Abdi Samatar elected President African Studies Association

Abdi Samatar, Professor in the Department of Geography, Environment and Society has been elected President of the African Studies Association. Dr. Samatar began his tenure as President in November of 2012. More on the African Studies Association here.

~from the ASA website: "Established in 1957, the African Studies Association is the largest organization with a global membership devoted to enhancing the exchange of information about Africa.... The African Studies Association encourages the production and dissemination of knowledge about Africa, past and present. Based in the United States, the ASA supports understanding of an entire continent in each facet of its political, economic, social, cultural, artistic, scientific, and environmental landscape. Our members include scholars, students, teachers, activists, development professionals, policymakers and donors."

Francis Harvey, new Chair of Geographic Information Science Commission at IGU

GES Associate Professor Francis Harvey became Chair of the Geographic Information Science Commission at the International Geographical Union in August 2012. The mission of the Commission on Geographic Information Science (GISc) is to advance the study of geographical information science internationally, and to enhance the role and contributions of geographers in the development of Geographic Information Science and of Geographic Information Science in the development of geography. Learn more about the Commission and the IGU here.

Welcome New Geography Graduate Students!

Macalester Grants Tenure Status to U of M Alum

St. Paul, Minn. - Macalester College has granted tenure status to Laura Smith, associate professor of Geography in the Geography Department. Smith received her PhD and MA from the University of Minnesota and her BA from Macalester College. She joined the Macalester faculty in 2004 as an assistant professor.

Smith is an urban geographer whose recent research projects have focused on mortgage foreclosure patterns in the Twin Cities, transportation and development, and on issues of American Indian land ownership.
Smith teaches Metropolitan Analysis, Urban GIS, Transportation Geography, Regional Geography of the U.S. and Canada, and Statistical Research Methods in Geography.
Macalester College, founded in 1874, is a national liberal arts college with a full-time enrollment of 1,978 students. Macalester is nationally recognized for its long-standing commitment to academic excellence, internationalism, multiculturalism, and civic engagement. Learn more at macalester.edu

Macalester Grants Tenure Status to U of M Alum

St. Paul, Minn. - Macalester College has granted tenure status to Daniel Trudeau, associate professor of Geography in the Geography Department. Trudeau, an urban social geographer whose research examines urban political economy, cultural landscapes, and social justice, received his PhD from the University of Colorado, Boulder, his MA from the State University of New York at Buffalo and his BA from the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities. He joined the Macalester faculty in 2006 as an assistant professor.



Trudeau's research experience represents his diverse set of interests in urban geography. He believes Geography is an important part of a liberal arts education. In his teaching, he tries to develop an awareness and appreciation of how geography matters for understanding the world around us, focusing on the usefulness of geographic concepts and perspectives for understanding social problems, politics, and culture.
Trudeau teaches Urban Social Geography, Political Geography and Cities of the 21st Century: the Political Economy of Urban Sustainability.
Macalester College, founded in 1874, is a national liberal arts college with a full-time enrollment of 1,978 students. Macalester is nationally recognized for its long-standing commitment to academic excellence, internationalism, multiculturalism, and civic engagement. Learn more at macalester.edu

Geography student's project gets national attention

from an article by Bill McAuliffe at the Star Tribune:

"Erika Wertz might measure her college career in tree rings. Wertz, a University of Minnesota senior, has been studying what the rings in bur oak trees in the Red River Valley can reveal about floods in the distant past, which someday may also indicate what the future might hold for the flood-prone Red and its broad, populated, level valley. Wertz's research is similar to other studies in "paleoclimatology," in which researchers look for clues about past weather and climate events by studying ice cores as well as layers of pollen, volcanic ash and the like laid down long before the advent of modern record-keeping."

Read the full story here.

Brown Day Lecture April 27

Join us for the Ralph H. Brown Memorial Lecture by Susan Cutter, Carolina Distinguished Professor and Director, Hazards and Vulnerability Research Institute, Department of Geography, University of South Carolina.

Where: 3M Classroom 1-106 Hanson Hall on the West Bank of the U of M campus.
When: Coffee/refreshments 3:15; talk starts at 3:30 and ends at 5pm with a Q&A

Moving from Hazard Vulnerability to Disaster Resilience: The Experience from Mississippi's Gulf Coast

For the past decade, hazards and disasters researchers have focused on what makes people and places vulnerable to natural hazards. The development of geo-referenced vulnerability metrics, especially those capturing social vulnerability (such as the Social Vulnerability Index), enabled comparisons between places in terms of attributes that influenced the ability of populations to prepare for, respond to, and recover from disasters. Hazard vulnerability assessments (including both social and physical vulnerability) are now the basis for county and state hazard mitigation plans nationwide. Instead of focusing on vulnerability reduction as a pathway towards disaster risk reduction, federal agency interest is centered on enhancing the nation's resilience to natural disasters. Using Mississippi's Gulf Coast and its experience with Hurricane Katrina as an exemplar, this lecture describes the concept of disaster resilience and current efforts underway to measure disaster resilience from community to regional scales.

Urban Revolutions In the Age of Global Urbanism

A new grant was received from the UK-based journal Urban Studies Foundation's International call for proposals for a seminar series. PI's on the grant include professors Vinay Gidwani, Helga Leitner, and Eric Sheppard of the Geography Department.

This grant will support a conference that will take place in Jakarta, March 16-20, 2012.

Urban Revolutions in an Age of Global Urbanism is being organized by Eric Sheppard (University of Minnesota), Helga Leitner (University of Minnesota), Ananya Roy (University of California), Vinay Gidwani (University of Minnesota), Jo Santoso (Tarumanagara University), and Michael Goldman (University of Minnesota)

Minnesota Reception now part of Southwest by Midwest

The Minnesota Reception, our annual get together at the AAG has a new look this year.
We've joined forces with UW-Madison to sponsor "Southwest by Midwest."

Please join us at the Stitch Bar on Saturday night, February 25th in NYC!

Stitch Lounge (downstairs)
247 West 37th Street (between 7th and 8th Ave)
8pm to Close

Map

This is a co-production with UW-Madison and includes Exeter and Bristol! Don't Miss Out!

Chris Strunk and Helga Leitner in The Nation

Ph.D. student Chris Strunk and Geography Professor Helga Leitner have a new article in The Nation titled "Redefining Secure Communities." Read it here!

City Redistricting and Jeff Matson's Geography 5564 - Urban GIS

Geography 5564, Urban GIS, was recently highlighted in the MNDaily. The class, taught by Jeff Matson, welcomed Mike Dean, executive director for Common Cause of Minnesota as part of project on redistricting that will create maps for Minneapolis city wards. The maps the class produces will be submitted to the city. Read the story here.

Yu Zhou

Yu Zhou, Professor of Earth Science and Geography at Vassar College and an alum of the U of M's Geography Department, has an article in the Huffington Post on the possibilities of fair trade as a way of addressing the controversy over Apple (and others') subcontractors in China. See the full article here.

Yu Zhou is also author of "The Inside Story of China's high-tech industry: Making Silicon Valley in Beijing." She received her Ph.D. from the Geography Department in 1995.