Three long-time AAG members met up recently at the 4th International Geography Youth Summit (IGYS) in Bengaluru (formerly Bangalore), India. The IGYS was developed as part of The Institute of Geographical Studies (TIGS) in Bengaluru. Both are the brainchilds of AAG member, Dr. Chandra Shekhar Balachandran, who founded TIGS in 2000. Together with collaborators and partners in India and the US, TIGS organizes year-round workshops with teachers, parents and students in Indian urban and rural schools to introduce geography as culturally relevant and meaningful. This kind of geography challenges traditional textbook approaches and extends learning beyond the classroom.

Dr. Balachandran developed the IGYS to encourage students to develop their own geographical research on locally relevant social and environmental issues and then present their work in an academic setting. This year, more than 160 students, aged 11-17 years old, convened at the Vidyanjali Academy for Learning in Bengaluru, to share their findings at IGYS-2018.

Students wrote and submitted abstracts online beforehand, and presentations were organized into concurrent thematic sessions, modeled after the AAG annual meeting format, with plenty of time for Q and A. For many students, some of whom are from rural and under-resourced schools and who are supported by a local NGO partner, this is their first time doing their own research, and making a pubic presentation. Dr. Heidi J. Nast, Professor of Geography and International Studies at DePaul University, has fund-raised for TIGS in the US for the past eight years and has attended the past two Summits. As she observes “the student enthusiasm at the Summit is infectious. The topics the students raise and the concerns they have are helping us to think about Indian geography in entirely new ways.”

This year, Dr. Sue Roberts from the University of Kentucky attended IGYS for the first time and gave the Keynote address. She says, “What impressed me most was the way the students took geographical concepts and ran with them. They generated truly fresh ways of approaching complex problems that we adults and professionals can sometimes make rather boring” and she added “the students had no problem connecting their research findings to practical action.”

One team of students, for example, tackled the issue of proliferating potholes in their streets. After examining the geographical prevalence of potholes and thinking through their many spatial effects on social and economic well-being, the students met with local officials who responded with more urgency than had been shown previously. The students additionally filled two potholes on their own, committed themselves to filling two more each month, and they created a website to report and repair potholes.

Three young girls gave the plenary paper, “taboo geographies of menstruation,” based on work they had presented at the IGYS 2017. They questioned why menstruating women are seen as polluting and placed at spatial distance from others, and suggested culturally sensitive ways for changing this.

These are but two examples of how children are taking their geography research work to interventions in the world around them.

There is much AAG members around the world can learn from the work of TIGS to generate awareness of geography and to support geographical research in schools. To find out more about this exciting initiative in India, please visit www.tigs.in . A growing number of AAG members are giving financial support to the work of TIGS through its partner organization in the US: Dharani USA Inc. (a non-profit 401-3c organization). Information on how to donate is on the website.

On November 3, 2017 AAG President Derek Alderman addressed the Ohio University Geography Department through its Colloquium program. His talk, entitled “Civil Rights as Geospatial Work: Role of Counter Mapping and Radical Place-making in the African American Freedom Struggle”, engaged the audience in a critical look at how geographers can play a role in discussing and practicing civil rights. He emphasized that geographers now have an opportunity to be active in a second wave of Civil Rights movements, making specific note that there is a chance to feature not only civil rights struggles, but the ways in which we talk about them. Coinciding with the Geography Awareness Week theme of the geography of civil rights movements, Alderman highlighted how geographers can interact with new grassroots movements and ways of knowing about race and place.

A key moment of Alderman’s talk called attention to the next generation of geographers. “Students will be our planners and mappers for the future–but you won’t be doing that alone, you’ll do that as part of a larger history of [geospatial and civil rights] work,” Alderman remarked. The statement captures an idea at the heart of his presentation– civil rights and geography are fundamentally linked and have a deep history which can and should be explored further. Examples of the geospatial work Alderman discussed included The Green Book, a tool which helped black travelers during the height of segregation in America, and the importance of data during sit-ins and bus boycotts. One way of looking at these important topics is to view them as part of a longer, broader civil rights movement beyond the common narratives many of us are familiar with today.

The Ohio University Geography Colloquium is a four-part, semester-long series. Chosen by the OU faculty and a graduate student representative, the colloquium speakers connect students with a variety of areas of geographic research. Many Geography departments regularly host similar events with guest speakers sharing information on topics, study areas, or research initiatives they are passionate about and ways they filter into popular culture. For students, these events can help them explore new areas of geographic thought and inspire new research ideas. For faculty in attendance, it presents an opportunity to branch out into other geographic subfields and become energized for their own research.

One way that the AAG supports colloquium programs and the sharing of geographic ideas is through the Visiting Geographical Scientist Program (VGSP). Funded by the Gamma Theta Upsilon Geography Honor Society, the program is geared towards small departments with limited resources to bring in notable geographers as guest speakers. The VGSP helps to identify potential visitors and assists with costs for travel.

Additionally, the AAG has kicked off a brand new resource to highlight geographers interested in and available to give presentations on various aspects of geographic thought and research. The Geography Speakers Bureau is designed to facilitate connections between speakers and those hosting events such as department colloquia, or media contacts seeking a geographer perspective on a topic. The Speakers Bureau, still in development with more speakers to be added, highlights distinguished geographers and their research interests and encourages a culture of public speaking within the field. Not only does the Speakers Bureau aim to connect geographers to each other, but it also seeks to increase public engagement to help communicate all that geography has to offer the world.

For more information on the VGSP program contact Mark Revell at mrevell [at] aag [dot] org. For more information on the Geography Speakers Bureau contact David Coronado at dcoronado [at] aag [dot] org.