AAG Names Rita Colwell as the 2019 Honorary Geographer
The American Association of Geographers has named Rita Colwell, the first woman to be director of the National Science Foundation (NSF), as its 2019 AAG Honorary Geographer. Rita Colwell currently is a distinguished university professor at the University of Maryland at College Park and at Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health, a senior advisor and chairman emeritus at Canon U.S. Life Sciences, Inc., and the president and CEO of CosmosID, Inc.
Colwell’s internationally recognized research primarily focuses on water and health with particular focus on cholera and infectious disease. A pioneer for women in science, she has published more than 750 articles and has authored or co-authored 17 books. During her time at the NSF she not only increased the size of individual grants awarded by expanding the budget of the NSF by 68 percent, but also advocated for greater support for women scientists and science and technology education. Dr. Colwell has taken on many significant advisory positions in the U.S. Government, nonprofit science policy organizations, and private foundations throughout her career, including her role as a former president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). Prior to joining NSF, Colwell served as president of the University of Maryland’s Biotechnology Institute and as Vice President for Academic Affairs at the University. She has been awarded 55 honorary degrees, as well as the recipient of the Order of the Rising Sun, Gold and Silver Star, bestowed by the Emperor of Japan, the 2006 National Medal of Science awarded by the President of the United States, and the 2010 Stockholm Water Prize awarded by the King of Sweden. The Colwell Massif geological site in Antarctica was named in recognition of her work in the polar regions.
Colwell may be familiar to some members of the AAG, as she provided the opening keynote lecture at the Centennial Meeting of the AAG in 2004 in Philadelphia, PA. Her talk, entitled “The New Landscape of Science: A Geographic Portal,” still resonates within the discipline today. AAG will confer the 2019 AAG Honorary Geographer Award upon Rita Colwell at the 2019 AAG Annual Meeting in Washington, D.C. Details of this session will be forthcoming.
Every year the Association bestows its Honorary Geographer Award on an exceptional leader, to recognize excellence in the arts, research, teaching, and writing on geographic topics by non-geographers. Previous AAG Honorary Geographer awardees have included biologist Stephen J. Gould, architect Maya Lin, Nobel Laureate in economics Paul Krugman, sociologist Saskia Sassen, economist Jeffrey Sachs, and authors Calvin Trillin, Barbara Kingsolver, John McPhee and Barry Lopez, among others.
“It is encouraging to be receiving AAG Members’ thoughtful geography abstracts for the AAG Annual Meeting major themes: Geospatial Health Research; Geography and Human Rights; and Physical Geography in Environmental Science. Thank you. There is still time to participate… While you are in Washington, visit your legislators, share your science, speak up and be a part of the change: make a difference with Geography. And on Tuesday 6 November, make a difference with your citizenship: VOTE.”
The AAG Council and Executive Director have announced a third theme for the 2019 AAG Annual Meeting: Physical Geography in Environmental Science. This theme joins two others, Geography, GIScience, and Health: Building an International Geospatial Health Research Network (IGHRN) and Geographies of Human Rights: The Right to Benefit from Scientific Progress, as a way to focus the meeting.
Amidst the Blackwater National Wildlife Refuge in Dorchester County, Maryland lies the Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad Visitor Center. The Center celebrates the legacy of Harriet Tubman, who spent her childhood enslaved in the area before assisting over 100 African American slaves to freedom in the mid 1800s. 
The AAG is pleased to welcome Dwayne Parks to fill the role of Accounting Specialist. Dwayne brings more than 17 years of experience working with organizational data to the association headquarters in D.C. Previously, he has worked in a variety of fields including science, legal, and healthcare.
The UK Academy of Social Sciences conferred the award of Fellow on Mei-Po Kwan in their 2018 class of social scientists. Kwan, the only US geographer to receive the award this year, was chosen for her “significant contributions to theory, methods and practice in urban, GIScience, mobility and health research.” 
December 31st marks the deadline for multiple awards to honor and support geographers in all stages of their careers. Members may nominate their colleagues for the 
The AAG is saddened to hear of the sudden passing of Marilyn Sue O’Hara, also known as Marilyn Ruiz on September 30, 2018. O’Hara was a Clinical Professor of Pathobiology at the University of Illinois. She obtained a PhD in geography in 1995 from the University of Florida. Her work largely centered around the spatial diffusion of disease and epidemiology.
“I never ran my train off track and I never lost a passenger.” Harriet Tubman was fond of saying this in her later years, but during the 1850s when she was actively escorting enslaved people north to freedom using the Underground Railroad (UGRR) network, she was taking grave risks with her own life and liberty as well as that of the people she led. The Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad Visitor Center (HTVC) tells the story of this renowned “conductor” with her words and with exhibits providing insights into her early years and the historic events of her times. Sites and artifacts of the UGRR are limited. After all, its success depended on secrecy.
The process of urbanization often leads to the alteration of local streams. Such alterations range from complete disappearance of streams by making them flow underground, converting them into canals, loss of their aquatic habitat, and changes in their morphology (Kang and Marston 2006; Kang 2007) . In Washington, D.C. many streams and springs have disappeared during the last 200 years of urban development and federal growth (Williams 1977) . The two rivers bordering the city, the Potomac and Anacostia rivers, and the National Mall within the city, look very different as compared to their respective landscape characteristics in the 1700s due to changing sediment and runoff volumes. In Figure 1 you can see that the current stream density within the city and the surrounding areas reveals a significant difference (Figure 1). However, some times the local conditions of streams are resilient enough to counter the effects of the urban runoff (Kang 2007; Kang and Marston 2006).
The atlas project took much longer than anticipated. It entailed procurement of numerous research grants, and required roughly 85 person-years of work from a multi-disciplinary team of specialists at Minnesota and the American Geographical Society. First published by the University of Chicago Press in 1978, the work was reissued in an updated edition by the Oxford University Press in 1992, and in a digitized edition by the University of Chicago in 2006. It won the Watumull Prize of the American Historical Association, as the best work on Indian history of the 1978-79 biennium, and an outstanding achievement award from the Association of American Geographers. In 1981 David Watumull observed: “Over the years, since 1946 when this Prize was instituted, I can … say, without a doubt, that this is the finest and most worthwhile book to be selected.” What makes the work unique is its presentation, not only of the findings of modern historians of South Asia, but also its recreations of the ways in which aspects of that region were made known by numerous actors – both South Asian and outsiders –over more than three millennia.
Joe’s additional writing in his years at Minnesota (1964-2000) took numerous forms: scores of book reviews, essays in political geography, editorials on contemporary issues and events, numerous articles on the Kashmir dispute, work on folk regions in South Asia, a short monograph relating to the history of exploration, various spin-offs from his work on the history of cartography, and major contributions to several encyclopedias, including the lengthy article on the “Physical and Human Geography [of India]” for the 15th edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica on whose advisory board he subsequently served.
Joe’s writings on Kashmir were focused on promoting a peaceful resolution of the multi-partite disputes over that region. They were based largely on his visits – in 1993, 1994 and 1997 – to all parts of that contested, ethnically diverse state. He conducted interviews, on both sides of the Indo-Pakistani line of control, with a wide range of political actors (UN personnel, civil administrators, military officers, party leaders, dissidents [some in hiding],businessmen, journalists, victims of violence, and others). While his tours in 1993 and 1994 were largely self-financed, that of 1997 was as part of a fact-finding team sponsored by and drawn from the Kashmir Study Group (KSG). This think tank, of which Joe was a founding member, was established in 1996 by Farooq Kathwari (a wealthy Kashmir-American businessman), and was made up mainly of scholars and retired diplomats. Though the published findings and recommendations of the KSG (to which Joe was a principal – but anonymous – contributor), were widely discussed in diplomatic circles in South Asia, North America and Europe, hawkish nationalistic spoilers ultimately prevented their adoption. The KSG still exists; but it is less active than in its early years.
In a non-academic vein, Joe gained a touch of notoriety for his remarkable doodles, hundreds of which were created during tedious staff meetings and conferences in Minnesota and elsewhere. One of these appears to the left.
The ideas in these two monographs and in many previous articles – along with many others – were compiled in a book, Transforming the United Nations System: Designs for a Workable World (TUNS), published by the United Nations University Press in 2013. That work provides a comprehensive set of proposals for moving away from the Westphalian paradigm of unfettered state sovereignty on which the present system of global governance is predicated. Despite – or perhaps because of – its radical nature, Joe’s most recent book has been warmly endorsed by leading global thinkers, including Boutros Boutros-Ghali, Thomas Pickering, Brian Urquhart, Thomas Weiss, Johan Galtung, Alfred de Zayas, Stephen Schlesinger and many others. Joe’s editor at the United Nations University Press wrote to him shortly before publication: “I don’t think we’ve ever had a book with so much praise and backing from such a prestigious group of endorsers.” The Press then made Joe its first nominee ever for the prestigious Grawemeyer Award for Ideas Improving World Order. (He did not win, however.)
In December 2014, Joe legally established The Workable World Trust, the principal purpose of which is to disseminate and promote the many global governance proposals in his most recent book. The work of the Trust has been carried out with the remarkably efficient and competent support of Ms. Nancy Dunlavy, who legally succeeded Joe as Director of the Trust in 2017. Joe then formally assumed the title of Director Emeritus. In practice, however, the two continue to cooperate on a wide variety of projects; and Joe intends to remain active as long as his health permits.
This Labor Day weekend marks the return to University instruction for many geography faculty and students, and as an educator, I welcome you all back to our academic community and wish you a successful new academic year. Many of us are returning from field and lab research, writing, and conferences, wondering where the summer went and why we are considered nine-month-employees! … For our non-academic professional Geography community, I pause to thank you for your research partnerships, your innovation and entrepreneurship, and for the internship opportunities and inspiration you offer to our students.
The AAG will be awarding Carla Hayden, 14th Librarian of Congress, the Atlas Award during the 2019 AAG Annual Meeting, on Friday, April 5, 2019. Hayden will deliver a keynote address after presentation of the Atlas Award, the association’s highest honor.
The AAG seeks panelists, mentors, and workshop leaders for careers and professional development events for its annual meeting, April 3–7, 2019, in Washington, DC. Individuals representing a broad range of employment sectors, organizations, academic and professional backgrounds, and racial/ethnic/gender perspectives are encouraged to apply. If interested, email 
This month, get to know the editorial team of AAG’s newest journal, GeoHumanities. Two editors, Tim Cresswell and Deborah Dixon, and one assistant editor, Philip J. Nicholson, work on the journal, which includes scholarly articles at the intersection of geography and the humanities, shorter creative pieces, and an accompanying 
This month, learn about the career path of Caitlin Kontgis who works as an Applied Scientist Lead (Solutions) at Descartes Labs in New Mexico. Kontgis discusses her passion for geography, how it has led to her giving back to her local community, and the undergraduate courses that inspired her eventual professional goals.
Robert Stoddard passed away on May 21, 2018 at the age of 89. Stoddard, one of the first geographers to focus on pilgrimage, was also an Asia specialist who combined his interests throughout his distinguished teaching career in the U.S. at University of Nebraska-Lincoln and abroad in India, Nepal, and Sri Lanka.
This Labor Day weekend marks the return to University instruction for many geography faculty and students, and as an educator, I welcome you all back to our academic community and wish you a successful new academic year. Many of us are returning from field and lab research, writing, and conferences, wondering where the summer went and why we are considered nine-month-employees! The answer is we are year-round members of our academic communities. Last week I wrote the final Department Chair’s welcome of my term to the UT Austin Geography community. As my term closes, I am passing the administrative baton to a wonderful colleague, to whom I give my thanks and wish all the best. I am excited for the new beginning of rejoining my fellow professors and to have more time to devote to scholarship, to my students, and to the AAG. I thank those faculty, students, and staff who helped along the journey, and thank the department chairs who will carry our missions forward.
Washington, D.C. is known for its monuments, museums, and grand government buildings. It is associated with policy wonks, foreign dignitaries, and political controversy. But it is also a home town for thousands of people who live in its lively neighborhoods. How best to get a glimpse of everyday life for D.C.’s residents, those people living in places hidden from view on the National Mall? A tour of the city’s most hidden places of all: its urban alleys.
