Our Colloquia Series presents engaging research from around the world. Guest presenters cover varied topics from all aspects of Geography. This page lists abstracts from past and future colloquia.

Skiff boat on a river parked along a shore with woman standing on sand

Colleen Strawhacker: Building Capacity for the Social Sciences and Indigenous Communities in the Arctic

Sept. 29, 2017

In this talk, Strawhacker discusses her work with social scientists and Indigenous communities in the Arctic to build digital tools to ensure data and information are ethnically shared and managed for the future. As a result of the ‘open data’ movement, an increased focus on how data should be attributed...

Sperm whale statue

Bradley Tatar: Place-making, Landscape and Materialities: Whales and Social Practices in Ulsan, Korea

Sept. 22, 2017

In the southeastern coastal city of Ulsan in Korea, people continue to defy the global taboo on eating whale meat, which they believe is an important social practice for local identity. The Nam-gu District in the City of Ulsan has created the Special Zone for Whale Culture as a spatial...

Graphic art made with maps

Luke Bergmann: For Geographical Imagination Systems (GIS)

Sept. 15, 2017

What if our GIS were Geographical Imagination Systems? How might we develop GIS that understand space as relational and that reflect knowledge as positioned and interpretive? What might a GIS more adequate to the theoretical commitments of the critical social sciences and theoretical humanities look like? Here, I will approach...

Man on boat deck looking out over water

Dr. Mark Serreze: Brave New Arctic: The Untold Story of the Melting North

Sept. 1, 2017

As recently as the 1980s, the Arctic was largely the same Arctic that had enchanted humankind for centuries. But over the next decade, scientists began to notice changes. There were hints that the floating sea-ice cover at summer’s end was receding, accompanied by shifts in ocean circulation. Air temperatures over...

Geography Colloquium Series

Ending cheap nature?

May 5, 2017

Abstract: One thing that neoclassical economists and critics of capitalism agree on is that status quo economic processes are adept externalization machines. That is, our economic system is dependent on bargain-basement waste disposal sites, spaces, and bodies; it relies on enormous amounts of what Jason Moore calls “cheap” or free...

Geography Colloquium Series

Geography Graduate Student Talks

April 21, 2017

Three graduating GEOG Grad students will each provide an overview or their respective research projects. Salam Hindawi "Syrian Refugees in Germany: from safe havens to challenges of othering, integration, and European settlement" Galen Murton "Himalayan Disruptions: Earthquakes, Aid, and the Geopolitics of China in Nepal" Joel Correia "State of emergency:...

Geography Colloquium Series

A tail of two extremes: Transformation of rare storms into geomorphically important floods

April 14, 2017

Abstract: Simple relationships between mean climate and erosion rates have failed to emerge from either historic sediment yield studies or millennial-scale erosion rate studies using cosmogenic radionuclides. One confounding factor is the role of vegetation, whose type and density are also strongly linked to climate. In this presentation, I will...

Geography Colloquium Series

Politics of post-earthquake reconstruction and the early forms of disaster capitalism in Nepal

March 24, 2017

Abstract: Nepal’s 2015 earthquakes killed more than 9000 people, damaged more than half a million homes and destroyed nearly half of Nepal’s GDP. The earthquakes struck Nepal at a time when the country was experiencing two massive political transformations: 1) a decade long Maoist insurgency followed by the establishment of...

Geography Colloquium Series

New Approaches for Spatial Distribution Dynamics

March 17, 2017

Abstract: This talk will provide an overview of recent work on spatial distribution dynamics considering the evolution of cross-sectional spatial distributions over time. Families of new analytics based on rank concordance and discrete Markov chains are discussed, and derived analytics for global and local spatio-temporal clustering are presented with a...

Geography Colloquium Series

'Manoomin Gives, So We Give': Gift Economies and Food Sovereignty of the White Earth Anishinabek

March 10, 2017

The 2007 Nyéléni declarations identify fighting against the “privatisation and commodification of food, basic and public services, knowledge, land, water, seeds, livestock and our natural heritage” as central to food sovereignty. While the declaration is specific, it is less clear about what this means in practice. This talk sheds light...

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