is a Supervisory Research Soil Scientist at USDA’s Agricultural Research Service (ARS) National Soil Erosion Research Laboratory (NSERL), following a distinguished 20-year academic career with positions at eight universities on four continents, encompassing research, teaching, and outreach. As the NSERL Research Leader he leads and coordinates science and stakeholder engagement activities to develop the knowledge and technology needed by land users to conserve natural resources for future generations. A Fulbright Scholar, he is internationally recognized for his expertise in soil and water conservation, integrated watershed management, extreme events, and natural resources and hazards management, utilizing GIS and Remote Sensing technologies. His research and stakeholder engagement activities involve the development, validation, and application of integrated hydrology and erosion modeling tools, created collaboratively with scientists, engineers, and practitioners, to facilitate effective decision-making in the context of global climate change, extreme weather events, community resilience, and evolving land use and land cover patterns. Dr. Renschler has exhibited a strong commitment to service within the AAG and has held multiple leadership positions within the AAG, including chair of the Geomorphology Specialty Group, where he played a pivotal role in fostering collaboration and in advancing the group’s career development, research, and awards programs. He is an editorial board member of the Journal of Earth Science Informatics and Remote Sensing. Dr. Renschler is a past recipient of an Achievement in GIS Award from the Environmental Systems Research Institute (Esri) and currently serves as the president of the International Soil Conservation Organization (ISCO). The AAG is very proud to recognize Dr. Christian S. Renschler as an AAG Fellow.
Dr. Kevon Rhiney is a mid-career scholar with an impressive record of research, leadership, mentorship, and service to the AAG. Dr. Rhiney is associate professor of Human-Environment Geography at Rutgers University and was previously on the faculty at The University of the West Indies (Jamaica). One of the leading Caribbean scholars, Dr. Rhiney has enhance understanding of small-island agrarian political ecology, critical disaster studies, and the human dimensions of global environmental change. This has included groundbreaking research on coupled human-environmental impacts of global change on smallholder coffee production. Dr. Rhiney’s service to the discipline notably includes work as editor of the journal Geography Compass, as co-founder and past chair of the AAG Caribbean Geography Specialty Group, and as a former board member and director for the AAG Development Geographies Specialty Group. His teaching and mentorship reflect a commitment to advancing the field of geography and enriching geographic education on the Caribbean as an understudied region. Dr. Rhiney has been especially active in the recruitment and mentorship of international students and students who enhance the diversity of geography. His expertise in formulating policies has been sought by highly influential organizations such as the IPCC, USAID, and the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, which speaks to how Dr. Rhiney’s scholarship has reached into the influential circles beyond the academy. The AAG is very proud to recognize Dr. Kevon Rhiney as an AAG Fellow.
Dr. Emily Rosenman is a committed and creative economic geographer with interests in urban political economy and geographies of humanitarian finance. These are exciting areas that are already advancing established geographic subfields. Her latest research applies economic geography to the US opioid epidemic, examining how pharmaceutical companies exploited health disparities for profit and identifying policy and regulatory interventions that could prevent future harm. Dr. Rosenman is the 2023-24 chair of the Economic Geography Specialty Group (having previously served as treasurer and vice chair), where she has prioritized advancing the causes of equity, diversity, and inclusion, focusing particularly on the contributions of early-career researchers. She has led the creation of an early-career keynote lecture in economic geography now held annually at AAG. She has also developed a program for undergraduate students of color from across the United States to receive mentorship on applying to graduate school in geography. These new initiatives are deeply integrated into her evolving program of scholarship, where she has written on the politics of representation and citations in economic geography, the limits of engaged pluralism, and a framework for economic geography to become more publicly engaged. With a defining interest in contemporary policy problems, Dr. Rosenman is not just a critic, but a builder of alternative ideas and institutions. The AAG is very proud to recognize Dr. Emily Rosenman as an AAG Fellow.
Dr. Southworth is a leader in land change, human-environment dynamics, geographic information science, and remote sensing; and more recently the thoughtful engagement with artificial intelligence and big data to address pressing environmental challenges. Her research exemplifies how scholarship can be performed by highly interdisciplinary research teams that involve both social and environmental scientists. She has worked to broaden diversity and inclusion in AAG, especially in terms of transforming remote sensing in the AAG and beyond to be more inclusive of women, and founding and directing the Women in Geography group at the University of Florida. She has served as a Department Chair for 9 years, where she built a track record of incorporating and implementing innovative ideas to expand geography’s standing within the college and beyond. She serves on the AAG task force on nurturing undergraduate geography education and is a past winner of the Association’s E. Willard and Ruby S. Miller Award. She is a sought-after mentor and has shepherded dozens of master’s and doctoral graduate students who have gone on to significant positions in academia, government, and industry. The AAG is very proud to recognize Dr. Jane Southworth as an AAG Fellow.
Robert Stewart is a Distinguished Scientist in the Spatial Statistics group at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory and a professor in the Bredesen Center Data Science Track at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. His research primarily centers on the geospatial dimensions of risk and decision-making under uncertainty, applying methods from spatial statistics, machine learning, and Bayesian reasoning. His research has made significant impact on a wide variety of applications including population dynamics, environmental risk, maritime safety, transport risk, built environment characterization, and change detection. He is chair of the IEEE Computational Intelligence Society’s Government Activities Committee. He is an editorial board member of the Journal Transactions in GIS and the International Journal of Geographical Information Science. Robert serves as advisor to the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development’s Nuclear Energy Agency as well as the Alan Turing Institute’s Colouring Cities Research Program. He has also chaired the AAG’s Geographic Information Science and Systems Specialty Group at AAG and has served as ORNL liaison to the World Health Organization Chemical Risk Network. Robert remains passionate about mentoring and advising the next generation of geospatial scientists. He has mentored many early and mid-career scientists and served on a number of graduate committees located across multiple departments and universities. The AAG is very proud to recognize Dr. Robert Stewart as an AAG Fellow.
Dr. Fahui Wang, renowned GIScientist, has made seminal contributions to the development and application of spatial analysis methods for understanding spatial and social injustices in health, well-being, and access to services. He pioneered, and continues to advance, the field of spatial accessibility modeling through his work on ‘floating catchment’ methods, and their variants, that have become the gold standard in the field. Adopted by planners and analysts who evaluate health care workforce inequalities and disparities in access, his modeling approaches stand out for their policy relevance and broad impacts. Dr. Wang’s rigorous empirical research identifies communities lacking access to essential health services and informs where and how access can be improved. Organizations that have benefited from his leadership and his energy and passion for the discipline include the AAG’s Spatial Analysis and Modeling & Health and Medical Geography Specialty Groups and the International Association for Chinese Professionals in GIScience. As department chair, he led initiatives that have greatly increased the diversity of departmental faculty and provided supportive mentorship to students from underrepresented backgrounds who faced significant obstacles to success. The AAG is very proud to recognize Dr. Fahui Wang as an AAG Fellow.
Dr. Michael Widener, professor of Geography and Planning at the University of Toronto, has made original and ground-breaking contributions to health and transportation geography and provided visionary leadership and disciplinary and community service. His research has significantly shaped understandings of the social, spatial, and temporal dimensions of inequalities in food access. Combining rigorous quantitative modeling with thoughtful critical analysis, his research challenges well-worn concepts in the food access literature such as “food deserts.” He has engaged students and researchers with community partners to improve food access and health outcomes for equity-deserving populations in Toronto and across Canada. In his university leadership positions, Dr. Widener has spearheaded initiatives to support and mentor junior faculty; developed innovative curricula in key areas; tackled barriers faced by underrepresented students; and expanded research and educational ties with diverse communities. His international leadership is reflected in his service to the AAG’s Health and Medical Geography Specialty Group; co-editorship of Health and Place; and extensive committee service. An engaged and passionate mentor, Dr. Widener has worked tirelessly to build community among his students, in his department, and across the discipline of geography. The AAG is very proud to recognize Dr. Michael Widener as an AAG Fellow.
Max Liboiron is recognized for their extraordinary work in developing participatory and anticolonial environmental science practices. Via careful critique of current academic norms and concrete examples of how we can do better, Dr. Liboiron has inspired students and scholars across Geography and the environmental sciences to change their lab manuals, citation practices, collaboration protocols, and research methods. Rather than simply calling researchers out for extractive science, Dr. Liboiron calls researchers in to participatory and reciprocal mentorship and research practices through academic publications, such as Pollution is Colonialism (2021, Duke University Press), online resources such as the CLEAR Lab Manual, and short films made in collaboration with Couple3 that “open the black box of what seem like mundane laboratory practices… that are the main vehicles for equity, humility, accountability, and the creation of a lab collective. Our goal: to do science differently, in ways that do not replicate existing power dynamics.”
Chérie Rivers is recognized for her radical interdisciplinary and participatory geographic work, which weaves together Black and Indigenous ecologies, decolonial pedagogy, and Africana studies. A scholar of many talents, Dr. Rivers has produced two monographs—To Be Nsala’s Daughter: Decomposing the Colonial Gaze (Duke University Press 2023), and Necessary Noise: Music, Film, and Charitable Imperialism in the East of Congo (Oxford University Press, 2016), as well as an edited volume, The Art of Emergency: Aesthetics and Aid in African Crises (Oxford University Press, 2020). She also founded and runs an educational biodynamic farm, Dandelions’, that integrates the legacy of freedom farming with Black and Indigenous earth practices. To integrate her work as a scholar and a farmer, she has developed important tools for decolonial pedagogy and land-based learning, including an interdisciplinary curriculum entitled Decomposing the Colonial Gaze. Throughout, her goal is to “interrupt… modern colonialism with the transformative power of imagination” asking both what sustains us, and what we want to sustain.
She is recognized for her lifelong excellence in applying spatial thinking to the challenge of creating better lives and opportunities for people, starting in Detroit in the late 1960s.
As a foundational voice for Black geographies and Black methods of knowledge creation, Dr. McKittrick has re-imagined scholarship to be both documentation and instigation in modes that are poetic, sonic, material, and rhetorical. In every new, surprising iteration, her work offers “curiosity, wonder, citations, numbers, playlists, friendship, poetry, inquiry, song, grooves, and anticolonial chronologies as interdisciplinary codes that entwine with the academic form,” according to Duke University Press.
Dr. Bronwen Powell, associate professor in the Department of Geography at Penn State University, has an exceptional record in scholarship focused on Indigenous agrobiodiversity, food and nutrition systems, and international development, grounded in the principles of social justice and anti-racism. She’s been a strong public advocate for Indigenous food sovereignty through her interdisciplinary collaborations and scholarship engagement. As the associate head for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in her department, Dr. Powell spearheaded new initiatives that were centered around Indigenous geographies and was recognized for her leadership and commitment to promoting an inclusive academic environment for students and faculty. Dr. Powell has distinguished herself through her strong dedication to anti-racism scholarship and praxis that seems to center Indigenous and African voices and perspectives. The AAG is pleased to honor Dr. Powell with the Harold M. Rose Award for Anti-Racism Research and Practice.
Dr. Jieun Lee, Associate Professor of Geography, GIS, and Sustainability at the University of Northern Colorado, is recognized for her deep and sustained commitment to increasing diversity and equity in geography at the departmental, institutional, and national levels. Dr. Lee is explicitly recognized for empowering foreign-born women working in U.S. academic institutions in geography and the geospatial sciences. Dr. Lee played a leadership role in creating the Golden Compass program, which provides a safe and supportive environment for international women scholars to share their experiences, build networks, and receive mentoring. Building on the early success of an inaugural workshop, she secured grant funding from the National Science Foundation, in partnership with the Association of American Geographers and the University of Consortium for Geographic Information Science (UCGIS), to expand the reach and impact of the program over the next four years. Her visionary initiative is putting inclusive excellence into practice and opening new leadership opportunities for diverse scholars in the discipline.
AAG’s Susan Hardwick Excellence in Mentoring Award acknowledges Dr. Leslie Duram’s remarkable mentorship and lasting impact on students and colleagues. Dr. Duram, Professor of Geography and Environmental Resources and Director of the Environmental Studies minor at Southern Illinois University, has advised numerous graduate students, including those from underrepresented backgrounds and helped them achieve career success. Her unparalleled dedication to mentoring students extends to undergraduate students in the Environmental Studies minor as she provides all aspects of professional development opportunities. Dr. Duram’s exceptional mentorship and unwavering support has reached many of her colleagues and contributed to fostering a vibrant and engaged community in her department, university, and the geography discipline. As the department chair, she has been a supportive and inspirational colleague and mentor to her faculty colleagues for personal and professional growth. Her remarkable mentorship was highly recognized by prestigious awards such as Teaching Excellence Award and University Women’s Professional Advancement (UWPA) Mentorship Award by her institution (SIU).
Dr. Lisa Bhungalia has developed a socially engaged research agenda that bridges empirical observations on justice issues with innovative theory. The committee finds Dr. Bhungalia’s research to be at the forefront of what it means to blend theory and practice in pursuit of justice and the forging of a critical lens through which to examine and better understand social issues in the discipline of geography and global studies. Her book, Elastic Empire: Refashioning War through Aid in Palestine (Stanford University Press, 2024), an excellent example of bridging theoretical frameworks to practice, has earned prestigious honors, including the 2024 Albert Hourani Book Award and the Palestine Book Awards. Like Glenda Laws, for whom this award is named, Dr Lisa Bhungalia brings intellectual care, curiosity, enthusiasm, and empathy to a research project that centers those in the constant struggle for social justice and human rights across Palestine and beyond.
Pablo Mansilla Quiñones is a decolonial scholar who works closely with Indigenous social, territorial, and environmental struggles throughout South America. He uses a combination of participatory methods (through research) and transdisciplinary engagement approaches in the support of grassroots organizing (through activism) across his projects. These practices (including mapping, geohumanities, and creative geographies) have contributed to successful struggles against mega-dam construction in Mapuche territory and to Wayuú, Añú, and Barí struggles against extractivism in their territories. He is currently leading the Climate Pluriverses project, which brings together researchers and social movement leaders from across the world to engage in a process of building different socio-environmental possibilities from the creative knowledges and grounds of involved groups. Dr. Mansilla Quiñones also contributes to decolonial knowledge production by co-authoring articles with his research collaborators across a career of productivity that merits distinction. For these reasons, Dr. Mansilla Quiñones should be recognized for continuing the legacy of Dr. Glenda Laws and her exemplary commitment to social justice and social policy.
James Tyner, professor, Kent State University in Ohio, is recognized for his distinguished career in political geography, particularly prolific contributions to our understanding of the political economy of violence in Southeast Asia and the US, and histories and geographies of 20th-century Marxism, dedicated mentoring of graduate students, and longstanding record of service to the discipline.
Loretta Lees, director of the Initiative on Cities, Boston University, is recognized for her distinguished career in urban geography through groundbreaking international research on the temporality and spatiality of gentrification, outstanding mentorship of postdoctoral scholars and PhD students; and as a Scholar-Activist for her steadfast commitment to collaboration with marginalized communities and in applying geography for social justice in cities.
With Judicial Territory: Law, Capital, and the Expansion of American Empire (Duke University Press), Shaina Potts has provided an extraordinary work of scholarship, as well as a distinctly geographical contribution to critical understandings of the co-constitution of capital and empire in the liberal international order of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Tracing the territorial dimensions of Anglo-American dominance over international economic law, Potts demonstrates the ways that subtle jurisdictional questions have played a quiet but powerful role in establishing a global regime that favors private property rights and U.S. investments at the expense of national sovereignty, particularly in the Global South. Potts takes a subject which has typically been the exclusive domain of legal scholarship and convincingly demonstrates that it must be treated as a fundamentally geographic question, revealing a hidden map of legal rulings and capital flows which in many ways better explains the state of the world today than the political map of distinctly bordered sovereign nations. Potts adds rich human detail to this study of a system which is designed to be faceless and abstract, and in doing so she combines the synthetic, multi-perspectival and multi-scalar approach which is the hallmark of extraordinary geographical insight.
Apartheid Remains (Duke University Press) is a richly textured geographical monograph, the product of more than a decade of fieldwork, and sustained theoretical, political, and personal engagement with the industrial and residential landscapes of Durban, South Africa. Sharad Chari brings together a wide range of materials and methods, including documentary photography, music, archival materials, interviews, to investigate the layered remnants, legacies, and afterlives of apartheid and anti-apartheid struggles. Apartheid Remains, although a vibrantly interdisciplinary work, is rooted in geography, both in its commitments to and orientation to place, and in the clarity of Chari’s critical analysis, organized around a series of spatio-temporal conjectures. Over the course of the book, Chari attends to the sedimented accumulations of colonial relations, while remaining attentive to geographies of hope and livingness that exceed the constraints and toxicities of racial capitalism. Apartheid Remains represents significant theoretical and methodological contributions to geography, demonstrating the capaciousness of geographical writing as a critical orientation to possibility.
Florida Springs: From Geography to Politics and Restoration (University Press of Florida) is this year’s recipient of the AAG Globe Book Award. Freshwater springs represent sparkling trifles to the casual tourist, cherished landscapes to neighboring residents, and sources of life-giving water for everyone else. Dr. Meindl’s Florida Springs systematically unpacks the immense depth and complexity of these features to expose “competing narratives about springs, what ails them, and how we might repair the damage.” A skilled geographic storyteller, Meindl writes in an engaging and approachable style, accessible to both lay readers and policymakers, while navigating across the breadth of geography in remarkable ways. Blending nuanced discussions of physical science, historical geography, and public policy, Meindl masterfully illustrates the unique power of geography to synthesize a wide range of subfields and concepts to produce clear and useful understandings of landscapes and ecosystems of vital importance to all.
A deeply researched and well-written account of the connections between the lumber industry in northern California and the building of San Francisco, City of Wood: San Francisco and the Architecture of the Redwood Lumber Industry (University of Texas Press) draws on cultural and economic geography, as well as architectural and environmental history, to trace the links between redwood lumber camps and sawmills to lumber yards on the docks of San Francisco and construction of wooden housing in the city. Throughout the book, Buckley embeds his analysis in the lives and landscapes of production and consumption: the types of ordinary, everyday spaces and places that had fascinated writer, artist, and founder of Landscape magazine J.B. Jackson, for whom this award is named. Beautifully illustrated with newly drawn maps at different scales and historic photographs, City of Wood is a magnificent achievement, reminding us that city building depended on the bounty of nature, capitalist enterprise, and prodigious labor. The book informs and shapes our understanding of the construction of towns and cities across North America and beyond.
Based on an extraordinary amount of research in vast collections of postcards, Framing Nature: The Creation of an American Icon at the Grand Canyon (University of Nebraska Press) shows how the visual image of the Grand Canyon has been shaped and remade in the public mind. Youngs draws on cultural geography and landscape analysis to make her case, demonstrating her field knowledge of the dramatic physical geography of the Grand Canyon. Appropriately, her book is beautifully illustrated with many postcard views and historic images, as well as clearly drawn maps of viewpoints. In using postcards as evidence, the committee felt, Youngs reflected J.B. Jackson’s love of American popular culture. Framing Nature makes a substantive, informed, and novel contribution to cultural landscape analysis, and informs our understanding of the transformation of one of the world’s greatest natural landscapes into a national and environmental icon.
The 2024 AAG Distinguished Scholarship Honor is awarded to Jennifer Collins for her research in physical climatology and human geography, most notably for her studies of hurricanes, hurricane risk, and hurricane evacuation behavior. Her research has substantially advanced knowledge of hurricanes and tropical storms and led to improvements in forecasting. She is highly regarded for her analyses of the combined contributions of El Nino and the Madden-Julian Oscillation to the 2009 hurricane season in the eastern North Pacific, and of the environmental conditions affecting the record-breaking 2015 Pacific hurricane season. Collins and her co-authors also transformed the known history of Atlantic hurricanes by finding that the 1846 Great Havana Hurricane was the first known Category 5 hurricane to make landfall there.
The 2024 AAG Distinguished Teaching Honors is awarded to Patricia Lopez for her teaching, mentoring and pedagogical accomplishments at Dartmouth College. As Chris Sneddon, former Chair of Geography at Dartmouth College states, “Dr. Lopez is the most extraordinary teacher and mentor in higher education I have yet to encounter.” In her early career work at Dartmouth, she developed and taught eight courses, as well as engaged in high stress and deeply important work, such as teach-ins that responded to political crises that affected campuses and the US. Even in the most isolating times at the beginning of the COVID- 19 pandemic, Professor Lopez demonstrated pedagogy that taught students to value collaboration as central to knowledge production and to embrace multiple modes of learning across audio, visual and written media. Her courses span the breadth of student lea ming from leading introductory courses to teaching Global Poverty & Care, Geopolitics of Humanitarianism and co-teaching a class on #BlacklivesMatter. This is because her work centers on bringing care into labor, life, teaching, and mentoring.
The 2024 Gilbert Grosvenor Honors for Geographic Education is awarded to Dr. Rafael de Miguel Gonzalez for his exceptional service to the discipline of geography and unique contributions to the geographic education community. Currently the President of EUROGEO (the European Association of Geographers) and Professor of Geography Education at the University of Zaragoza (Spain), De Miguel is one of the preeminent scholars of geography education in the world today. De Miguel is recognized as one of geography’s key public advocates of national and international educational reform and innovation, through his work for about 30 years as a geography school teacher, later university professor, lead researcher, project manager, editor, writer, map-maker, higher education administrator, speaker and -as Board member of several geographical institutions- representative of the community of geographers and geography educators in front of national education policy makers and international organizations like the UN, the European Commission or the Council of Europe.
The 2024 AAG Lifetime Achievement Honor is awarded to Cindi Katz for her enduring scholarly contributions to feminist scholarship and social theory, and the subfields of cultural, social, and economic geography and political economy; as well as shedding light on the political-ecological conditions that affect the lives of children. Dr. Katz has contributed to diversifying the field through her mentorship of women and scholars of color.
Dr. Daniel Arreola is an emeritus professor at the School of Geographical Sciences and Urban Planning at Arizona State University. He is a prolific scholar who focuses on the Hispanic experience of the American Southwest and the Mexican border. Several of his seven books have won major AAG awards, and he is described as knowing the Mexican American borderlands better than anybody else. He has passed his passion on to his students and is widely considered to be an outstanding educator. Dr. Arreola served the AAG through his long-standing engagement with the APCG. He was instrumental in designing the AP Human Geography course, thus leaving his mark on the geography education of countless young geographers.
Dr. Ling Bian is a leading GIScientist whose extensive research, service, and outreach efforts, over three decades, have contributed greatly to the growth and development of quantitative approaches in geography. Her many research contributions include the development of a ground-breaking spatio-temporal approach for modeling the spread of communicable diseases among people and through social networks – an approach that has high relevance to understanding COVID-19 spread. Dr. Bian has provided outstanding service to our community through her leadership in national GIScience initiatives, her participation in national and international committees, and her dedicated efforts as section editor of the Annals of the AAG. She led a program to teach web GIS to high school students, creating pathways into geospatial careers for students from diverse backgrounds.
Dr. Heejun Chang is an accomplished geographer who has achieved the highest levels of scholarship, practice, and service. His research focused on human modifications of hydrologic systems (including climate change), its impacts on society, and spatial integrative methodological approaches has produced more than 170 well-cited publications and over 100 invited talks. Chang is recognized with major awards that include the Abe Fellowship from the Social Science Research Council and Japan Foundation, Sigma-Xi, and the E. Willard and Ruby S. Millar Award from the American Association of Geographers (AAG). Mentoring graduate and undergraduate students is also among Dr. Chang’s exceptional work, which also includes many publications co-authored with students. Additionally, during service as chair of the Geography Department at Portland State University, Chang was instrumental in substantially enhancing the diversity of its faculty. A 25-year member of the AAG, Chang has also provided leadership as Chair of the Spatial Analysis and Modeling Specialty Group, board member of the Water Resources Specialty Group, organizer of numerous special sessions, and editor-in-chief of the Professional Geographer.
Dr. Min Chen, professor of geography at Nanjing Normal University, is a leading mid-career scholar in the field of GIScience. With his boundless energy and vision, Dr. Chen has played a key role in building and sustaining GIScience through his extensive research and service activities. Co-author of more than 180 publications, he is widely known for his development of a model-sharing and collaborative simulation platform that facilitates knowledge-building in an open web environment. As executive editor of the Annals of GIS, he has greatly elevated the journal’s profile, making it a leading outlet for GIScience research worldwide. His leadership in various AAG specialty groups and international GIS organizations like the International Association of Chinese Professionals in GIScience have greatly advanced GIS scholarship and provided essential support for emerging scholars in the field.
Andrew Curley is an exceptional early career geographer at the University of Arizona who has been instrumental in supporting the recent growth of Indigenous Geographies and the community of Indigenous geographers within the AAG. A member of the Navajo (Diné) Nation, Dr. Curley has been an exceptional mentor for new Indigenous geographers, as well as scholars of energy and political geographies. His research focuses on addressing urgent questions relating Indigenous sovereignty, climate change, and development. He is also one of a group of new political ecologists, who focus their work on questions of tribal sovereignty. He has been particularly involved in public facing scholarship among the Diné.
Dr. Kate Derickson is an outstanding geographer who has significantly advanced the discipline through innovative, community-engaged scholarship that tackles urgent issues of environmental justice, urban development, racism, and climate change with and for impacted communities. She has developed a rigorous research record that includes contributions to the top journals in geography, distinguished by the significance of community engagement. Derickson is perhaps best known for developing and applying the concept of “resourcefulness”—articulated in an article in Progress in Human Geography with over 1,200 citations—that directs researchers and university leaders to prioritize capacity building of community partners to participate in research design and policy advocacy. She also co-founded the CREATE (Co-Developing Research and Engaged Approaches to Transform Environments) Initiative, a multifaceted program to advance research and education at the intersection of equity and environment through community engagement, interdisciplinary scholarship, and graduate training. Her extensive efforts in training the next generation of community-engaged scholars are reflected in the Community Engaged Scholarship Award from the University of Minnesota. For the American Association of Geographers, Derickson has also demonstrated leadership as Chair of the Socialist and Critical Geography Specialty Group and as member of the Awards Committee and Editorial Board of the Annals of the AAG. She was also Convener of the Antipode Summer Institute. Derickson has a record of path-breaking scholarly interventions in urban theory and community engaged research and for radically opening spaces in the discipline for junior scholars.
Dr. Chunyuan Diao is an outstanding early-career scholar whose extensive research contributions and service to the AAG have strengthened and advanced the field of remote sensing and geographers’ roles in it. Her publications in leading journals and extensive grant-funded research activities have creatively advanced our ability to monitor and model ecosystem dynamics across natural, human-natural, and disturbed biogeographical systems at multiple spatial and temporal scales. Dr. Diao’s leadership and service to the AAG Remote Sensing Specialty Group have fostered a supportive and expanding scholarly community; and her effective teaching and mentorship activities are helping to develop a new generation of remote sensing scholars whose gender and race/ethnic diversity more fully represent the populations impacted by global eco-environmental change.
Dr. Jerome E. Dobson is a professor emeritus of geography at the University of Kansas. He has a rare combination of experience in government, academia, and the private sector. He is recognized as a pioneer of Geographic Information Science. He led development of the current world standards for estimating populations at risk during disasters of all sorts and for how landmines and mine fields are represented on maps worldwide. He coined the term “geoslavery” to raise awareness of geospatial technology in human tracking coercively or surreptitiously. Dr. Dobson has a record of dedicated service to AAG, including co-founding the AAG Energy Specialty Group, chairing the Honors Committee and GIS Specialty Group, and serving on the Editorial Board of The Professional Geographer and on various AAG committees. Dr. Dobson served as president of the American Geographical Society. His innovative and diverse scholarship and commitment to helping people across the world through research and action are exemplary. Recently he and two Italian colleagues retrospectively mapped ocean floors from 30,000 BP to the present and digitally discovered scores of islands, which they named the Bering Transitory Archipelago and which may have served as stepping stones for the first crossings from Siberia to Alaska.
Dr. Song Gao is an associate professor of geography and the director of the Geospatial Data Science Lab at the University of Wisconsin Madison. He has established himself as one of the thought leaders and highly cited scholars in the field of geospatial artificial intelligence (GeoAI) and was heavily involved in the geospatial modeling of the spread of COVID-19. He has successfully mentored young scholars and students in GIScience, offered workshops and webinars for the AAG and other organizations, and is an associate editor for AAG’s International Encyclopedia of Geography and International Journal of Geographical Information Science. Dr. Gao’s involvement with cutting-edge data science and AI techniques, his commitment to taking on and solving important challenges, and his enthusiasm for working with different international organizations make him a strong asset to the AAG.
Laura-Anne Minkoff-Zern is an exceptional mid-career geographer who is a leader in a growing group of geographers who focus on issues of labor, race, and class within agriculture and food systems. Dr. Minkoff-Zern is the author of two books, one of which, The New American Farmer: Immigration, Race, and the Struggle for Sustainability, tells the story of Mexican and Central American immigrants, who are reshaping American farming by drawing on agricultural knowledge and practices from their home countries. Her second book, Will Work for Food: Labor Across the Food Chain, forthcoming in 2025, looks at exploration of the labor across the food chain, from farms to food processing and into the home, exploring the intersections between sustainability movements and labor organizing. Beyond her excellent research, she is also a leader in the subfield of food and agriculture, having served as chair and in many other roles in the AAG Geographies of Food and Agriculture Specialty Group. In this position she helped steward the specialty group towards new programs, such as a scholarship for community food and agriculture partnership research. As an associate professor in the Food Studies Program and an affiliate of the Department of Geography and the Environment at Syracuse University, she is at the forefront of bridging the disciplines of Geography and Food Studies.
Dr. Chandana Mitra is an associate professor in the Department of Geosciences at Auburn University. She uses her training in urban climate, GIS, and remote sensing to work across disciplinary boundaries on topics such as the sustainability and resilience of cities in the face of climate change. She is committed to addressing STEM education and importance of science communication in her research. She is an advocate for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI), for example by mentoring girls interested in STEM at the EmpowHER conference, co-founding GeoFIDE, a DEI organization the Geosciences, and by supporting underrepresented students. Dr. Mitra has held various positions in the AAG’s Asian and Regional Development and Planning Specialty groups and brings a strong commitment to social justice issues and cross-disciplinary approaches to the AAG.
Dr. Jessie Poon is among the world’s leading economic geographers, with a substantial record of research that includes four co-authored books and more than one hundred journal articles and book chapters. Her research—from early path-breaking work on the geographical structure of trade patterns and dynamics of regionalization to more recent explorations of social, cultural, financial, and information networks and to digital economies more generally—has been remarkably consistent over the last three decades, with uniformly high-quality writings distributed across leading journals in human geography and into related fields of regional science, business, communications, trade and development, and allied social sciences. In many leadership roles, Poon was also chair of the Regional Studies Association, Committee Member of the Council of the American Association of Geographers (AAG), Chair of the Southeast Section of the Asian Geography Specialty Group, member of the AAG Research Grants Committee, and editor or member of the Editorial Board of numerous top journals in her field. A longtime member of the AAG, Dr. Poon has also worked tirelessly to make geography, and the academy more broadly, a more equitable, diverse, and inclusive community. She has published extensively on the state of women in her field, advocated for other female scholars, championed increasing representation of female scholars in research journals, including editorial boards, while serving as the first female editor of Papers in Regional Science. Her trailblazing efforts have opened space within economic geography for women to both contribute to important debates and flourish while doing so.
Danielle Purifoy is an assistant professor in the Department of Geography at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill. Despite being just a few years beyond her PhD, she has already established herself as a prominent scholar of Black Geographies, political geography, and legal geographies. She also engages in community work and practical environmental engagement well beyond the university. She studies, in particular, “the making and unmaking of Black Towns,” focusing on their experiences of environmental racism. She found, in particular, that towns in the Southern US often developed two parallel communities, one white and one Black. The Black town was often not included within the incorporated boundaries, allowing for a devastating amount of environmental racism. Beyond this research, Dr. Purifoy is growing leader and mentor within the Black Geographies community, is a co-leader of the Mapping Black Towns project, has been a co-editor of numerous special journal issues, and has given invited lectures at universities around the world. She is truly an impressive early-career geographer.
Dr. Mark Rosenberg is a distinguished health geographer who has been a tireless advocate for geography and geographers throughout his career. His leadership, vision, and enduring commitment to mentorship have propelled the growth and development of health and medical geography. His influential research contributions provide rigorous evidence about how geographical and sociopolitical processes shape unequal access to health care, especially for vulnerable populations. Bringing energy, vision, and leadership to a wide range of national and international geographical organizations, including health geography groups of the AAG, CAG, and IGU, he has offered critical insights and direction that have strongly supported the groups’ health, growth, and development. By effectively mobilizing enthusiasm, wisdom, care, and practical advice, Dr. Rosenberg has excelled in mentoring diverse graduate students and early-career faculty, many of whom have achieved successful careers in health geography research and policy.
Dr. Shih-Lung Shaw is a leader in the areas of time geography and the applications of GIS to transportation geography. He is current Chancellor’s Professor in the Department of Geography and Sustainability at the University of Tennessee-Knoxville. His research developed a space-time GIS framework, which has been used to analyze a large variety of human dynamics phenomena, including both longtime issues such as travel dynamics and more recent phenomenon such as COVID infection patterns. Beyond his innovative, important, and useful research, Dr. Shaw has been a leader in the AAG. He is a former chair of the Transportation Geography Specialty Group and treasurer of the GIS group, and has been the lead organizer of the Human Dynamics Symposium at AAG annual meetings for eight years. Shih-Lung has also been president of the UCGIS and has been a strong supporter of a project to promote the professional development of women in GIScience.
Dr. Selima Sultana is Professor and Associate Head in the Department of Geography, Environment, and Sustainability at the University of North Carolina Greensboro. She is an outstanding scholar, a committed member of the AAG, and a mentor to many, specially to early career academics, and women and BIPOC geographers. Her service to the AAG is varied and extensive. She has been President of the AAG Regional Division of Southeast, Chair of the Transportation Geography Specialty Group, served on the AAG Council as Regional Councilor, representing the Southeast Division, Chair of the AAG Publications and the Status of Women in Geography Committees, and co-founder of the new Protected Areas Specialty Group. In addition, Dr. Sultana has been on the editorial board of many publications including The Professional Geographer and Southeastern Geographer, the latter where she served as editor. She is also on the AAG Mentoring Task Force, which highlights her ongoing mentorship. Likewise, at her home campus of UNC Greensboro, she has been a leading mentor to both graduate and undergraduate students. Dr. Sultana’s is also an exceptional researcher focuses on a large variety of social justice issues, including accessibility and the low visitation rates of African Americans at National Parks, and how the changing structure of urban areas increases commuting times for BIPOC women.
Dr. Yehua Dennis Wei is an internationally renowned urban/economic geographer whose research centers on effects of globalization and institutional change on cities, regions, and sustainability. A pioneer in the study of regional development and regional/ spatial inequality in China, Wei has published five books and more than 250 journal articles and book chapters. He has also edited a dozen journal special issues and served as editor-in-chief of Applied Geography. His awards and honors include the Excellence in Research Award from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, the Distinguished Scholar Award from the Regional Development and Planning Specialty Group of the American Association of Geographers (AAG), the Outstanding Young Scientist Award from the National Natural Science Foundation of China, and a role as Overseas Evaluation Expert of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. Over nearly 30 years, Dr. Wei has provided valuable leadership to the AAG by organizing numerous special sessions and international conferences, and by chairing three AAG specialty groups (China Geography, Asian Geography, and Regional Development and Planning). The quality and impact of his service are also reflected in the Distinguished Service Award from each of these groups. In addition to revealing spatial inequality and equity issues in China through his research, Dr. Wei has also worked hard to enhance diversity and inclusion in geography and the academe by serving on the AAG’s Enhancing Diversity Committee, and at the University of Utah, on the Diversity Committee, Senate Advisory Committee on Diversity, and Senate Committee on Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion.
Dr. Ruth Wilson Gilmore is recognized for her extraordinary contributions to the confrontation with racial capitalism and the conditions necessary for structural reform, particularly of carceral institutions and prison systems, mass punishment, and criminalization and race. She has also shared her expertise in labor and social movements, the intersections of race and gender, the African Diaspora and Black Radical tradition.
Dr. J. Marshall Shepherd is the Georgia Athletic Association Distinguished Professor of Geography and Atmospheric Sciences at the University of Georgia and serves as associate director of Climate and Outreach for the Institute for Resilient Infrastructure Systems. He is a Full Professor in the Department of Geography where he was a previous Associate Department Head. In 2023, he was appointed associate dean for Research, Scholarship and Partnerships in the Franklin College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Georgia.
Explorer, Pwo Navigator, cultural revivalist, educator, and storyteller Charles Nainoa Thompson is this year’s Honorary Geographer, an award given annually by the American Association of Geographers to recognize an exceptional leader in the arts, research, teaching, and writing whose work addresses geographic topics.
This year’s recipient of the Stanley Brunn Award for Creativity in Geography is Margaret Wickens Pearce, cartographer and founder of 
The 2024 AAG Wilbanks Prize for Transformational Research in Geography is awarded to Qihao Weng, Chair Professor of geomatics and artificial intelligence at Hong Kong Polytechnic University. Weng is also a professor of geography at Indiana State University, and the director of Indiana State’s Center for Urban and Environmental Change. Professor Weng has defined urban remote sensing as a new field and has transformed urban environmental research with theoretical and technical advances, including novel algorithms and innovative methods for sub-pixel-scale analysis and time series imagery. His research has significantly advanced our theoretical understanding and empirical knowledge of urban heat islands, urban sprawl, urbanization effects, and urban environmental sustainability. By establishing relationships among satellite thermal infrared imagery, land surface temperature, and air temperature, his research connects remotely sensed data to urban landscape patterns, radiation budgets, and climate change. His 2004 methodology for estimating land-surface temperature from satellite-derived attributes of vegetation, developed with Lu and Schubring, has had far-reaching impact in a range of fields, including urban geography, landscape ecology, urban planning, urban meteorology, and climatology.
Dr. Nik Heynen has an exceptional record in anti-racism scholarship, with a focus on abolition geography. His work highlights the intricate connections between environmental racism, racial capitalism, and political ecology, making him one of the most prominent voices in anti-racism geographical research. Moreover, Dr. Heynen has incorporated anti-racism practices in his other endeavors in and out of the academy, including mentoring and advocating for future generations of anti-racism scholars, as well as translating scholarship into tangible and positive impacts on communities through anti-racist community engagement activities and initiatives.
Dr. Elizabeth Olson, professor of geography at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, is recognized for the breadth and depth of her commitments to fostering inclusivity and care. Dr. Olson has been an outstanding mentor for scholars of color and women. As department chair, she made a concerted effort to create a more diverse faculty, focusing on the recruitment and retention of scholars of color. She has worked continuously to build a department culture in which faculty and students of color can thrive. During the Covid-19 pandemic, Dr. Olson’s expertise in care work informed how the university responded to the pandemic, contributing to the formulation of policies to support early-career faculty. Finally, Dr. Olson’s scholarship on care ethics, youth, and religion speaks to her dedication to creating more welcoming and inclusive spaces in the university and in the discipline.
Dr. Derek Alderman is recognized for his outstanding and impactful contributions to mentorship of students and early career faculty colleagues. The committee particularly noted the caring and inclusive environment Dr. Alderman creates which supports a highly valued climate of collegiality within the University of Tennessee Department of Geography and Sustainability, the impressive number of students mentored throughout his career, his holistic “coaching up” mentorship style that centers diversity, equity, and inclusion, draws upon his own life experience, and goes far beyond a one-size-fits-all mentorship approach. The committee was moved by the testimonies and letters of support submitted by Dr. Alderman’s mentees which embody the spirit, memory, and legacy of the late Dr. Susan Hardwick.
Mohammed Rafi Arefin, assistant professor of geography at the University of British Columbia, is recognized both for his outstanding research on political ecologies of urban waste in the global North and South and for his unwavering commitment to environmental and climate justice. Dr. Arefin embodies the spirit of the Glenda Laws Award in his efforts to help establish a Centre for Climate Justice (CCJ) at UBC that connects the university with communities on the front lines of climate disruption. In addition to putting the university’s resources in service of diverse communities in British Columbia, the CCJ provides an activist network to advocate for substantive policy changes around issues of housing, sovereignty, and political freedoms. Dr. Arefin must also be recognized for his tireless efforts to bring international attention to the incarceration of political activists in Egypt ahead of the UN’s COP27 climate summit in Sharm el-Sheikh.
Soe W. Myint, Meadows Endowed Chair Professor, Texas State University, is an internationally recognized scholar who holds the Fulbright Canada Research Chair, has earned recognition from the Canadian Association of Geographers, and is an editor or editorial board member of well recognized remote sensing, GIS, and ecology journals. Dr. Myint possesses a long list of well-cited publications and is acknowledged as one of the most influential researchers in the fields of remote sensing and GIS to address environmental issues in urban, forest, and coastal ecosystems advancing understanding of environmental equity in cities. Dr. Myint is recipient of multiple grants from top national research organizations; a dedicated mentor to geography graduate, undergraduate, and postdoctoral students; and an advocate for diversity and inclusion in the discipline. He has served as a member or chair of over 60 PhD committees and has made outstanding contributions to the discipline as a member of the AAG through his exemplary research, teaching, and service.
Dr. Karen Barton, professor in the Department of Geography, GIS, & Sustainability at the University of Northern Colorado, is this year’s recipient of the the Harm de Blij Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Geography Teaching. The selection committee felt that all applicants were outstanding, however, Dr. Barton’s unparalleled commitment to international field education stood out as exemplary. She has led field courses to Nepal, Iceland, Guyana, Nicaragua, Peru, Kenya, and Norway in addition to points within the United States. She includes service learning in her field excursions that help students understand their place in the world, and most impressively, Dr. Barton has assembled funds for these courses from a broad range of sources, allowing a diverse group of students to participate in these impactful trips. Dr. Barton has been recognized with four awards for her teaching excellence on campus. Her peer recommendations indicate a sustained commitment to undergraduate education and experiential learning over her career as a geographer.
Displacing Territory: Syrian and Palestinian Refugees in Jordan by Karen Culcasi (University of Chicago Press, 2023) presents a powerful and innovative response to the global crisis of forced displacement. Culcasi argues against framing the “refugee crisis” via the perspective and priorities of the Global North, instead setting her analysis in the Southwest Asia and North Africa region. Her focus on Jordanian refugee policy and the lived experience of refugees creates a provocative reframing of questions about migration and displacement, read against the central themes of power, territory, and place.
The City after Property: Abandonment and Repair in Postindustrial Detroit by Sara Safransky (Duke University Press, 2023) begins with a paradox: Detroit’s residents face foreclosures and evictions amidst a crisis of land abandonment. Safransky answers this paradox by weaving theoretically rich insights with detailed research, resulting in a rich account of urban property, racial capitalism, and deindustrialization. Safransky orients geographical scholarship to the possibilities of urban space outside dominant property regimes and centers the work of Black Detroit residents in confronting the challenges to their community.
The Cactus Hunters: Desire and Extinction in the Illicit Succulent Trade by Jared D. Margulies (University of Minnesota Press, 2023) delves into the world of global succulent collecting to explore how and why some of the most passionate lovers of these plants engage in their illicit trade. Margulies examines how the desires of collectors can threaten the very existence of the species they seek out. The book develops a political ecology of desire to interrogate the close relations between our unconscious and conscious selves and the wider ecological web of life.
Waste and the City: The Crisis of Sanitation and the Right to Citylife by Colin McFarlane (Verso, 2023) builds a compelling argument for addressing the worldwide inequality in sanitation through a focus on five key areas: people, things, life, protest, and allocation. McFarlane argues that access to sanitation is fundamental not only to reducing poverty and inequality but also to “citylife,” the right to a livable urban life.
Border Witness: Re-imagining the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands Through Film by Michael Dear (University of California Press, 2023) is a masterfully written book that uses film to narrate the human and landscape geographies of the US-Mexico border region. It convinces the reader to consider “border film” a vibrant genre and reviews a century of film to illuminate the communities, spaces, and identities that emerge in a dynamic geographical zone. Both academics and non-academics will appreciate Dear’s thorough research, insights on timely issues, nice illustrations, and wonderful prose. This is a book that is only possible when decades of research and fieldwork slowly marinate into a rich, deep study.
Near Woods: A Year in an Allegheny Forest by Kevin Patrick (Rowman & Littlefield, Stackpole Books Division, 2023) creates a wonderfully informed, nuanced, and thoughtful meditation on a small patch of woods outside Indiana, PA. Inspired by Thoreau’s Walden, Patrick explores the relationship between people and place, weaving together natural history, cultural history, the seasons, and his own reflections. The book demonstrates that a good geographer can take the most unassuming landscape and spin a tale about it, offering deep insights about connections that transcend time and space. The book is presented in an easy and enjoyable prose style, and it is accompanied by beautiful and evocative color photographs.
The 2023 AAG Distinguished Scholarship Honors goes to Li An, Professor of Geography at San Diego State University and fellow of the AAG and the American Association for Advancement of Science. An is an internationally recognized geographer known for his pioneering contributions to agent-based modeling and space-time analysis that strengthen our ability to understand spatiotemporal variability of complex human-environmental processes. His work is motivated by his longing for peace and strength in human-environment interactions through improved sustainability—a motivation inspired by his name: Li, his first name, means strength or power, and An, his last name, means peace or safety. An has contributed to this mission by using geovisualization, modeling, and simulation to bridge the division between social science and ecological modeling that previously limited the capacity to address environmental issues that are inherently human influenced, for example, panda conservation and invasive species.
The 2023 AAG Distinguished Scholarship Honors is awarded to Geraldine Pratt for her contributions to the fields of feminist geography, economic geography, and labor. She does so by demonstrating how labor markets work, tracing the relationships between domestic workers in Canada and their transnational families, as well as the debates over the ethics of care at home and abroad. Pratt has served as an inspiration to human geographers, demonstrating that dedication to ethical collaborations can also lead to 
The 2023 AAG Distinguished Teaching Honors is awarded to John Strait and Ava Fujimoto-Strait for their joint teaching, mentoring, and pedagogical accomplishments at Sam Houston State University (SHSU). As Pat Harris, Chair of SHSU’s Department of Environmental and Geosciences stated, “Individually, John and Ava are great ambassadors for geography … it is hard to talk about one without talking about the other because their course and teaching styles are so intertwined.” Not only is the breadth of their teaching impressive, but they also offer innovative instruction that is engaging, place-based, and student-centered. Collectively, they have taught several different courses at SHSU, many of which are recognized for their academic community engagement, due to their emphasis on community partnerships and service-based learning opportunities. Since 2006, they have coordinated and co-directed a host of immersive field courses, both within the United States and abroad. These field courses offer students hands-on interdisciplinary experiences in such diverse locales as the Mississippi Delta, Hawaii, Spain, Italy, Morocco, as well as other locations. These transformative travel experiences, in conjunction with field-based activities incorporated within their traditional in-class courses, directly immerse students into relevant subject matter, ultimately creating strong bonds and facilitating a passion for geographic inquiry.
The American Association of Geographers awards AAG Lifetime Achievement Honors to Dr. David R. Butler. Over his 37-year academic career, Butler’s influential work at the interface of geomorphology and biogeography has advanced knowledge and understanding in physical geography. He has displayed exemplary devotion to teaching and mentoring both at the college and K-12 levels, putting diversity and equity principles at the forefront of his program. He has promoted and strengthened physical geography through his scholarship and his leadership and service.
The American Association of Geographers awards AAG Lifetime Achievement Honors to Mark Monmonier. Over the course of five decades, he has made outstanding contributions to geographic research, most notably in the fields of cartography and geographic communication. He also has an extensive record of distinctive leadership at national and international levels, and in service to the discipline of geography and the AAG. He is a valued colleague and esteemed mentor and inspiration to hundreds of students, many of whom have become leaders in the academic community, government agencies, and industry.
The 2023 AAG Lifetime Achievement Honors is awarded to Linda Peake for her scholarly contributions to feminist and urban geographies and for a career dedicated to extending equity, diversity, and inclusion at her institution (York University, Canada) and across the discipline of geography.
William Wyckoff, a recipient of the AAG’s Lifetime Achievement Honors, has played a leading role in research focusing on the historical evolution of interactions among people and places in the American West. While serving on the faculty of Montana State University since 1986, Wyckoff conducted a continually evolving set of research projects focusing on several important segments of this vast territory and its diverse population. Some of his research focused on specific places, while other projects were broader regional examinations. Wyckoff’s research built on traditional historical geography themes and approaches, but he employed new perspectives and techniques to provide novel insights into the complex interactions among people and places across the region.
Dr. Timothy Beach is an internationally recognized leader in soils, wetlands, geomorphology, and geoarchaeology through hundreds of publications. His research — deriving from his soils lab at UT Austin and a range of field sites across the world including Guatemala, Mexico, Belize, Turkey, Italy, and the USA — has substantially elevated our understanding of wetlands, geomorphology, human interactions with soils, and global change, especially relating to Maya civilization. Beach is recognized with major awards from several disciplines, universities, and numerous invited lectures including at the Vatican. The awards include the G.K. Gilbert Award and Ellen Mosely-Thompson Paper of the Year Award from the American Association of Geographers (AAG), the Kirk Bryan Award from the Geological Society of America (GSA), the Carl O. Sauer Distinguished Scholarship Award from the Conference of Latin American Geography, and the Fryxell Award from the Society for American Archaeology (SAA). Beach also received fellowships from Guggenheim and Dumbarton Oaks (twice) and is an elected Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. The University of Texas at Austin honored Dr. Beach’s research with the C.B. Smith Centennial Chair in U.S.-Mexico Relations. In addition, Georgetown University awarded Tim Beach with the Distinguished Research Award and the Georgetown School of Foreign Service Professor of the Year Teaching Award. Beach is also an Alumnus of the Year at California State University-Chico. An active member over four decades, Tim Beach has provided outstanding leadership and service to the AAG, most notably as chair of the Geomorphology Specialty Group and co-founder of the Paleoenvironmental Change Specialty Group. He has similarly held leadership roles in the GSA, SAA, and the American Quaternary Association. Beach’s long record of service to his discipline also includes the scores of special sessions that he organized or co-organized, that have produced special edited journal issues.
Dr. Martin Doyle is well known as a physical geographer, and he’s also very comfortable in the realms of environmental policy, finance, and aquatic ecology. He has won major awards for his ground-breaking research, including a Guggenheim Fellowship, the AAG’s Meridian Book Award for The Source: How Rivers Made America and America Remade its Rivers and the AAG’s Geomorphology Specialty Group’s G.K. Gilbert Award. He is a strong mentor, including collaborating with and supporting female river scientists, and through his role as Associate Dean at Duke University, where he has been an advocate for female scholars and scholars of color. He served in President Obama’s Department of the Interior, and on the US Army Science Board. He is widely known as a “go-to” figure for interviews in the media, and is an important spokesperson for watershed protection and restoration. He is known as a powerful mentor of students as well as early-career scientists, and although no longer in a geography department, he remains a member and strong supporter of the AAG and the Geomorphology Specialty Group.
Dr. LaToya Eaves has established a record of transformative research, dynamic teaching, and dedicated mentoring in the field of geography. Her contributions to the fields of Black Geographies, Black feminism, queer geographies, and the U.S. South are particularly noteworthy. Dr. Eaves’ rigorous and accessible scholarship pushes geography as a discipline to engage with the importance of Black geographic thought and practices in the production of space and place. Her scholarship provides accessible entry points for students to engage with Black Geographies, and she has contributed foundational texts for scholars doing work within Black Geographies literature. Her research has been published in Geoforum, Dialogues in Human Geography, Gender, Place & Culture, The Professional Geographer, and Journal of Geography in Higher Education, among other journals and edited volumes. She has received numerous accolades within geography, including but not limited to Department of Geography’s Outstanding Faculty Teaching Award at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, Academic Advancement Award by the Tennessee LGBT+ College Conference, the Ronald F. Abler Distinguished Service Honors by the AAG, and the Enhancing Diversity Award by the AAG. One of the founders of the Black Geographies Specialty Group, Dr. Eaves’ organization and caring mentorship has transformed the discipline of geography and provided a space and academic home for Black scholars and scholars of Black Geographies. She is a generous and caring mentor as well. Her reputation within the geography community broadly and within the Black Geographies community specifically speaks to her generous mentorship of students and junior scholars, much of which is invisible, uncompensated, and unrecognized work in institutional settings. She has been committed to recognizing and honoring senior Black scholars, organizing panels, special issues of journals, and award applications to assure that these senior scholars are recognized for their foundational contributions. Beyond the subfield of Black Geographies, Dr. Eaves has served the AAG in the roles of National Councilor, Treasurer and Chair of the Finance Committee. She also contributed to the AAG Harassment Free Task Force and the AAG Task Force on Diversifying the Curriculum in Geography, and she co-chaired the AAG New Orleans Featured Theme Committee. She has served as an editor for Dialogues in Human Geography and on numerous editorial boards.
Dr. A. Stewart Fotheringham has been described as the strongest researcher of his generation in quantitative geography and spatial analysis. He has been at the forefront of efforts to improve our understanding of spatially distributed phenomena, and of the social and environmental processes that operate in space and time. His publications on spatial interaction modeling have become the accepted authorities in the field for their theoretical and quantitative rigor and for the richness of their applications. Fotheringham has also significantly advanced our understanding of the problems of making statistical inference from spatial data across the health, social, and environmental sciences. More recently, his work on spatial process heterogeneity has led to powerful new insights from place-based analysis, a topic that he has pioneered through the development of geographically weighted regression and the creation of analogous versions of many standard statistical techniques. He has made these advances readily accessible to researchers in geography, and in the health, social, and environmental sciences more broadly, through software, tutorials, and workshops, and the development of appropriate inferential tests. He is a member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, and he has done much to promote geography and spatial science across the social sciences and internationally. He has been a long-time member of the American Association of Geographers despite his long periods at European universities, and he has been a regular attendee at AAG meetings and a contributor to geographical debates on both sides of the Atlantic. His research, including numerous papers in the Annals of the American Association of Geographers, is very heavily cited.
Dr. Nik Heynen’s sustained and exemplary record of research, mentorship, and service has left an enduring impact on the discipline of geography. Dr. Heynen’s scholarship has been transformational and field-defining in the areas of urban political ecology, abolition geographies and ecologies, and geographies of neoliberalism and racial capitalism. His work theorizes and demonstrates empirically how racialized processes of capitalism, white supremacy, and settler colonialism produce structurally unjust geographies and ecologies. His work centers Black scholars and their scholarship to create a social justice-oriented research agenda that produces not only rigorous, theoretically sophisticated scholarship but also practical, justice-centered work. Dr. Heynen’s scholarship is only surpassed by his commitment to his advocacy for reparations and service within the discipline. Dr. Heynen has served as part of the editorial collective at 
Dr. Reece Jones is Professor and the Chair of the Department of Geography and Environment at the University of Hawai‘i at Manoa. He has created influential research on borders and immigration and is dedicated to service within the AAG and the wider academic community. He is currently the Chair of the Local Organizing Committee for the 2024 Annual Meeting in Honolulu. He previously served as the president of the Political Geography Specialty Group (PGSG) of the AAG in 2013 and 2014, was the Secretary/Treasurer of the PGSG from 2011-2012, and served on the PGSG executive committee from 2009-2016. Reece has served the discipline of geography as the Editor-in-Chief of the journal 
David H. “Dave” Kaplan is well-known both nationally and internationally for his work in political and urban geography. He has written or edited 14 books, ranging from sophisticated analyses of ethnicity and nationalism to textbooks on urban geography. He has published about 70 journal articles and book chapters, given over 80 invited presentations, and is editor-in-chief for the journal 
Robin Leichenko is an extremely creative, inquisitive, and giving academic and public scholar whose career has spanned economic and environmental geography, focusing over the past 20 years primarily on economic impacts and responses to climate change. She has been a professor at Rutgers University for over 25 years, where she has chaired 11 Ph.D. committees, served as department chair and graduate director, served as co-director of the Rutgers Climate Institute, and is currently Associate Dean of Social and Behavioral Sciences. She is an exemplary public scholar. She has served on multiple committees on responses to climate change, including serving as a review editor on the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), serving as co-chair of the New York City Panel on Climate Change, and serving as co-lead of the Society and Economy Sector of the New York State Climate Impact Assessment. Dr. Leichenko’s research journey shows her inquisitiveness and willingness to try new things. Early in graduate school, she was an environmental geographer, but during her Ph.D. program at Penn State, she became focused on economic geography, obtaining a M.A. in Economics along with her Ph.D. in Geography. After coming to Rutgers, she began to return to environmental geography, but combined the work with her knowledge of economic systems. Her ability to speak the language of scholars and practitioners across the various fields focusing on climate change has helped her to make immense contributions both to the academic study of climate change and to the debate on public responses to it. She has also been very active in the AAG itself. Among other things, she was chair of the Economic Geography specialty group. She has also acted as a mentor to many early and mid-career geographers, particularly women. Overall, Robin Leichenko is a model geographer, unafraid to cross boundaries, who works both inside and outside the academy.
Dr. Wei Li is a highly productive researcher who has published well over 100 academic articles and 10 books, edited books and special issues of journals, and delivered more than 75 invited lectures, with many focusing on urban and ethnic geography as well as highly skilled migrations. She is most known for her work on ethnic and racial settlement patterns, where she coined the now widely known term ethnoburb. Her work is well-respected both nationally and internationally, and she has held various visiting positions both in the U.S. and internationally. Dr. Li has provided extensive service to the AAG, including leadership positions in the Ethnic Geography Specialty Group, and serving as National Councilor and on the JEDI task force as well as other diversity-related initiatives. Beyond her own valuable contributions, she is also exceptional in drawing attention to and applauding the contributions of others. Dr. Li also deserves praise for her exceptional work in mentoring and advising graduate students and junior colleagues, including an extensive record of co-presenting and co-authoring papers with her students.
Dr. Wenwen Li is a nationally recognized researcher at the forefront of geography, developing new methods for spatial pattern analysis and regionalization for solving real-world problems across disciplines. She is among the first to introduce classic inertia theory from physics to the measurement of spatial compactness patterns. Dr. Li has conducted innovative research on cyberinfrastructure, utilizing big data and artificial intelligence (AI) to enable geospatial intelligence for data-driven discovery and intelligent spatial decision making. For this
Dr. Priscilla McCutcheon has built an eminent record of innovative research, impactful teaching, and dedicated service in geography. Dr. McCutcheon’s work in Black food geographies and land politics weaves together geographies of religious organizations, environmental justice, land/food access, and Black geographies to interrogate the structural inequalities and racial disparities in land ownership, particularly in the U.S. South. Her scholarship on race and environment also highlights racially marginalized peoples as agentic actors rather than simply communities trapped in oppressive struggles. Dr. McCutcheon’s scholarship is an important and vital contribution to geography, food justice, and Black studies. Described as “one of the most important scholars of her generation,” Dr. McCutcheon’s research in many journals including 
Dr. Lindsay Naylor is an outstanding researcher, teacher, and member of the AAG who is extremely qualified to become an Early/Mid-Career AAG Fellow. In the past seven years, she has published 27 articles, mainly as a first author, as well as a book, Fair Trade Rebels, published by the highly regarded University of Minnesota Press. This book won the 2020 Julian Minghi Distinguished Book Award of the Political Geography Specialty Group of the AAG. She also has a second book under contract with the University of Georgia. Her research focuses on food systems, bodies, care, and agriculture, concentrating on stories and research on material subjects in particular places, and often involves partnering with local community organizations. She is quickly emerging as one of the premier scholars in both political geography and the geographies of food and agriculture. In addition, she is a strong teacher, serves as the current graduate advisor for the Geography program at the University of Delaware, and has been extremely active in the AAG. As a graduate student, she was one of the founders of the Geographies of Food and Agriculture specialty group. Lindsay was instrumental in the AAG Covid-19 Rapid Response and with AAG staff and a committee of AAG members developed the graduate student learning skills program (she is the current chair), which has been a tremendous support system for our members. She is also active in the Political Geography Specialty Group (as a former board member) and as a former board member of the AAG Middle States Region, from which she was elected as a Regional Councilor to the AAG. In sum, in her career to date, Lindsay Naylor has added an enormous amount to the field of geography as a researcher, a colleague, and a mentor.
Dr. Duane Nellis has had an outstanding career as a leader in remote sensing in geography, and through his positions as leaders of major universities across the United States. Nellis forged an impressive career as a geographer and as a senior administrator at several public research universities. He has published numerous papers in the field of geography and remote sensing, and he has guided the continual growth of this field serving in his long-standing role as co-editor of Geocarto International. He has carried out this editorial work in addition to his university leadership roles as dean of arts and sciences (West Virginia University), provost (Kansas State University), and president (University of Idaho, Texas Tech, and Ohio University). In all these roles, Nellis crafted creative, joint-venture opportunities between the university and external foundations and corporations, shifting the narrative of public universities being victims of defunding to empowered agents of their own destinies. He also used his bully pulpit to advance diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts at every university in which he served. One powerful example of his efforts was the designation of Texas Tech University as a Hispanic-Serving Institution. Nellis also served the AAG through his efforts in the Remote Sensing Specialty Group, and especially through his terms as Vice-President, President, and Past President of the AAG. He received many awards and commendations over the course of his distinguished career, and has richly deserved all the recognition. He received the Gilbert Grosvenor Geographic Education Honors in 2001 for his distinguished contributions to geographic education. He also received the highest-level scholarly achievement award from the AAG Remote Sensing Specialty Group and the John Fraser Hart Award for Distinguished Scholarship from the Agriculture and Rural Land Use Specialty Group.
Dr. Bimal K. Paul, a Fulbright-Flex Fellow, has an international reputation as a leading scholar on disasters, hazards, and health and is known for frequently offering deeper understandings of complex issues and debunking long-held myths. Stanford University identified him as among the top two percent of researchers in the world. His research expertise is not just evidenced by his long record of publications, which includes numerous articles and several books, but also by his selection as a member of the observer team at the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Lima, Peru, and more recently the Paris Climate Change Conference. Dr. Paul’s work is well-known and respected beyond North America, as proven by numerous invited talks in various Asian countries as well as his service as the external reviewer on 20 dissertations at foreign universities. Dr. Paul is recognized as an expert on South Asia both within and outside academia and is frequently interviewed by the media on a wide range of topics including natural disaster mitigation, disaster relief, and health. Dr. Paul has served the AAG in a variety of capacities, including leadership of the Asian Geography Specialty Group, the AAG Affirmative Action and Minority Status Committee, and the AAG Research Grants Committee. He has also held editorial positions for the 
Dr. William Solecki is an internationally recognized geographer whose research has significantly advanced understanding of urban environmental change and transitions to adaptation and resilience in the face of a changing climate. Among Dr. Solecki’s sustained, high-impact contributions are his leadership roles in climate assessments at the international and national levels. For the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) since 2006, he has served as contributing lead author, lead author, or contributing author for chapters in the 4th Assessment, 5th Assessment, and 6th Assessment reports. Solecki was also a lead author for “Chapter 1 Framing and Contexts” of the IPCC Special Report: Global Warming of 1.5°C. He was also a lead author for U.S. National Climate Assessment chapter reports, most recently for a chapter on the Northeast (AR4). Infusing geographical concepts, and transcending academic scholarship to co-involve policymakers and practitioners, are significant attributes of Dr. Solecki’s work. His engagement with climate change issues in New York City has provided a living laboratory for his research and teaching at Hunter College, City University of New York (CUNY). He was the co-Chair of the New York City Panel on Climate Change, founding director of the Institute for Sustainable Cities at Hunter College, founding (interim) director of the CUNY-led, Science and Resilience Institute at Jamaica Bay, co-founder of the Urban Climate Change Research Network, and founding editor of the 
Dr. David Wilson is a distinguished urban geographer who has led the excellent urban geography program at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign for 30 years. His research has focused on urban redevelopment, political economy, governance dynamics, and race in Rust Belt Cities of the global north, particularly in Chicago, Flint, Glasgow, and Cleveland. He both studies these cities and has become closely tied to them, particularly their Blues music scene. Dr. Wilson also excels as a mentor, both for urban geography students and for junior faculty. He is a giving scholar, with an open-door policy for all. He is also devoted to the promotion of diversity and inclusion at the University of Illinois and in the field of geography in general. In the AAG, he has been a leader in the Urban Geography Specialty Group, where he co-organizes the annual plenary lecture. He has also been on the editorial board of more than 10 national and international journals.
John Harner, 
James Cheshire and Oliver Uberti, 
Katherine McKittrick
Case Watkins
Kimberley Kinder,