Geography Faculty News

Michael Brown, Professor
michaelb@u.washington.edu
http://faculty.washington.edu/michaelb

Research: I published an article on political obligation and gay men's STI in Political Geography. I've had papers accepted in the Annals and Political Geography. My work has continued in looking at biopower and urban public-health politics in Seattle. I gave talks at the University of Dundee, the University of Minnesota, the Institute of British Geographers, and of course the AAG. I continue to collaborate with Prof. Larry Knopp of the historical geographies of queer Seattle. Service: I was co-chair of the Sexuality & Space AAG specialty group, on the paper awards committee of the Political Geography Specialty Group. I continue to edit Social & Cultural Geography and have joined the editorial board of ACME. I served on the Grad Admissions Committee and the Communications Chair Search. In terms of teaching, I offer one of the very few queer theory graduate seminars on campus. I also started a brand new course Geog 276 Intro to Political Geography, the first time it's ever been taught at UW.

Mark Ellis, Professor

I am continuing my work on immigration and published a couple of papers on immigrant residential geographies and employment in Urban Geography and Economic Geography. The project on mixed-race families and households continues with the latest paper - forthcoming in Ethnic and Racial Studies - being a theoretical exploration and empirical assessment of how the characteristics of residential space influences the identities that mixed-race couples choose for their very young children. I co-organized a conference on local contexts of incorporation for the immigrant second generation through the West Coast Poverty Center, which was held in October 2006. The conference was partially funded by the poverty center and by an additional grant from the Russell Sage Foundation. The papers from the conference will be published in a special issue of the Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies. I was invited to give a presentation in the President’s plenary session at the AAG meetings in San Francisco, and to give the distinguished Alumni talk in the geography department at Indiana University. I also traveled to DC as a member of the long range planning committee of the Demographic Branch of the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development. This committee was charged with setting priorities for demographic research funding through NICHD, which is the largest funder of population research in the US. Other trips have been purely for fun, the highlight of which was my annual expedition to meet old friends at Cape San Blas, Florida for beach camping - a beautiful and still relatively untouched part of the Florida panhandle despite the efforts of rapacious developers.

Sarah Elwood, Associate Professor

Since arriving in late July, I’ve spent the year focused on the research, teaching, and home transitions of moving to Seattle and UW. I continue work on my NSF Career Grant project in Chicago – a participatory research project aimed at fostering sustainable GIS capacity in community-based organizations and understanding the urban political strategies that these organizations create through their use of GIS. I made one field visit to Chicago in December and will make another in June to do some interviewing and organize one of our twice-yearly GIS skill building workshops with the local participants. In publication from this project I’ve been concentrating this year on GIS-specific venues/journals for the work, including Transactions in GIS (2006, 10(5): 693-708), the International Journal of Geographic Information Science (forthcoming), and a chapter in Advances in Spatial Data Handling (2006, Kluwer). I’ve also been working on a group of methodological papers that should come into print in 2007: A paper on ethics in participatory research for ACME, a chapter on mixed methods for The Handbook of Qualitative Methods in Human Geography, and a book chapter co-authored with 8 of the research participants from my NSF project. In teaching, I adapted the community-engaged teaching strategies from my NSF project to work with the GIS courses I’ll offer at UW, Principles of Cart and GIS Workshop, and offered a graduate seminar in critical GIS. Throughout the year, I have been working to make connections that will help me form research collaborations in the local area, giving invited lectures and workshops for other units at UW, at UBC, and for community groups and community-based research projects in the Seattle and Vancouver areas. This coming year, I will be working closely with Meghan Cope (U Vermont) as we finish an edited volume entitled Qualitative GIS: A mixed methods approach (Sage).

James W. (“JW”) Harrington, Professor

My return from sabbatical has been most pleasant (this is not always the case!). In Autumn I launched a reconfiguration of my junior-level International Trade course, focused on student teams working on trade trends and policy for Canada, China, or Mexico with respect to the US. I spent the Winter Quarter in Olympia, serving as UW’s Deputy Faculty Legislative Representative. I learned a great deal about the legislative process, and began to establish relationships with legislators and staff that will serve us all well during my next two years as the lead Representative. It was a good year for education, including higher education; next session I’ll focus on increasing faculty representation in higher education policy.

I’ve co-edited two volumes: Knowledge-Based Services is in print, and Services and Economic Development in the Asia Pacific will be out soon. I continue my work on occupational attainment, with a web-based survey of software professionals (including GIS professionals – if any of you read this, please contact me at jwh@u.washington.edu). Working in Olympia has given me greater insights into policy needs related to workforce development, which is my next research area. Doctoral student Spencer Cohen and I co-authored a paper for the AAG annual meeting, on the development and outcomes of territorial-based technology policies in China (focusing on Dalian). This continues my new interest in Chinese economic development. I’ve just begun coordinating the Department’s self study for our decennial review of graduate and undergraduate programs. If you have any comments about your experiences in our programs, please contact me!

Steve Herbert, Professor

Department of Geography/Law, Societies and Justice Program My work this year focused on advancing each of two projects focused on public order policing. One project, in collaboration with my Law, Socieites, and Justice colleague, Katherine Beckett, examines recent measures that intensify the power to police "undesirables" in public spaces in Seattle. This occurs through the creation of one or another zone of exclusion, from which certain individuals are banned. Professor Beckett and I have two forthcoming articles on these measures, in the journals, Theoretical Criminology and Studies in Law, Politics, and Society. We are also working on a book manuscript. The second project examines the increased use of zoning to regulate political project. A paper from this project will appear soon in the journal, Political Geography.

Beyond these research efforts, I continue to enjoy advising a stimulating group of graduate students, many of whom participated in a recent and highly successful mini-conference on the geographies of law. I also look forward to teaching a summer school course for incoming freshman that will focus on crime and policing issues in the context of Seattle’s Pioneer Square.

Lucy Jarosz, Associate Professor

I have begun working on a book project coming out of my introductory class on the geography of food and eating. I completed the prospectus and have solid interest in the project from Cornell University Press. I traveled to Norway to participate in a doctoral dissertation defense centered on the political ecology of deforestation in Madagascar. Doctoral defenses in Norway are so much more intensive than ours are; they take an entire day and end with a banquet complete with toasts, stories, skits, jokes and singing extending into the a.m. I found the whole process intellectually stimulating, socially gratifying and quite wonderful. I really liked the way family, friends, and the supervisory committee came together to celebrate the achievement of doctoral students, and it's gotten me thinking about how I might do that better here. My field research with Vicky Lawson and Anne Bonds on rural poverty in the American West ended this year with our final trip to Montana. We have completed a diverse and rich array of interviews and will be focusing upon our writing in the coming year.

Jonathan Mayer Professor of Epidemiology and Geography, International Health Program, Adjunct Professor of Medicine (Infectious Diseases), Family Medicine, and Health Services
jmayer@u.washington.edu

This year has given me further opportunity to combine service with research and teaching with the incorporation of my NGO (nongovernmental organization), “Health Improvement and Promotion Alliance” or “HIP”—see www.hip-ghana.org. At present, we have 23 members from 3 countries, and serve the citizens of the poorest slum in Accra, Ghana. I serve as President/CEO and member of the Board. In addition to direct service such as working with the construction of a basic public health system, nutrition, sanitation, and clinical services, we conduct applied research of direct relevance to the citizens. Our interests, and my interests, have expanded into slum health in general. A surprising 72% of all urban migrants in Africa are moving into these communities, few of which have adequate water, sanitation, health care, or other services, yet most development aid and health NGOs continue to focus on rural areas. The area where we work, Nima, remains my emotional and intellectual passion. I travel to Ghana several times per year, to join my colleagues who are there all year. We have several interns working with us. We are engaged in a baseline study in Nima, and have discovered that there is a dual burden of infectious and noninfectious diseases in Nima, and frequently in the same household: malaria and diarrheal diseases coexist with surprisingly high rates of hypertension, diabetes, and heart disease.

I traveled to Ghana four times in the past year for varying periods. I am also leading a study investigating whether dengue fever and dengue hemorrhagic fever are present in Ghana. This emerging disease of great worldwide importance has never been described in Ghana, yet all of the geographical and ecological conditions are appropriate for its presence. If it is present, it has both scientific and clinical significance. We are using both molecular and immunological methods to identify the presence or absence of dengue in individual patients.

Two other activities in Ghana are advising a Ghanaian college on developing the first Physician Assistant program in the country—a major step in addressing the workforce shortage in primary care in rural areas, and as the Subdirector for Health of a large Norwegian team addressing “The New Faces of Poverty in Ghana.” The health team is specifically addressing HIV, poverty, and gender. The project includes technical assistance to Ghanaian universities for training, research, and advising Ghanaian graduate students.

A study of socio-economic and urban-rural inequities in the availability of outpatient opioid medications (such as morphine and oxycodone) in Washington State has been concluded and is under consideration for publication at the Clinical Journal of Pain. I am co-Principal Investigator with John Loeser, MD, of Neurological Surgery and Anesthesiology. Our findings are significant in that there are minimal inequities in Washington State in contrast to the two other areas which have been studied: New York City, and the State of Michigan. The explanations for this are not entirely clear.

I continue to serve as Professor of Epidemiology at UW, where I do research in the epidemiology of infectious diseases, clinical epidemiology and clinical research, and cardiovascular epidemiology. I also serve as Co-Director of the Undergraduate Program in Public Health, and as a member of the International Health Faculty. In the School of Medicine, I am a member of the faculty in the Division of Infectious Diseases in the Department of Internal Medicine, as well as a member of the Infectious Disease and Travel/Tropical Medicine Service and clinic at the University of Washington Medical Center and Harborview Medical Center. I take call in tropical and travel medicine with MEDCON, a free service to health care providers in Washington, Wyoming, Alaska, Montana, and Idaho.

Nationally and internationally, I am on several panels at the National Institutes of Health, such as the panel on “Infectious Diseases, Reproductive Health, Asthma, and Pulmonary Diseases.” At the National Academy of Sciences, I serve on the Geographical Sciences Committee, the Committee on Vulnerable Populations in times of Humanitarian Need, and the Committee on Research Priorities in the Earth Sciences and Public Health. I am on the editorial boards of The Professional Geographer, Geographical Research Forum, and a new infectious disease journal, Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Infectious Diseases. I am a Senior Editor of The Encyclopedia of Public Health, which is a major undertaking of 20 volumes to be published by Elsevier Press, although its main use will be online. I publish in geographical, medical, and public health journals—I am convinced that publication in the latter can do a great service to geography by demonstrating the usefulness of the geographical perspective on major issues to large audiences other than geographers.

I teach undergraduate courses in medical geography, which are also required public health courses, and graduate courses in the same field, emphasizing HIV/AIDS, infectious diseases, and the health consequences of natural disasters. Personal activities include composing songs, playing guitar, writing plays, and creative pieces about experiences providing public health and individual health care in the slums of Accra.

Katharyne Mitchell, Professor

I finished up my third and final year as Director of Reclaiming Childhood, sponsored by the Simpson Center for the Humanities. In this three year project we examined the changing nature of childhood in 21st century America. Reclaiming Childhood has involved public writing, the formation of a research collaborative, several public workshops and lecture series and, this year, a number of events focused on letting children tell us what they think. Along with my research assistant, Mona Atia, we organized a Town Hall run by kids called “Kids Speak Out: Life in the Digital Age,” and a two-month-long event in the Allen Library entitled, “Constructing Childhood,” which runs through June 23. Constructing Childhood is a multi-media installation by kids on the theme of being a youth in America today. I also edited a book, Being and Becoming a Public Scholar, which will be published by Blackwell in 2008. The project is leaking into the fall, with a public lecture in the Seattle downtown library, and a trade book entitled, Stealing Childhood, which I will co-author with Frances McCue and Laura Kastner. At that point, it will definitely be over! I served as the chair of the Site Council for AE2 School in Decatur this year, remain on the board of numerous journals, and developed a new course called Modern and Postmodern Cities. I was greatly saddened by two untimely deaths this year: Mary Cooper, the wonderful librarian of my children’s school; and my friend and former advisor, Allan Pred.

Richard Morrill, Emeritus

I “officially” retired ten years ago this summer. Of course my wife says I “failed” retirement, as I kept teaching through 2004 and continue to serve on committees, do research and writing and go to meetings, as well as make a pest of myself with our public officials. Last summer I went to the Brisbane IGU meetings, as a “legend” to talk about 50 years since the “quantitative revolution”. In February I attended the Western Regional Science meetings in Newport Beach, then the AAG meetings in San Francisco (paper with Michael Brown and Larry Knopp (former student here) on Anomalies in Red and Blue (2000 and 2004 presidential elections), which will be published in November in Political Geography Q. And we have a related paper on “How Real are Red and Blue America” in Focus, of the American Geographical Society, in July.

Tim Nyerges, Professor
nyerges@u.washington.edu
http://faculty.washington.edu/nyerges

Tim Nyerges conducted teaching, research, and service activities in a similar manner as past years, but undertook several new activities. Tim taught Geography 460 Geography Information Systems Analysis as a new course this past year. Although the course continued its raster GIS tradition, he subtitled the course Coastal GIS to help synergize a new direction for Tim’s teaching, research and service that has been planned over the past couple of years, and is now being implemented. In August 2006, Tim was certified as an advanced open water scuba diver to bolster his experiential insight and future scholarly activity about the challenges facing coastal areas around the world. Adding to the new course perspectives, the Geography 465 Analytical Cartography course was taught with the subtitle Python Programming. Python is an open source programming language used in ArcGIS and other software applications, enabling students to extend GIS data management, analysis, display, and project management capabilities. Python language training will help students gain insight into inner workings of GIS, demystify the complexity of GIS software, and build student confidence in being able to address increasingly complex GIS applications.

On the research front, Tim continued his work with the Multi-Ethnic Study of Atherosclerosis (MESA) Air Pollution Study, funded by EPA to a principal investigator in the Department of Occupational and Environmental Health, U of Washington as their largest grant ever, covering a ten-year period at $30,000,000. Tim is a senior scientist supervising the GIS database management and analysis activity. That position is linked with a geography graduate student RA opportunity, broadening opportunities for grad student funding. In addition, Tim as principal investigator of the National Science Foundation-funded Participatory GIS for Transportation Decision Making Project entered its fourth year – a year of intense software development. The project supported six RAs in geography this past year who are working to develop a web site for the LIT (LetsImproveTransportation.org) Challenge. The LIT Challenge web site will host a field experiment in analytic-deliberative democracy, enabling a sample of the Puget Sound Region public (at least 300) to participate in the Fall 2007 in a regional transportation decision process to allocate $16B in funding for transportation system improvement. Work on the PGIST project resulted in six publications authored/co-authored by Tim. The textbook draft for GIS and Urban-Regional Environments: A Decision Support Approach (used in Geography 461 Urban GIS) was finally submitted to Guilford Press for external review after three years of intensive writing on thirteen chapters.

On the service front, Tim continued his position as graduate program coordinator for the Department, as well as his third and final year as research chair and program organizer for the University Consortium for Geographic Information Science (UCGIS) – a consortium of 80+ US Universities and agencies involved in GIScience research and education. He co-organized the UCGIS 2006 Summer Assembly, June 2007, in Vancouver, Washington; as well as organized and chaired the student paper competition for that same assembly that funded travel and lodging for 18 graduate students to present research results.

Matthew Sparke, Professor

This year I have been very honored to receive the University of Washington’s Distinguished Teaching Award. In this respect I want to note my deep thanks to the many colleagues in Geography – from David Hodge all the way forward to Sarah Elwood - who have always been so supportive as well as inspiring with their own teaching. I am especially indebted to Vicky Lawson for her mentoring over my 11 years in the department and for encouraging me to connect my research on globalization with my teaching through the NSF Career project. Outside the classroom my work on globalization has continued with various publications and public lectures relating to neoliberalism, borders, geoeconomics, the Global South, and the transformation of citizenship. This latter work is now leading into a new RRF funded research project focused on global education and what, specifically, students learn on study abroad programs. The same interests have also led this year to a new set of university-wide duties: including the coordination of a Provost teaching workshop on global education, serving on UW’s Global Learning Goals committee, and Chairing the Standing Committee of the Comparative History of Ideas. Going forward I hope in turn to connect this work on global education to university efforts to develop a Global Health curriculum.

Suzanne Davies Withers, Associate Professor
swithers@u.washington.edu

My current research projects are geodemographic studies of family migration and mobility. I have published in Population, Space and Place (with William Clark) on housing costs and the geography of family migration outcomes. This study takes a geographic perspective towards assessing the 'returns' to family migration by linking differential costs of living between the place of origin and destination with changes in women's labor force participation. Together with Tricia Ruiz we have extended the study of the link between housing costs, family migration, and women's labor force participation by using the PUMS national dataset. This research is the first to empirically establish demographic variations in the aggregate decrease in the cost of living associated with intermetropolitan migration in the United States. Our findings have important implications for key theoretical debates, including the contested claim of regional white flight, theories of intrahousehold decision making, and the connection between housing affordability and immigrant internal migration.. In press in Demographic Research is a longitudinal study that focuses on mobility sequences and challenges the classic dichotomy between long-distance employment-related moves and short-distance housing-related moves. I have also contributed methodological pieces to the International Encyclopedia of Human Geography. I remain an affiliate of the Center for Studies in Demography and Ecology and the Center for Statistics and the Social Sciences. I serve as a board member of the Population Specialty Group of the Association of American Geographers. I continue to serve as the undergraduate program coordinator, and teach courses on Theories of Migration, The Geography of Housing, Advanced Quantitative Analysis, The Geography of U.S. Population Diversity, and a senior seminar on Assessing Geographic Learning.

Craig ZumBrunnen, Professor Geography
Henry M.Jackon School of International Studies

This past year Craig ZumBrunnen has continued his involvement in various UW interdisciplinary initiatives and activities, including active participation in the UW's urban ecology program reciprocal student and faculty exchange trips, international conferences, and workshops between the UW and the Humboldt, Freie, Technical universities and the Leibniz-Institute of Freshwater Ecology and Inland Fisheries of Berlin in Germany in June and September 2006 and in Seattle in October 2006. His recent collaborative research work has focused on five areas: 1) completion of a collaborative edited volume on the Foundations of Urban Ecology being published by Springer, 2) assessments of continuity and change in Russian electoral behavior, 3) exploring the organization and institutionalization of Russian political parties, 4) continuing his new line of inquiry into the role of Russia in climate change, the Kyoto Protocol and carbon credit markets, and 5) participating in the AAG Enhancing Departments and Graduate Education (EDGE) project by collaborating with Dr. So-Min Cheong, a former UW Geography Ph.D., on a chapter entitled “Working in Interdisciplinary Contexts.” He has reorganized his introductory physical geography class placing more emphasis on landscape examples from the Pacific Northwest and a renewed emphasis on climate change. He continues to teach methods of resource analysis, and this autumn will again be teaching an undergraduate/graduate course on environmental and natural resource and sustainable development Russia and the Newly Independent States. He plans to offer a spring 2008 seminar focused on issues related to sustainable development and the human dimensions of climate change and energy use.