President's Column

Toward a More Grounded Geography Community

Image of roots of a tree growing on top of the soil. Credit: Eilis Garvey, Unsplash
Credit: Eilis Garvey, Unsplash

Sara Smith

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?

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.

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News

Jennifer Whytlaw Joins GISCI Board as AAG Representative

Jennifer WhytlawThe 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
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Resources

AAG Journal Articles on Black Geographies and Racial Justice

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.

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President's Column

Welcoming a New President to AAG—Interview with Sara Smith

William MoseleySara Smith

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.

 

 

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Perspectives

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

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.  

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.

 

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Awardees

2026 AAG Communities Awards

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

  1. Gordon “Reds” Wolman Graduate Student Research Award (MSc), Itai Bojdak-Yates, Colorado State University
  2. 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

 

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AAG Staff
AAG Staff
Advocacy

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

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 5th. 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 30th 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 25th, 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.

 

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Eddie McInerney
Eddie McInerney
News

The AAG Annual Meeting Revenue Flow

By Antoinette WinklerPrins, AAG Council Treasurer

Photo of Antoinette WinklerPrinsThis 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.

 

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Antoinette WinklerPrins
Antoinette WinklerPrins
President's Column

Geographic Ignorance, the Iran War, and the End of US Hegemony

William Moseley

Great powers die when they needlessly fritter away their advantages. While I was never a fan of US hegemony, it did confer benefits to the country’s economy and its citizens. The War in Iran is the crowning blow to a year-long string of reckless moves that effectively destroy American hegemony by undermining the country’s moral positions, weakening its economy, and entangling the nation in an unwinnable war. A deeper understanding of geography could have mitigated such miscalculations, something future political leaders and the US public need to better understand if further missteps are to be avoided.

First, the current US administration has taken a sledgehammer to the existing world order built on multilateralism and a commitment to basic human rights. This system was erected in the mid-20th century by the US and its allies in the wake of two devastating world wars. While the US and other powers violated the rules of engagement in a number of instances, there was enough of a commitment to multilateral institutions and fundamental principles that the system ensured a modicum of stability and shared economic benefits. The current administration’s zero-sum view of the world cannot comprehend the advantages that come with cooperation and soft power—and it has done everything possible to undermine multilateralism and destroy US bilateral foreign assistance.

In unilaterally blundering into the war in Iran, the US administration made no attempt to bring along other allies and then was shocked when European countries were unwilling to assist in the endeavor. The crowning blow came on April 7 when President Trump threatened to destroy Iranian civilization if the regime did not comply with his demands: “A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again.” Let us be clear that such wanton mass destruction is defined by international law as a war crime. This was a major breach of international moral strictures, shattering whatever remained of principled American leadership, and these statements were swiftly denounced by the Pope and other religious leaders.

Second, the debt-sponsored spending of the current administration has reached historic heights. The US national debt has now hit $39 trillion, and over the past year we have seen the fastest accumulation of a trillion dollars in debt outside of the pandemic. As of early April, the US had spent $28 billion on the war in Iran, a figure that keeps climbing. Such massive debt accumulation, coupled with cuts in research spending, will undoubtedly weaken the US economy for years to come, effectively diminishing economic might as a major component of US power on the world stage.

Geographical Perspective Is Badly Needed

Third, since February 28, the US has actively been engaged in military attacks on Iran (although we are in the midst of a shaky ceasefire as I write). This war of choice is an enormous strategic blunder as the US administration has plunged the country in an unwinnable conflict by failing to comprehend: 1) the cultural geography of Iran, 2) the daunting physical geography of the Strait of Hormuz (a major pinch point through which 20% of global oil and liquified natural gas pass), and 3) the ongoing vulnerability of the US economy to global oil shocks.

The US administration has grossly misread the cultural, social and political geography of Iran. Iran, formerly Persia, is one of the oldest nation states in the world, with organized settlements dating back to 3200-4000 BC and the first Persian Empire emerging in 550 BC (Achaemenid Empire). The result is not just an ancient cultural complex, but a relatively large country (with 90-some million people) with a strong national identity. This is also a region where the US has behaved badly in the past, supporting a covert coup to oust a democratically elected prime minister in 1953, and then installing Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi who ruled until the Iranian Revolution in 1979. While there had been social unrest and internal discontent with the Islamic Regime in recent months and years, the lack of a more robust, organized resistance movement, and a formidably repressive regime, meant that a popular uprising in the wake of US and Israeli air attacks was unlikely. Even with an Iranian public that feels deep antipathy towards its rulers, such an uprising became even more unlikely when the US president made genocidal calls for the destruction of Iran’s civilization, effectively alienating a population with a deep sense of pride in its country.

The Strait of Hormuz is a physical pinch point in the global trade of oil and liquified natural gas. Exports originating in the Persian Gulf must pass through this strait controlled by Iran and Oman (although more so by Iran) (see map below). Iran’s extensive coastline is better suited for controlling the Persian Gulf and the Strait compared to its smaller, southern neighbors. More specifically, Iran’s long, continuous and mountainous coastline, coupled with multiple islands, and a relatively narrow deep-water channel through which large ships can pass, allows them to effectively monitor and mount guerrilla attacks on passing ships. As has been noted elsewhere, Iran does not need to halt all shipping, but only sporadically hit a few targets in order to bring a halt to all commercial shipping. It is increasingly clear that the US Administration and its war planners underestimated the import and difficulty of controlling this area.

Map of Straight of Hormuz and surrounding countries
The Strait of Hormuz, within the context of Iran and region. Cartography by Sophia Spisak, Macalester College, adapted from Encyclopedia Brittanica. Data sources: ESRI, Food and Ag. Org. GAUL, GADM, UN OCHA, USGS, Who’s on First.

 

The United State is still heavily dependent on fossil fuel consumption, with the current administration having abandoned all attempts to build up alternative energy sources. While other countries have worked hard to develop fossil fuel independence, the US administration has refused to understand that a fossil fuel-based economy is not only problematic in environmental terms, but it also leaves the country vulnerable to shocks in the global energy system. Although the US is the largest fossil fuel energy producer in the world, and largely creates what it needs, energy prices are deeply intertwined, meaning that disruptions in one part of the system reverberate throughout the world. As such, the US President’s claim that a closed Strait of Hormuz is not his problem represents a fundamental misunderstanding of how global energy market’s function. It also means that the US is still deeply vulnerable to the energy price shocks created by the closing of the Strait of Hormuz, including less obvious consequences such as higher fertilizer prices for farmers (which will impact food prices) and more profits for oil exporting adversaries such as Russia.

The War in Iran will be a Pyrrhic victory for the US at best. While the US president may eventually claim some sort of win, in the process he will have destroyed the country’s moral credibility and soft power, permanently set back the American economy, and created an unstable quagmire in Iran. The end result will be a hastened end to US hegemony brought about by hubris, cultural arrogance, and ignorance of geography.

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.

 

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William (Bill) Moseley
William (Bill) Moseley
On the Map

Tracking the Geography of Diseases: How Epidemiologists Map Infection

Geography In The News logoGeography in the News is an educational series offered by the American Association of Geographers for teachers and students in all subjects. We include vocabulary, discussion, and assignment ideas at the end of each article. 

By Neal Lineback

Have you ever wondered where you caught a cold? If so, you’ve asked the first question epidemologists ask about infectious diseases. Epidemiology is the study of how diseases spread. It relies on geography to find its answers.

You could say that epidemiologists study the “where” of diseases. Specifically, they study the paths of communicable diseases.

What are communicable diseases? They’re the ones you can catch. These illnesses spread through viruses, fungi, or bacteria, typically from person to person, and sometimes from animals to people. Some diseases come from contaminated food, water, or insects. All of these transmissions relate to geography. 

Viruses and bacteria are all around us, particularly in dense human populations. Some are harmless. But dangerous viruses range across a whole host of diseases, from pneumonia and whooping cough to measles, chicken pox, and polio, among others.

Among the least dangerous to healthy individuals is the common cold, or Rhinovirus. Its symptoms are normally mild. The cold is so common that it’s almost impossible to know where you caught it—unless you are an epidemologist. Through contact tracing, distribution maps, and other tools, epidemiologists can find the initial source of an infection. It takes only one or two people for a disease to spread as contacts multiply.

Epidemiology is a science of time as well as space. Once a few people show symptoms, they could infect 50 percent or more of the people they come in contact with, within three to ten days. This makes swift analysis crucial.

A fast-moving virus can cause an epidemic or pandemic. The difference between the two is in distribution. The disease is distributed unevenly in an epidemic, with some communities having few or no cases. In a pandemic, many more people are sick across more areas. Deaths and hospitalizations are elevated too.

This is why the flu virus—which is actually a number of virus types that can mutate over time–and the COVID viruses are carefully tracked by their strain. Flu is also identified by type. If you have ever heard a strain of influenza referred to as A,B,C, or D, you have heard its type, based on its severity. “A” causes pandemics and is the most dangerous. “B” can cause epidemics. “C” causes mild cold-like symptoms. “D” is an animal variety.

The recent COVID outbreak in 2020-2023 was a pandemic in the United States. Ensheng Dong, a Ph.D. student at Johns Hopkins University, was one of the first people in the world to create a map-based dashboard to show the disease’s spread. Using a Geographic Information System (GIS), Dong worked with physicists, geographers, and others at the university to build a map to track outbreaks. Its red-on-black appearance became iconic.

Outbreaks of many viral infections can be mapped. The CDC (Centers of Disease Control) and other international medical institutions maintain huge geographical databases to follow outbreaks around the world. This research is critical in slowing, treating, and containing viral diffusions and concentrations, allowing the medical professionals to predict where intervention (ie. tests, warnings, and vaccinations) can be helpful in reducing deaths and hospitalizations.

Epidemiology is still a young science. Less than 175 years ago, a doctor named John Snow identified the source of the 1854 cholera outbreak in London: a neighborhood water pump. He did this by mapping all of the cholera cases in the area and interviewing the families. Once he identified the common location they’d used to draw water, he removed the handle from the pump. New cases fell.

This map shows the 2013 spread of polio worldwide:

This map by Rachael Carpenter indicates that the spread of polio began with a concentration in Afghanistan, then jumped to Somalia, Kenya, and Nigeria. The disease spread to Nigeria’s African neighbors Cote d'Ivoire, Mali, Niger, Central African Republic, Uganda, and Liberia.
In 2013, Geography in the News reported on a severe polio outbreak, showing the path of infection. Map by Rachael Carpenter

 

Polio cases began with a concentration in Afghanistan, then jumped to Somalia, Kenya, and Nigeria. The disease spread to Nigeria’s neighbors in Africa, before it was finally halted through the efforts of multiple relief organizations’ vaccine programs, including The World Health Organization (WHO),The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), Rotary International, and the Centers for Disease Control.

So how can a microscopic virus jump thousands of miles from Afghanistan to Nigeria? Clearly, modern technology played a role in moving such great distances over the earth’s surface. What made the countries adjacent to Nigeria so susceptible to the spread of polio? These are geographic questions on the minds of health officials as they battle communicable diseases worldwide everyday.The mobilities of viruses around the world require constant attention.

Note: You can reduce your odds of infection by frequent hand washing, using tissues and avoiding touching your face when you sneeze. Cleaning your work spaces and using a mask, or covering your mouth when you cough, are also good practices.

And that is Geography in the News.

Material in this article comes from “Polio Returns with a Vengeance” (2013), an original article for Geography in the News by Neal Lineback and Mandy Lineback Gritzner.

AAG’s Geography in the News is inspired by the series of the same name founded by Neal Lineback, professor and the chair of Appalachian State University’s Department of Geography and Planning. For nearly 30 years from 1986 to 2013, GITN delivered timely explainer articles to educators and students, relevant to topics in the news. Many of these were published on Maps.com’s educational platforms and in National Geographic’s blogs. AAG is pleased to carry on the series.

Vocabulary
  • Communicable disease
  • Epidemic
  • Fungus/Fungi
  • Iconic
  • Mutate
  • Pandemic
  • Strain
  • Virus
Discussion
  1. What are some of the tools epidemiologists use to track how diseases spread?
  2. Why do we say that epidemiology is a science of time as well as space?
  3. What is the difference between an epidemic and a pandemic?
  4. What are some of the reasons that a virus can “jump” long distances?
Further Reading

“John Snow, Historical Giant in Epidemiology.” UCLA https://epi-snow.ph.ucla.edu/

“Medical Geography and Why We Need It.” University of British Columbia. https://geog.ubc.ca/news/medical-geography-and-why-we-need-it/

Milner, Greg. “Creating the Dashboard for the Pandemic.” Esri ArcUser, Summer 2020. https://www.esri.com/about/newsroom/arcuser/johns-hopkins-covid-19-dashboard

“Notes from the Field: Outbreak of Poliomyelitis — Somalia and Kenya, May 2013,” Centers for Disease Control, Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report. At https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm6223a7.htm

“What Is Epidemiology?” Epidemiology for the Uninitiated. BMJ Group. https://www.bmj.com/about-bmj/resources-readers/publications/epidemiology-uninitiated

 

 

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AAG Staff
AAG Staff