President's Column

Geographies of Accountability

July 30, 2026

Tan and red brick mosaic walkway on the UNC campus.

“The Gift” is a brick walkway and installation incorporating images important to Native traditions, such as turtles, eagle feather, dogwood flowers, hills, water, and corn created by artist Senora Lynch (Haliwa-Saponi) for the American Indian Center at the University of North Carolina. Courtesy UNC

When I interviewed for my job at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, I was nervous or maybe even awestruck. It was beyond comprehension that I could get a tenure track job at such an institution. I remember my anxiously chosen secondhand outfit, mistakes I made, but also little moments that seem telling now. On the campus tour, a professor paused by a towering figure of a soldier facing North, and said sarcastically: “Welcome to the South — this is Silent Sam — he’s facing north to protect us from the Yankees.” Much to my surprise, I got the job, and started in 2009.

Most folks described the statue as though he had sprung out of the earth and would be there until the whole university was in ruins in some distant future. My office was in the Saunders building — and I slowly learned from undergraduate students that Saunders was a KKK leader. I had been teaching political geography without knowing the political geography of my own building. Student activists in the Real Silent Sam Coalition spent time in the library, in the archives, and found documents confirming Saunders’s KKK leadership, and that this was a reason the building had been named for him. Students used geographic strategies to force the university administration to rename the building. Students have taught me how to be in ethical relationship to the place and people that sustain me and my work — teaching and learning from UNC students has been one of the best things that’s ever happened to me. Witnessing these events shaped my approach to political geography and is reflected in the first chapter of my political geography textbook.

In 2018, a decade after my interview, that Confederate monument was toppled by activists and pictures of his face in the dirt were national news.

Investigating Power and Place

I’m writing to you today from a sunny summer Ladakh, in the Indian Himalayas, but at the same time I am recalling these events, to introduce my motivations for starting my presidential Task Force on Grounded Relations and Repair, with the dream team of James Bryan, Andrew Curley (Diné), LaToya Eaves, Elspeth Iralu (Angami Naga), Jovan Scott Lewis, Natasha Myhal (Sault Ste. Marie Tribe of Chippewa Indians), Meredith Palmer (Tuscarora, Six Nations of the Grand River), Laura Pulido, Isaac Rivera, and Kayla Roulhac. A future column will describe more of the task force’s activities and invite participation, but I wanted to begin with the inspiration.

Our university does not have an official land acknowledgment. The First Nations Graduate Circle has written: “We acknowledge that the land on which the University of North Carolina stands is the ancestral homeland of Eastern Siouan-speaking Indigenous peoples (Yesàh, “The People”).” Many of the buildings on campus were built by people who had been stolen from their homelands in Africa and enslaved in North Carolina, and university founders and faculty rented out the people they had enslaved to build and maintain our buildings. Nearly all of the early benefactors were settler-enslavers, including Benjamin Smith, who enslaved 221 people and gave the largest early donation of 20,000 acres of land, and Duncan Cameron and then his son Paul — generational benefactors and trustees who also owned the largest plantation in North Carolina. In the first half of the 19^th century when the university faced financial crisis, it benefited from Indian removal by acquiring and selling Cherokee and Chickasaw lands as far west as Tennessee, and also by profiting from the sale and labor of enslaved people.

Working at the university taught me so much about power and geography, and I started to write about these questions and work with student activists. Diné geographer Andrew Curley and I also wrote about what it’s like to work at this kind of institution. This led me to ask Danielle Purifoy to join me in co-founding our Landback Abolition Project. This is a collective endeavor in which we have been working with Native students, descendants of the enslaved, and the students in our classes to create an archive of place-based knowledge about the university in order to support institutional change and repair — for instance, working with descendants of those enslaved by our institution to understand what could constitute justice or repair when plantation power structures still animate our institution; and working with members of the Carolina Indian Circle to create an archive of Native life in this place.

In our classes, we take students to the archives and on campus tours: I am trying to recreate for them the process through which I learned to take my ethical relations to place more seriously. I also tell them that this is a rehearsal — that when they graduate and move to a new place, a new job, or a new educational setting they can ask the same questions: whose land am I on? Who built these buildings? Whose neighborhood is this?

The legacies of slavery and Indigenous dispossession at our institutions are both widespread and contextually specific. In 2020, the Land-grab Universities report from High Country News asked us to consider how our academic institutions had been funded by the expropriation of Native land. In 2016, the Universities Studying Slavery consortium convened to ask what responsibilities universities have to the enslaved people who built them and their descendants. These are natural place-based questions that geographers are well-placed to take up. Who are the people that our institutions and research are grounded among and who do our institutions and research agendas serve? How can we be in better ethical relations to the land and people upon whom we are dependent as scholars, practitioners, educators, learners, and simply as people?

I want to take up these questions in my taskforce, and I have also found that these kinds of questions really draw community members and students into the discipline — connecting to past President Bill Moseley’s Generation Alpha Project Task Force asking about our discipline’s future, and past President Rebecca Lave’s Task Force on Public and Engaged Scholarship, for example. Since beginning these conversations with members, it has been wonderful to hear here how many of you are doing related or similar community-based work. For the task force, I am bringing together scholars to study how we can cultivate better grounded relations in the institutions and communities we are located in, and be more responsive to the ethical responsibilities that these relations entail.

As geographers, we sometimes operate as though we were untethered to the places that support our work and existence, whether that is the cleaning and maintenance labor that makes our university or organization function or the places and people we engage with through research. I am hoping through the task force for us to learn more about geographers who are building strong and careful ethical relations to place and people so that we can expand those models and share best practices. We are beginning from these initial questions.

What are best practices for accountability to the Native nations to whom our institutions are in debt? How can we advocate for enhanced Native governance at our institutions? What are the current relations between our departments or organizations and the Native nations in their region and how can they be improved without placing a burden on overburdened individuals and institutions?
What are best practices for engaging with repair at our institutions for the legacies of slavery and understanding how those logics and antiblackness shaped our institutions? How can we support existing demands for reparative action?
How do we best ground our relations to places and the labor that currently sustains our work?
What are our responsibilities to address the uneven and extractive politics of research and fieldwork (including international research and collaborations), as well as our material complicity in empire and extraction, both material and intellectual?

During my time in AAG leadership, I want us to think through these questions in relation to our institutions and to the AAG itself — building on much prior work the organization has been taking up. I am excited to talk about these ideas at regional meetings and I would like to be learning more about what you are doing at your institution. Please reach out to me — and share your ideas with us!

Please note: The ideas expressed in the AAG President’s column are not necessarily the views of the AAG as a whole. This column is traditionally a space in which the president may talk about their views or focus during their tenure as president of AAG, or spotlight their areas of professional work. Please feel free to email AAG President Sara Smith directly to enable a constructive discussion.

Perspectives

Finding the Way: A Tribute to Geography

July 30, 2026

By James Chan

James Chan posed in front of a wall shelf full of books One June 1, my lifelong companion and I bought a condo at The Philadelphian, right next to the Philadelphia Museum of Art. When I opened the mailbox of our unit guess what I found? A copy of the latest Annals of the AAG (American Association of Geographers) with the previous owner’s name on the label. The presence of that journal struck me like a message from Providence. It reminded me of my geography training and—now at age 76 and after nearly 55 years of work both within and outside of the field—made me wonder: could a discipline which I once thought had led me astray have actually been my lucky star? Here is my geography story.

No sooner had puberty awakened me to the need for an education in this chaotic world than I realized I excelled at geography in high school. I became a geography major at the University of Hong Kong and graduated in 1970. In 1971, the University of Chicago accepted me as a foreign student in their geography department. I studied under Marvin Mikesell (cultural geography) and Paul Wheatley (historical geography of East and Southeast Asia), graduating in 1973. I then went to the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor to work with Rhoads Murphey (China, India, and regional geography), earning my Ph.D. in 1977. Peter Gosling (Southeast Asia) and George Kish (Soviet Union) were my other geography advisors. Professor Chang Chun-shu (History of China) was the only non-geography member of my doctoral committee.

In the late 1970s, as now, tenure-track jobs in geography were scarce. I had a one-year stint at Boston University and a brief stay at SUNY Cortland, teaching cultural and world regional geography, along with a course I created on China. Personal issues at the time compounded the shortage of good jobs in geography, so I left academic teaching and worked at Academic Press, Inc., a scientific publisher in New York, where I served as China Area Manager and then International Promotion Manager for two years. Corporate politics made me want to leave an otherwise good position. In May 1983, I set up my own consulting practice, helping American manufacturers, database companies, and professional associations do business in China and Asia. I’m still an independent consultant, doing what I love—something I literally cooked up on my own.

For several years in the late 1970s and early 1980s, I was lucky to befriend Woody (Forrest) Pitts, whose work at the University of Hawai‘i specialized in Japan, Korea, and quantitative methods. I used to complain to him about the lack of career opportunities in geography and how I felt “let down” for having chosen it as my specialty. Woody, kind and supportive, told me I was wrong to feel that way. Intellectually, I agreed with him. But emotionally, I couldn’t stop blaming geography for a career I thought I would never find.

In truth, I was disingenuous with myself. It is true that I never became an academic or research geographer, and business consulting has never been seen as a natural path for geography majors. Yet my knowledge of geography contributed to the epiphany I had about working in international consulting.

One day in church, I made a vow: I wanted to help pull China and America closer through trade. A deep calm and sense of peace came over me the moment that idea struck. Now, as an independent business consultant with a Ph.D. in China geography and cultural geography, I’m reminded by the serendipitous Annals of the AAG in my mailbox that what I’ve been doing is still deeply, intimately geographical.

Imagine me at the nadir of a troubled life when I was in my late 20s and early 30s, seeing myself as Hercules standing in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, pulling China and America closer—moving the tectonic plates themselves. Isn’t that a quintessentially geographical idea?

In April 1979, while I was a young geography professor at SUNY Cortland, Clifton Pannell (University of Georgia, urban, economic and cultural geography of China and East Asia) invited me to give a paper on China. I traveled to Philadelphia from Cortland, New York to attend the 75th Anniversary of the AAG annual meeting, which was held at the Benjamin Franklin Hotel. In the evening of April 22, 1979, I met my lifelong companion by chance in the city. Our meeting has turned Philadelphia into my home and the United States of America into my adopted country.

Now you know why that latest issue of The Annals turned out to be such a revelation. Geography as a subject works mysteriously for me.

Perspectives is a column intended to give AAG members an opportunity to share ideas relevant to the practice of geography. If you have an idea for a Perspective, see our guidelines for more information.

President's Column

Toward a More Grounded Geography Community

July 2, 2026

Credit: Eilis Garvey, Unsplash

I’m writing to you from a hot summer in Carrboro, North Carolina. My daughter has a long to-do list: make art, write, play in the woods, see family. As an assistant professor, I’ve felt guilty when I wasn’t working or being efficient. Sometimes we are teaching and cursing ourselves for not writing — then we write and get to the classroom and judge ourselves for not being better prepared. Instead, I hope you all are out in the sunshine.

I’m humbled to write to you as president of AAG, and grateful for everything I learned as vice president. I was shocked to get nominated, but am eager to serve during uncertain times. This is a good time for all of us to think about who we are to one another and how we can stay true to hardwon values of justice, freedom of speech, and equity. Let’s move with joy, be of service, and strengthen one another. I want to use this first column to introduce myself and my taskforce, speak to our current political context, and ask for your continued hard work and engagement.

Most of you are learning my name for the first time. I am an anticolonial and feminist political geographer. I started my research in Ladakh, in the Indian Himalaya, along contested borders with Pakistan and China. In my first research I developed the concept of intimate geopolitics — that who we love and how we interact with our neighbors is territorial and shaped by colonial legacies, making embodied life geopolitical. It’s a classic feminist and political question: how do our intimate lives make the world? Then, with my first student, Mabel Gergan, I worked with Himalayan college students to understand experiences of racism and personal transformation as they attended university in big Indian cities. Alongside this research, I began to work to reshape political geography and feminist geography through engagement with anticolonial, Black, and Indigenous geographies. In recent years, I have co-founded two collectives:

The Desirable Futures Collective studies time: what kind of futures are available for whom? How is time a tool to claim territory through telling stories about past and future?
The Landback Abolition Project, co-founded with Dr. Danielle Purifoy, works alongside community to understand what justice would look like at our university with its lasting legacy of indigenous dispossession and slavery.

These experiences have contributed to my vision for the presidency, and work with AAG beyond that. My Grounded Relations and Repair Taskforce takes up the question of our ethical relations to people and place. I want to showcase how geographers can be in good ethical relations to the history and present of their institutions. How can we be accountable to Native nations? To the enslaved labor that built many of our universities? To workers who clean and care for our institutions? I want to see a geography where every geography student learns to ask whose land they are on and consider their ethical responsibilities to the communities that sustain them.

Supporting Each Other Through Difficult Times

I’m writing during a challenging time for all of us in education. I want to call us in to support one another, and not to concede to the current political climate but rather to be in solidarity and lean into our core values. We cannot afford to give up the gains we have made. As vice president I had the pleasure of traveling to our regional conferences in Cincinnati, Lexington, and Milwaukee, and our political climate and lack of resources for scholarship were the first things that geographers talked to me about. Geographers are drawn to the discipline because they love its creativity, interdisciplinary nature and expansiveness, but most of all because they want to change the world for the better. Geographers work for justice, for healthy and beautiful and equitable urban spaces, for climate justice and environmental protection. We are an increasingly diverse and inclusive discipline.

These values that we worked so hard to cultivate and these spaces — that we worked so hard to create — are at risk.

Faculty wonder if they can teach on race and gender — the exact topics they cultivated expertise in over their careers. Environmental scientists with decades of training and NSF and NASA grants wonder how to fund their work. Graduate students ask if they need to stop studying environmental justice. International scholars can’t go home to visit their families because they worry they won’t make it back in the country. We all worry our neighbors will be picked up in ICE raids. Will our chancellors or administrators will have our backs? My chair, Conghe Song, like many department heads, never seems to leave his office: reassuring faculty their work is valued, trying to figure out scholars’ visas, seeking ways to keep us funded, and that support is such a comfort in these times. But I want you to know that AAG is here for you as well. AAG has been signing onto letters about social science and climate funding, reaching out to faculty facing institutional problems, and working to protect international scholars. I think we have more power than we think, and even more so when we stand up together.

Grounding Our Practice and Our Connections

I want to encourage us to be thinking about our ethical relations to one another and to place — and this shapes the upcoming annual meeting in New York City along with my task force. I invite us to take up these questions in New York next February, through the themes of Grounded Relations and Desirable Futures. As researchers and scientists and writers and teachers — how can we build a community grounded in our ethical relations to people and place, and intentionally create a future in which we can not only survive, but thrive?

Lastly, I want to ask us all to create collective structures to protect and affirm one another. The last year at AAG has been an inspiring one. We faced some of the most daunting challenges around federal funding and the political climate, and renewed concerns about the shuttering or merging of geography departments. But we also saw our members deeply consider our global relations — I was particularly moved by our members’ work on Palestinian liberation. I see the courage and work for this cause to be the best of our geographers’ impulses to be politically engaged, and put into practice Fannie Lou Hamer’s call that “Nobody’s free until everybody’s free.” One antidote to anxiety is action, and particularly action in the service of others. Can you build something with your colleagues, your students, your coworkers?

News

Jennifer Whytlaw Joins GISCI Board as AAG Representative

July 2, 2026

Jennifer Whytlaw The GIS Certification Institute (GISCI) Board of Directors has welcomed Jennifer L. Whytlaw, Ph.D., GISP, associate professor of Applied GIS at Old Dominion University, as the newest representative of the American Association of Geographers (AAG). She joins Darcy Boellstorff, who recently renewed her term as AAG’s second representative on the board.

Founded in 2002 by member organizations including AAG, GITA, NSGIC, UCGIS, and the Geospatial Professional Network (GPN, formerly URISA), GISCI is a nonprofit organization that administers the internationally recognized GISP® (Certified GIS Professional) credential. The GISCI Board meets monthly to guide certification policies, strategic priorities, and initiatives that support excellence and professionalism across the geospatial community.

As a GISP since 2012, Whytlaw brings both professional expertise and a strong commitment to advancing the GIS profession. Throughout her career, she has promoted ethical and professional standards in GIS while inspiring the next generation of geospatial professionals through teaching, mentoring, research, and outreach.

At Old Dominion University, Whytlaw teaches undergraduate and graduate students, advises student research, and mentors emerging professionals as they pursue careers and advanced degrees. Her commitment to workforce development extends beyond higher education. She has been an active advocate for introducing GIS in K-12 classrooms, applying for educational grants, supporting GIS-integrated science curricula, and participating in STEM outreach programs that expose younger students to career opportunities in geospatial technology.

Looking ahead, Whytlaw is enthusiastic about helping GISCI strengthen its engagement with students and early-career professionals. Reflecting on her goals as a board member, she noted: “I would like to enhance GISCI’s outreach and engagement with student-focused programs such as mentorship programs and online resources targeted toward all types of colleges and universities, ensuring the future sustainability of the GIS profession.”

She also sees an opportunity for GISCI to continue evolving alongside rapidly advancing technologies: “A second focus area would be continuing the integration of new and emerging geospatial technologies, such as Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, and XR [extended reality] technologies, into the GISCI’s certification process to ensure relevance and preparedness for the future of GIS.”

As a founding GISCI member organization, AAG plays an important role in helping ensure that GIS certification reflects the needs and perspectives of the geography and GIScience communities. Whytlaw’s experience in education, outreach, and emerging technologies will provide valuable insight as GISCI continues to advance the GISP credential and support the future of the profession.

Learn more about GISCI and the GISP credential

Resources

AAG Journal Articles on Black Geographies and Racial Justice

June 8, 2026

Mural of a young Black child with pink and blue ribbon-like graphics swirling around the image.

Mural by Kevin Ledo, collaborative "Under the Same Sky" project, Portland, Oregon. Photo credit: Sarah RK, Unsplash

The following titles reflect vital scholarship on Black Geographies in AAG’s journals in recent years. Through September 30, 2026, AAG and Taylor & Francis provide free access to these articles, available for download at the links listed below.

For additional reading recommendations, see Black Geographies Reading List, sponsored by the AAG Black Geographies Specialty Group.

Alderman, Derek H. A Street Fit for a King: Naming Places and Commemoration in the American South
Alderman, Derek H.; Paul Kingsbury; and Owen J. Dwyer. Reexamining the Montgomery Bus Boycott: Toward an Empathetic Pedagogy of the Civil Rights Movement
Baran, Ian, and David L. Phoenix. Spaces of Learning: Pedagogy and Movement Building Within the Black Panther Party
Barwick, Daniel, and Anoop Nayak. The Transnationalism of the Black Lives Matter Movement: Decolonization and Mapping Black Geographies in Sydney, Australia.
Belanger, Elizabeth. Working-Class Mobility and Streetcar Politics in Reconstruction-Era St. Louis,
Berry, Rachelle; Jennifer Rice; Amy Trauger; Haley DeLoach; Amelia Wheeler; and Alice Hilton. Wake Work: Unearthing the Legacy of Slavery at the United States’ First Publicly Chartered University
Best, Asha. The Way They Blow the Horn: Caribbean Dollar Cabs and Subaltern Mobilities
Biehler, Dawn, Shannon LaDeau, Joel Baker, Yinka Bode-George, J. H. Pitas, Rebecca C. Jordan, Paul Leisnham & Sacoby Wilson. Segregation Histories, Wealth, and Community Engagement Shape Inequitable Burdens of Urban Greening
Bledsoe, Adam. Neither Ground on Which to Stand, nor Self to Defend: The Structural Denial (and Radical Histories) of Black Self-Defense
Bledsoe, Adam. Afro-Brazilian Resistance to Extractivism in the Bay of Aratu
Bledsoe, Adam. Neither Ground on Which to Stand, nor Self to Defend: The Structural Denial (and Radical Histories) of Black Self-Defense
Bruno, Tianna. Ecological Memory in the Biophysical Afterlife of Slavery
Bruno, Tianna; and Cristina Faiver-Serna. More Reflections on a White Discipline
Cahuas, Madelaine. Building a Holistic Intersectional Feminist Praxis in Geography: Lessons from Community
Carter, Perry L. Art Works: Rendering the Absence Present by Bearing Witness at the National Memorial for Peace and Justice
Chari, Sharad. Subalternization of a Postplantation City
Chennault, Carrie; & Lynn Sutton. At Home: Black Women’s Collective Claims to Environmentally Just Rental Housing
Combs, H. Jason. The South’s Slave Culture Transplanted to the Western Frontier
Cope, Meghan; and Frank Latcham. Narratives of Decline: Race, Poverty, and Youth in the Context of Postindustrial Urban Angst
Crawford, Madyson. An Ode to Belonging: Southern Black Women’s Politics of Belonging Through Storytelling
Delaney, David. The Space That Race Makes
Edgett, Kayla. Black Self-Defense as Social Reproduction: Geographies of Insurgency and Counterinsurgency Amidst Racialized Uneven Development in Atlanta
Faria, Caroline; Bisola Falola; Jane Henderson; and Rebecca Maria Torres. A Long Way to Go: Collective Paths to Racial Justice in Geography
Freshour, Carrie; and Brian Williams. Toward “Total Freedom”: Black Ecologies of Land, Labor, and Livelihoods in the Mississippi Delta
Gilmore, Ruth Wilson. Fatal Couplings of Power and Difference: Notes on Racism and Geography
Grady, Sue; and Joe Darden, Spatial Methods to Study Local Racial Residential Segregation and Infant Health in Detroit, Michigan
graham-jackson, april; and Robert Moeller. Black Scale: Constructing “Haunted” Overpasses as Relational Methodologies
Granger, Orman E. The Hydroclimatonomy of a Developing Tropical Island: A Water Resources Perspective
Guthman, Julie. “If They Only Knew”: Color Blindness and Universalism in California Alternative Food Institutions
Hamilton, Aretina R; and Kenneth Foote. Police Torture in Chicago: Theorizing Violence and Social Justice in a Racialized City
Harwood, Stacy Anne; Ruby Mendenhall; Sang S. Lee; Cameron Riopelle; and
Margaret Browne Huntt. Everyday Racism in Integrated Spaces: Mapping the Experiences of Students of Color at a Diversifying Predominantly White Institution
Heynan, Nik. Back to Revolutionary Theory Through Racialized Poverty: The McGee Family’s Utopian Struggle for Milwaukee
Howell, Philip; and Ilanah Taves. Black Protest and the Man on Horseback: Race, Animality, and Equestrian Counter-Conduct
Holloway, Steven R.; Richard Wright; and Mark Ellis. The Racially Fragmented City? Neighborhood Racial Segregation and Diversity Jointly Considered
Huang, Xiao; Xiaoqi Bao; Zhenlong Li; Shaozeng Zhang; and Bo Zhao. Black Businesses Matter: A Longitudinal Study of Black-Owned Restaurants in the COVID-19 Pandemic Using Geospatial Big Data
Ignatov, Anatoli. African Orature as Ecophilosophy: Tuning in to the Voices of the Land
Inwood, Joshua. The Modern Infrastructure Landscape and the Legacy of Slavery
Inwood, Joshua; and Derek Alderman. “The Care and Feeding of Power Structures”: Reconceptualizing Geospatial Intelligence through the Countermapping Efforts of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, 2019.
Jordan, Demetrice; Ashton Shortridge; and Joe T. Darden. The Advancing Geography Through Diversity Program: A Framework to Address the Persistent Underrepresentation of Domestic Racial and Ethnic Minorities in U.S. Geography Doctoral Programs
Kelly, Meghan. The Gallery of Possibilities
Klocker, Natascha and Paul Mbenna. Inheriting Racial Privilege and Oppression Through Proximity: Evidence from the Everyday Lives of Mixed-Race Couples in Australia
Kobayashi, Audrey. The Dialectic of Race and the Discipline of Geography
Meehan, Katie; Mabel Denzin Gergan; Sharlene Mollett; and Laura Pulido. Unsettling Race, Nature, and Environment in Geography
Mburu, Lucy W.; and Marco Helbich. Commuter-Harmonized Ambient Population
McCutcheon, Priscilla. “When and Where I Enter”: The National Council of Negro Women, Black Women’s Organizing Power, and the Fight to End Hunger
Modlin, E. Arnold; Stephen P. Hanna; Perry L. Carter; Amy E. Potter; Candace Forbes Bright; and Derek H. Alderman. Can Plantation Museums Do Full Justice to the Story of the Enslaved? A Discussion of Problems, Possibilities, and the Place of Memory
Mollett, Sharlene. Mapping Deception: The Politics of Mapping Miskito and Garifuna Space in Honduras
Moore, Adam; and Nour Joudah. The Significance of W.E.B. Du Bois’s Decolonial Geopolitics
Mullings, Beverley. Sides of the Same Coin?: Coping and Resistance among Jamaican Data-Entry Operators
Noxolo, Patricia; and Marika Preziuso. Approaching a “Fictionable” World through the Novels of Maryse Condé and Wilson Harris
Osborne, Tracey; and Elizabeth Shapiro-Garza. Complicating Commodification of Ecosystem Services in Mexico’s Forests
Palmer, Mark; and Robert Rundstrom. GIS, Internal Colonialism, and the U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs
Peake, Linda; and Audrey Kobayashi. Policies and Practices for an Antiracist Geography at the Millennium
Ponder, C.S. Spatializing the Municipal Bond Market: Urban Resilience under Racial Capitalism
Pulido, Laura. Rethinking Environmental Racism: White Privilege and Urban Development in Southern California
Pulido, Laura. Reflections on a White Discipline
Pulido, Laura; Tianna Bruno; Cristina Galentine. Environmental Deregulation, Spectacular Racism, and White Nationalism in the Trump Era
Purifoy, Danielle. Black Towns and (Legal) Marronage
Rhiney, Kevon; Chris Knudson; & Zack Guido. Cultivating Crisis: Coffee, Smallholder Vulnerability, and the Uneven Sociomaterial Consequences of the Leaf Rust Epidemic in Jamaica
Roberts, Andrea; and Maia L. Butler. Contending with the Palimpsest: Reading the Land through Black Women’s Emotional Geographies,
Rose, Harold M. The Development of an Urban Subsystem: The Case of the Negro Ghetto
Rose, Harold M. The Geography of Despair.
Scott, Darius. Good Roads and Anti-Black Violence
Scott, Darius. Normalized Alterity: Visualizing Black Spatial Humanities
Shimshon-Santo, Amy. How to Become Erasure Proof
Thompson, Ki’Amber. Toward a World Where We Can Breathe: Abolitionist Environmental Justice Praxis
Torres, Rebecca Maria. Everyday Encounters with Activist Scholarship
Tretter, Eliot M. The Power of Naming: The Toponymic Geographies of Commemorated African-Americans
Vasudevan, Pavithra; Margaret Marietta Ramírez; Yolanda González Mendoza; and Michelle Daigle. Storytelling Earth and Body
Vickers, Morgan. On Swampification: Black Ecologies, Moral Geographies, and Racialized Swampland Destruction
Wilson, Bobby. Race in Commodity Exchange and Consumption: Separate but Equal
Wilson, Bobby. Critically Understanding Race-Connected Practices: A Reading of W. E. B. Du Bois and Richard Wright
Wilson, David. Introduction: Racialized Poverty in U.S. Cities: Toward a Refined Racial Economy Perspective
Winders, Jamie; and Richard Schein. Race and Diversity: What Have We Learned?
Winston, Celeste. Maroon Geographies
Wood, Astrid. Bringing Transport into Black Geographies: Policies, Protests, and Planning in Johannesburg
Woods, Clyde. Life After Death
Wright, Dawn J.; Sally L. Duncan; and Denise Lach. Social Power and GIS Technology: A Review and Assessment of Approaches for Natural Resource Management
Wright, Dawn J.; Michael F. Goodchild; and James D. Proctor. Demystifying the Persistent Ambiguity of GIS as ‘Tool’ versus ‘Science’
Wright, Willie Jamaal. The Morphology of Marronage
Wright, Willie Jamaal. The Public Is Intellectual
Wright, Willie Jamaal, Adam Bledsoe, Priscilla Ferreira, Kristen Maye & Ellen Louis. Beyond Geographies of Race
Wyly, Elvin K. Race, Gender, and Spatial Segmentation in the Twin Cities
Yu, Shaolu. Placing Racial Triangulation, Triangulating Place and Race: Chinese Grocery Stores in the Mississippi Delta during the Jim Crow Era

President's Column

Welcoming a New President to AAG—Interview with Sara Smith

May 29, 2026

For the last President’s Column of his term, President Bill Moseley talks with incoming President Sara Smith about her experiences within the discipline and her aspirations for her upcoming leadership at AAG. The following conversation offers insight into the new directions for the 2026-27 presidency. View the interview

Bill: Sara, thank you for being here. My first question is, what’s your history with geography? What brought you to the discipline?

Sara: Like so many of us, I ended up in geography completely on accident! I was doing counter development work for a women’s organization in Ladakh, in northern India. And I actually just needed to spend more time in my hometown with my family. I also was frustrated with the kinds of obstacles we were running into. My husband and I were both working in the NGO field in Ladakh. And I found myself wanting a more global context for that work, or I wanted to understand the structural forces we were dealing with better.

And so, I looked up grad schools in my hometown, Tucson, Arizona. And the Department of Geography and Regional Development at the University of Arizona was the first thing that came up, so I went there. That’s how I came to geography,

But I stayed because of the people that I met, and especially, I started taking classes from my advisor, Sally Marston, in political geography, and political geography just really spoke to me, as a way to understand the world.

Bill: I think so many geographers come into the discipline sideways.

Sara: Exactly. I think that’s why your [Gen Alpha] task force [addressing the next generation of geographers] is good. What if people came in earlier and intentionally?

Bill: Yes. But I also think it’s a good thing that this discipline is open to people coming to it in many different ways. So, I’m curious, what do you tell your students, or what do you tell people who are interested in the discipline—what, for you, makes it so relevant to the issues of the day?

Sara: Hmm…I have two answers. One is, I think, a classic geography answer, which is that we range from the environmental sciences to the social sciences and humanities, and I think that’s really beautiful. The expansiveness of the discipline is exciting to me, but I think in classes, what is exciting for students is the kind of liberties we take with geography. It’s a very fluid discipline.

If we look across the social sciences…I feel like geographers have really picked up, for instance, Black theory, Indigenous theory, and centered it in their work, which I think is unusual for the social sciences. I think sometimes those kinds of theoretical frameworks are still on the margins. In geography, they’re some of the quickest growing sub-disciplines.

I’ve been teaching environmental justice classes, and I think the students find that approach really exciting. Thinking through Indigenous theories of land relations, or thinking about racial capitalism as something that has structured why we’re facing environmental justice questions—those approaches are very accessible in geography and intuitive to students, too. I think there’s a way, when you start with place, it can feel very welcoming, and students can start thinking through the connections. Like in one of my classes, they map their hometown—an assignment Danielle Purifoy inspired me to try. They haven’t thought about their hometown in relation to environmental justice before. What if they map out the hazards and the neighborhoods? It makes it feel very relevant to them, so I think once students get that kind of welcome into geography, they find it really exciting, and just naturally relevant.

Bill: I believe a lot of our members might be wondering: Who is Sara Smith, and what kind of research does she do? Could you describe briefly the kind of research you do?

Sara: I feel coherent, but I think my research agenda might seem a little incoherent to some folks. Broadly, I study the relations between our intimate, everyday lives and territory. So, my first project about that was set in Ladakh, and it became a book project, Intimate Geopolitics.

In that work, I’m looking at Ladakh’s location on a contested border with Pakistan and China, and the colonial history of that region. I looked at the ways that territory affects people’s decisions about who they’re going to marry, how many kids they want to have, these kinds of intimate decisions. How does intimate life become understood to be making territory? People were telling me Buddhists and Muslims can’t marry each other because it’s a political problem. But a couple generations ago, they were marrying each other all the time. So, what are the conditions that made that impossible? I started with that, but then that work has kind of broadened out, so then I worked with Mabel Denzin Gergan, with Himalayan college students. What’s it like to be from a tiny town in the Himalayas and go to some of the biggest, most diverse cities in the world, like Delhi or Mumbai? How does that change how you think about your hometown back in the mountains? How does that change you politically? So both of those are about this relationship between: Our ordinary lives, how we relate to our parents or our friends at college, and the state.

That’s the basis for my research, but I really wanted to do work closer to home. So, I also started doing work on time and temporality and fascism, and just trying to understand our political scenario, and I also just love political geography, so I wrote a critical introduction to Political Geography. And then more recently, I felt…I started to get frustrated that my research was all on the other side of the world, and we’re here in North Carolina. And I had learned a lot from student organizers. Our campus is very caught up in the afterlives of slavery and Indigenous dispossession. For example, in the time I’ve been here, our building name was changed. It used to be named for a KKK leader. It was student activism that got that name off the building, and we also had a Confederate monument, students pulled it down, the administration thought about putting it back up. Students’ thinking and activism led me to this new work and taught me so much about place and power.

All these things made me feel that I need to be more locally engaged, so I started a project for our students to study the history of the university. So that’s the Land Back Abolition Project that I co-founded with Danielle Purifoy.

Bill: I love hearing how people’s research evolves over time.

Sara: Yeah, so it’s many different things, but they feel like one thing to me.

Bill: I’m wondering if you could just say a little bit about what prompted you to run for AAG president.

Sara: I was so surprised when I got the email saying I had been nominated to be vice president, I’m sure many people feel the same way. So, I was surprised, and I’m actually shy, and I don’t like to be at the front of the room with a bunch of people looking at me. So, I started calling my friends saying, “I should say no, right? I should just… I shouldn’t agree to be nominated,” but they all said, what are you talking about? You have to say yes. And I think it’s funny, because I’m shy, but I really like to build things. I like to build collectives, so ever since I started this job, I started kind of building networks of people, working toward shared goals, and I really enjoy that kind of work.

When I thought about it in that perspective, I just like to get involved in whatever organization I’m part of. So that’s what made me say yes.

Also … I just… I like to work. I like to work hard for things that feel right to me, so this felt like a different way to practice that.

Bill: Okay. Well, relatedly, what are you hoping to focus on during your tenure as the AAG President? Your priorities.

Sara: I’m thinking about a couple things. So, of course, I have a task force, which is at the heart of my work. The task force is called Grounded Relations and Repair, and it’s a little bit like a scaled-up version of our Land Back Abolition Project.

I want us to be thinking about our ethical relationships to place as geographers. So, when I started my job here at UNC, like I told you, I was thinking about political geography as something that’s out there somewhere. I wasn’t thinking about…what building is my classroom in? Who built this building? Has the university you know, repaired its history of bad relations with Black and Indigenous people? I wasn’t thinking about the really local politics, so the idea with the task force is for us to be thinking about our ethical relationships to the institutions we’re embedded in.

What are our universities’ relation to the community, or if we’re working in industry, what’s our organization’s or our companies’? What are their relationships to the local community, to the people who built the buildings, to the land that we’re on, or to other workers also, I’m thinking about it through labor questions.

So, what’s our faculty’s relationship to labor at our institution? Who labors at our institution? Can they live in our town, or do they have to live really far out and commute in? What are kind of the structural relations that we’re embedded in?

We shouldn’t be able to get a geography degree without knowing whose land we’re on.

I think these questions are also key to the work that AAG members have been doing to encourage us to engage more with Palestinian liberation – they are asking us to take our ethical relationship to the world seriously and it’s important for us to rise to that calling.

And I like that orientation for geography, because I think we shouldn’t be able to get a geography degree without knowing whose land we’re on.

How did this institution come to be? It’s a fundamentally place-based question.

I also like this work because it’s so fruitful in the classroom. In the task force, we’re thinking of developing a national toolkit, so that folks could do this kind of work at their university. I love teaching this way in the classroom. In several of my classes, students have to study the history of the institution. And I tell them they’re rehearsing for the rest of their life.

Next time they get a job, next time they go on to graduate school, they should be asking the same questions of that institution. I’m hoping it’s helping people… build a different kind of ethical relationship to the communities that they’re in, where they feel it’s on them to learn about their relationship to one another and to place. I want to focus on that, and then I also think about AAG’s accessibility.…As we’ve learned in Council, it’s quite difficult to make changes (for instance, on affordability). But as someone who grew up with a single mom who was worried about money, and just…I still always am thinking about money, so I’d love for AAG to be more accessible to folks and think about things like who is and isn’t included in different ways, I think that’s really important to me. AAG is doing a lot of work in that regard. And then I think the last thing is just that…It’s rough out there right now. I think we’re so worried just about the state of the discipline, the state of the academy, we’re worried about funding cuts, we’re worried about the national scenario. Worried about fascism and free speech. It’s a really good time for us to be trying to support each other. And think about what we can do as a community. Fundamentally, we’re a community, and it’s not so easy to be in a national community of nearly 10,000 people. That’s actually really rare and special, so it’s an opportunity for us to make that community stronger. And use it to protect one another, and support one another in a time that feels, I think, really scary. For a lot of folks.

Bill: You are entering this position at a really challenging moment.

Sara: It’s not, yeah, it’s not, like, smooth sailing for anyone, and everybody’s challenges are so different, depending on the kind of institution, or, the stage of your career,

Bill: Yeah. Well, like you said, we are a community, and communities need volunteers to step up and play certain roles. The AAG basically runs on volunteers, and I guess I’m curious if you have any advice for someone who might be a member considering volunteering in a certain capacity for the AAG.

Sara: I think it’s a great experience. I’ve been encouraging my students to do more. It’s nice to find and make that kind of community. I believe it was at this annual meeting that I was suggesting—I think you and I were on the Student Day panel it’s great to run for specialty group, student representative positions, or otherwise get involved in those smaller ways; or even to do things like organize a session at AAG. And I think a lot of folks throw in their abstract, or they apply for a session, but they don’t think, what if I just, tried to reach out to 5 or 10 people who I look up to and ask them to talk about a topic? It’s great to just try to jump all the way in, and people will be surprised at how welcoming folks are to that kind of engagement.

Bill: Is there anything else you would like to add that we haven’t talked about?

Sara: Yes, what about… do you have advice for me? As outgoing president.

Bill: I think you know this, because we’ve been serving together for the past year. You go into the job wanting to focus on certain things, and you don’t always control the agenda, right? And so, being very flexible and responsive to the concerns of the membership, as well as the particular political moment you find yourself in, is important. In sum, roll with the punches.

Sara: That’s good advice.

Bill: Well, thank you so much, Sara. It’s been a total delight speaking with you. I’m looking forward to continue serving alongside you in the upcoming year, and I really wish you all the best in your new position.

Sara: Thank you, I will need it!.

Please note: The ideas expressed in the AAG President’s column are not necessarily the views of the AAG as a whole. This column is traditionally a space in which the president may talk about their views or focus during their tenure as president of AAG, or spotlight their areas of professional work. Please feel free to email the president directly at moseley@macalester.edu to enable a constructive discussion.

Perspectives

Building Healthier Cities: A Call for Geographers and Building Professionals to Collaborate through Geospatial Data

May 29, 2026

By Oluwaseun Ipede

As our cities grow more complex and environmental crises mount, urban sustainability is no longer a theoretical discussion; it’s an existential necessity. Among the greatest challenges facing 21st-century cities is balancing rapid urbanization with public health and environmental sustainability. At the heart of this challenge lies an indispensable asset: Geospatial data.

Geospatial data is the connective tissue that binds physical infrastructure, human behavior, and environmental systems. But data alone is not enough. Its responsible use requires geographers, academic and professional, human and physical, cartographic and computational, to engage collaboratively with built environment professionals such as architects, engineers, and construction (AEC) specialists. In doing so, we can transform urban spaces into sustainable, healthy cities that serve both people and the planet.

This perspective calls for a more intentional convergence between academic geography and the built environment professions. We must create stronger alliances between geographers and AEC practitioners to unlock the full potential of geospatial technologies, not only for smarter infrastructure but for a higher Public Health Index (PHI), a metric that integrates the determinants of health within the spatial context of urban development.

Why Geospatial Thinking Matters in the AEC World

The AEC sector is in the midst of a digital revolution driven by tools such as Building Information Modeling (BIM), GIS, IoT, and AI. Yet, what’s often missing from this techno-centric evolution is geographical thinking, the ability to analyze the spatial dimensions of urban life, social equity, and environmental justice.

AEC professionals typically design and construct the built environment based on functional needs, client specifications, and engineering requirements. But without geographers’ input, they may overlook socio-spatial disparities, ecological sensitivity, or historical injustices embedded in urban landscapes.

By leveraging geospatial data, geographers can help architects and engineers ask better questions:

Are green spaces equitably distributed?
What neighborhoods face the highest air pollution burden?
Where are vulnerabilities to urban heat islands concentrated?
How does access to healthcare, clean water, and public transport vary across districts?

These are not only public health questions, but also inherently geographic questions. The answers lie in maps, models, and location-based data.

Public Health and Urban Sustainability: A Spatial Convergence

There is growing recognition that the health of urban populations is shaped more by where people live than by individual behavior. The WHO’s urban health framework emphasizes that air quality, noise pollution, walkability, access to nature, and housing conditions are all place-based determinants of health.

In a 2021 article in Nature Sustainability, Nieuwenhuijsen et al. demonstrated how integrated urban and transport planning using spatial models could significantly reduce premature deaths in cities by designing healthier environments. Similarly, the Lancet Global Health commission on urban design highlighted the health dividends of data-informed land use, mobility, and environmental planning (Giles-Corti et al., 2016).

The missing piece? Systematic and sustained collaboration between academic geographers and built environment professionals, rooted in shared access to data and mutually informed practices.

Large number of houses built on a hill with greenspace saved within. — Junnar, Maharashti, India. Building and planning professionals should work more closely with geographers to capture the full range of geoinformation about places, such as the distribution of green space, health outcomes for residents, history and context, and more. Credit: Zoshua Colah, Unsplash

Bridging Academic Research and Real-World Impact

Academic geography often generates invaluable insights into urban systems, population health, environmental exposure, and spatial justice. Yet, these insights are frequently siloed, buried in journals, datasets, or local case studies without pipelines into professional practice.

By contrast, AEC professionals often possess the authority and tools to shape real environments but may lack the time or training to engage with cutting-edge geographic research. The result is a fragmentation that wastes both insight and opportunity.

A more effective model would:

Create applied research partnerships where academic institutions support municipal projects with geospatial modeling, health risk mapping, or sustainability planning.
Co-develop open data platforms that bring together public health data, environmental monitoring, land use, and infrastructure systems.
Embed geographers in interdisciplinary planning teams within urban design firms, public agencies, and NGOs.
Incentivize knowledge translation, encouraging academics to publish not only in peer-reviewed outlets but also in formats digestible by policymakers, planners, and engineers.

Through these approaches, we transform geographic knowledge into actionable intelligence for healthier cities.

The Role of Data Collaboration: Optimism over Obstacles

It’s true that data limitations exist, especially in the Global South, where political sensitivities or institutional gaps can impede access. But rather than accepting these barriers, we should see them as challenges to overcome through professional solidarity and innovative collaboration. Emerging models such as data cooperatives, public-private academic partnerships, and community mapping projects (e.g., Humanitarian OpenStreetMap) demonstrate how diverse stakeholders can pool geospatial data to fill critical gaps.

Data availability and collaboration challenges are not exclusive to the Global South, they also exist in the Global North, though in different forms. In wealthier contexts, issues often revolve around data fragmentation, siloed institutional access, and proprietary restrictions by private firms. Despite robust infrastructure, academic research, and AEC professionals in the Global North still face hurdles in sharing and integrating geospatial data for public benefit. Collaborative initiatives, but the need for stronger academic-practitioner synergy remains. The opportunity to blend research with practice to improve public health through spatial insights is global. AEC professionals can enhance this effort by sharing non-sensitive spatial data collected during design or construction phases, site assessments, building footprints, and environmental impact data back into public or academic domains. Meanwhile, universities and research institutes can act as neutral custodians of data, improving transparency and trust.

Everyone Has a Geographic Role

No matter their specialization–transport geographers, medical geographers, climate modelers, or remote sensing analysts–every geographer works with “place” as a foundational concept. And every AEC professional works in a place, whether designing a water pipeline, planning a hospital, or modeling a transportation network.

This shared concern with space and place is the starting point for collaboration.

We must redefine geography not only as a field of academic inquiry but as an action-oriented discipline embedded in urban development processes. Geography, through its emphasis on scale, systems, and connections, offers a language to unify the fragmented efforts of planners, builders, public health experts, and citizens.

By foregrounding geospatial data and geographical expertise, we can help cities evolve not just in form, but in function, as ecosystems of wellbeing.

Conclusion: Toward a Healthy Urban Future

As a multidisciplinary expert, I stand at the intersection where physical space meets digital insight. I’ve witnessed firsthand how each role contributes a vital piece to the urban puzzle, from capturing accurate terrain models with GPS/drones to analyzing social disparities with spatial data. What’s clear is that no single discipline holds the key to building sustainable, healthy cities. It is only through intentional collaboration between academic researchers and built environment professionals that we can truly unlock the power of location-based data.

Geospatial data is not just about maps, it’s about meaning. When survey data informs urban models, when drone imagery validates land cover changes, and when GIS connects these insights to public health indicators, we move beyond design toward decision-making for human well-being. Geography isn’t just a field; it’s a framework. It equips us to see connections, understand patterns, and act across scales.

The future of our cities depends on breaking down silos, sharing data openly, and applying geographic thinking across professions. It’s time we all, academics and practitioners alike, step up as co-creators of healthier, more equitable urban spaces. After all, everything happens somewhere. And where it happens matters. “Everything is related to everything else, but near things are more related than distant things.”

This article is based on the author’s presentation on urban oases during AAG 2025 in Detroit.

Awardees

2026 AAG Communities Awards

May 11, 2026

Photo of bright sparkly lights on dark background

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

Advocacy

The Battle for SBE and Science Funding: What You Can Do

April 23, 2026

In early April, the White House published its proposed budget for Fiscal Year 2027. In its current form, the proposal threatens the core of U.S. scientific leadership; and if passed by Congress, would impose devastating cuts to programs supporting geography, climate, and spatial sciences.

These proposed reductions included a 55% cut to funding for the National Science Foundation (NSF), and the elimination of the Social, Behavioral, and Economic Sciences (SBE) directorate. The impact of this proposed elimination is already being felt, with Nature reporting that NSF leadership is moving to comply in advance by dissolving the directorate entirely, strictly on the basis of the White House request.

Historically, the Social, Behavioral, and Economic Sciences Directorate has been a cornerstone of funding for geographers, and social and psychological scientists, supporting nearly 63% of all academic research across those disciplines, but it suffers from an administrative hurdle that other directorates do not have: it was not statutorily established. SBE was established in the early 1990s because of years-long advocacy by social scientists who believed it should exist outside of the biology directorate. In 2017, NSF reaffirmed the value of SBE research to the nation’s priorities in a report that asserted “The diverse SBE sciences that are supported at NSF—anthropology, archaeology, demography, economics, geography, linguistics, neuroscience, political science, psychology, sociology, and statistics—produce fundamental knowledge, methods, and tools for a greater understanding of people and how they live,” knowledge that forms a foundation for acting on national priorities in keeping with the NSF mission.

Nonetheless, SBE’s lack of statutory status reduces its legal and budgetary protections.

The Administration took similar measures in 2025, when it proposed the elimination of the directorate in the 2026 Budget. Due to push-back from many in the science community, including geographers, Congress took measures to limit these cuts, ensuring that the SBE would be able to operate at least through FY 2026.

This iteration of the administration’s budget proposal is likely to face a steep uphill climb in both halls of Congress, as it did in 2025, with members from both sides of the aisle articulating their support for sciences. We must continue to show our legislators that funding for spatial science matters.

What’s next?

In the past two weeks, the House and Senate Budget Committees held their first hearings with the Director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), Russell Vought. These were the first opportunities for the administration to defend the proposed cuts. During these marathon sessions, members from both sides of the aisle grilled the OMB Director on cuts to NSF, and other domestic agencies, voicing their displeasure with the impact that this would have on research across the board. Each chamber will work to draft and complete their concurrent budget resolutions by months-end.

In the month or so ahead, the budget will move through both Chambers’ appropriations committees, where it will be marked up for hopeful completion by the end of June. The subcommittees most important in determining how NSF, and SBE funds are appropriated include the House and Senate Subcommittees on Commerce, Justice, Science, and Related Agencies (CJS). The House Subcommittee will hold its markup on April 30, 2026, followed by a full House Appropriations Committee markup on May 13, 2026. Both will be public unless voted on as otherwise by committee members. Between these two Committee markups, the National Science Board (NSB) was scheduled to hold its next meeting on May 5^th. This meeting has since been cancelled. As the governing body of NSF, the NSB’s perspectives on the budget are vital to helping Congress and the president understand which budgetary decision best align with the NSF’s mission. The NSB’s dismissal will have more consequential impacts as the budget process continues to unfold.

Congress must approve a budget, to be sent to the President’s desk by the 30^th of September, or face a government shutdown.

What can you do?

Document how SBE funding has made an impact on your work, your institution, and especially your community and the nation. Send examples to advocacy@aag.org and use them in your communications with your Congressional representatives.
Reach out to your member of Congress, using tools like those provided by the Consortium of Social Science Associations, and AAG’s Action Kit to urge your member of Congress to recognize the importance of disciplines like geography to the nation’s long arc of innovation, and to express any concerns you may have related to the elimination of this crucial directorate of the NSF.
UPDATE: As of April 25^th, 2026, the Administration has fired the entirety of the National Science Board, the governing body of the NSF. May’s meeting of the NSB has been cancelled. Please use tools like those provided by the Consortium of Social Science Associations, and AAG’s Action Kit to urge your member of Congress to recognizethe important role of this storied institution.
Encourage members of your network, such as department leaders, provosts, executives in the private sector, to be in touch and amplify your message.
Add your voice to the public dialogue on science funding. Many people in your community may not even know the stakes of this battle. Write an op ed, schedule a talk at your library, or share on social media. AAG’s Action Kit has ideas and how-to’s.

Stay alert to the appropriations process as it progresses, and stay in touch with AAG through advocacy@aag.org with your questions and ideas.

News

The AAG Annual Meeting Revenue Flow

April 20, 2026

By Antoinette WinklerPrins, AAG Council Treasurer

This is the last message by outgoing 2024-2026 Council Treasurer Antoinette WinklerPrins. In her earlier series, she helped illuminate several financial dimensions of a professional organization such as the AAG. In this column, she shares a visualization of the income and expenses flow of the AAG’s Annual Meeting. Read previous columns.

We recently gathered for our annual meeting in San Francisco—a celebration of the broad and diverse community that geographers are. The annual meeting is a key activity for the organization and its members. We had over 5,000 registrants and 1,200 sessions, with the majority being held in person, with a hybrid option for session organizers who opted in. Running a meeting is an expensive affair, and arrangements are usually made many years ahead of time, with some costs locked in while others are set at the time of the meeting. This means that there can be inflationary pressures on costs, as there was this year.

The figure below illustrates the flow of the 2026 AAG Annual Meeting Revenue and Expenses—demonstrating the fixed and variable costs that must be accounted for.

Sankey diagram titled “AAG Annual Meeting Revenue and Expense Analysis.” Revenue flows from registration (79%), exhibit booths (4%), sponsorships (7%), and other sources into total meeting revenue. Expenses flow into categories such as hotel, facility, and catering (22%); audiovisual services (23%); contracted meeting services (17%); staff capacity (25%); and smaller technology and administrative costs. Expenses ultimately divide into 62% variable costs and 38% fixed costs. Credit: Betsy Orgodol — Credit: Betsy Orgodol

The AAG operates on a break-even model for its annual meeting and sets its registration fee accordingly, but has to do so ahead of time without knowing precisely how many people will register, nor how some costs will change.

Annual Meeting variable expenses consist primarily of usage-based costs such as catering, certain hotel and facility fees, and audiovisual services—these are not fixed when the contract is signed, and depend on factors such as the number of registrants and number of sessions. The AAG contracts several meeting services, such as meeting and exhibit managers, decorators, childcare services, conference assistants, security, and service providers for conference participants who need accommodation. Staff capacity, insurance, and software technology fees are largely fixed costs that do not change based on the size of the meeting or the number of attendees.

The cost structure the AAG uses provides more flexibility and scalability—when attendance is strong, total expenses rise proportionally but are matched by increased registration and sponsorship revenue, enabling the organization to serve more participants without compromising the quality of the meeting experience. When attendance is smaller, costs decrease in areas like catering and certain service charges, though only to a limited extent since some baseline expenses remain fixed; even so, the meeting can be delivered efficiently while maintaining a consistent standard of value for attendees.

The AAG consistently works to control more costs to ensure that resources are used efficiently and that the meeting remains both financially sustainable and rewarding for attendees. While the AAG strives to conserve meeting expenses in the most efficient manner possible, inflationary pressures, such as those driven by tariffs impacting meeting-related costs and California sales and use taxes, presented a challenge this year. The combination of planning and contracting ahead helped AAG absorb some of these costs.

We realize that it may feel that registration fees are high; the break-even model for pricing is meant to provide you with the services the membership has asked for and expects (refreshments and meals, hybrid options, childcare, and accommodations for disabilities, among others) and to assure that the meeting is a quality event and a positive experience for all.

Please feel free to reach out to me or Gary Langham, AAG’s Executive Director with questions, comments, or concerns. Send your comments and questions with the subject line “Treasurer’s Corner” to helloworld@aag.org.