Physical Geography and the AAG
Geography is the quintessential interdisciplinary discipline — or, as AAG past president Mona Domosh has described it, a ‘promiscuous discipline,’ an undisciplined discipline — a radically intradisciplinary discipline. For someone like myself whose research is in human and nature-society geography, this means that my work is in conversation not only with that of other geographers,…
Geographers do their research at a distance, build their toolkits… and find community
Scaling up AAG's Support for Students and Early-Career Geographers By Julaiti Nilupaer and Coline Dony By definition, geographers study such a variety of places and spaces. Some choose to do their research about geographies near their university, and others are drawn to distant geographies. These choices were seriously challenged or derailed during the 2020-2021 academic…
AAG Early Career and Department Leadership Webinar Series Continues in Fall 2021
By Julaiti Nilupaer, Mark Revell, Ken Foote and Shannon O’Lear This May marked the culmination of a year-long series of webinars developed by the AAG in partnership with past president Ken Foote (University of Connecticut) and current council member Shannon O’Lear (University of Kansas). The Early Career and Department Leadership webinar series launched in fall 2020 as part of the AAG’s COVID-19 Rapid Response…
Invisible and Silent No More: The Necessity of Centering Anti-Racism as We Address Inclusion and Access for Disabled Community Members
Gretchen Sneegas, PhD, Texas A&M University and Arrianna Planey, PhD, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill Editor's Note: This month, we present a Perspective from AAG members Dr. Gretchen Sneegas and Dr. Arrianna Planey. Their commentary on the intersectional nature of marginalization and discrimination in terms of disability and anti-Blackness is a response to the…
Coming Soon: New, Improved Membership Database
Note: The first planned downtime will begin July 16, 2021. During this time, the parts of our website that require you to log in will be inaccessible. We will update this page as soon as access is restored. If you have questions, please email us at or call us at 202-234-1450. Thank you! As Phase…
AAG Welcomes New Annals Editor
Brian King has been named a co-editor of Human Geography and Nature & Society for The Annals of the American Association of ; King is a professor and Head of the Department of Geography at the Pennsylvania State. His research, teaching, and outreach focus on livelihoods, conservation and development, environmental change, and human health, centering…
Moving Forward on Climate Change and Professional Ethics
A few weeks ago, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) announced that atmospheric CO2 concentrations, at 419 ppm, have now reached 150% of their pre-industrial levels – the highest in more than four million years, when sea levels were about 24 meters higher, the global average surface temperature almost 4ºC warmer than today, and the first modern humans had more than three million years yet to appear on earth. The world-historical COVID-19 pandemic, still…
On Teaching, Mentoring, Balance, and Service
With summer almost here, I’m about to head into my last year as an academic. I’m “retiring” June 2022, although in truth I’ll work full time running my family’s winery and nonprofit, both built around the mission of providing training, jobs, and community for those with disabilities. As I transition from academics, Andrew and I…
Perspectives: A New Column in the AAG Newsletter
In May, we introduced a new column to the AAG Newsletter called Perspectives, replacing AAG’s former Op-Ed feature. Perspectives will share the opinions and ideas of members on issues of relevance to geography. We encourage submissions that stimulate dialogue, get members thinking, and challenge our discipline to take new approaches to the social, political, and…
Opening Up the Possibilities for an Accessible AAG
Many of us “went” to the AAG annual meeting last month, scheduled to take place in Seattle. Of course, we all attended virtually from separate isolated locations. I attended from my living room, my kitchen table, and my bedroom floor. Though just to insert some sense of the old days, for one committee meeting, I…
A Good Day for Geography, Every Day
The late Will Graf would end his AAG President's columns with this optimistic affirmation: It's a good day for Geography. Given the last year, you might be surprised to hear that it is just as true today as it was during his tenure in 1998-99. Let me explain. As I write this, it is the…
Working Together for Racial and Social Justice: From Anti-Asian Racism and Violence to Anti-Racist Praxis in Geography
By Guo Chen, Associate Professor of Geography and Global Urban Studies, Michigan State University This column is the first in a new section of the AAG News called Perspectives, which offers a platform for members to discuss issues of relevance to geography. A slightly longer version of this article was first published in April as…