Coline Dony Joins AAG as Senior Geography Researcher

The AAG welcomes Coline Dony as a Senior Geography Researcher. Before joining the AAG staff in Washington, D.C., Coline served as a visiting assistant professor at the University of Maryland Baltimore County where she taught undergraduate and graduate level courses in GIS, geovisualization and programming for spatial data analysis. Coline also taught an undergraduate course in medical geography, her area of expertise.

Coline holds four degrees in geography: a bachelor’s degree and a master of science degree from the Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Belgium, and a master of arts degree and a Ph.D. from the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. Coline moved from Brussels to Charlotte, N.C., in 2011 to join an interdisciplinary team doing research on spatial access to healthcare. For her dissertation research, Coline looked at ways to improve people’s health by using better urban planning instead of primarily relying on medical services through a study of access to parks in Charlotte and associated environmental injustices. Other than health geography, Coline cares about bringing programming skills to geographers, especially to female geographers and to social geography programs. In the summer of 2015 she taught for Girls Who Code, a non-profit that aims to see more women pursue their education in a STEM field.

In her role at AAG she is working on a new AAG initiative, “Coding for Girls in GIS and Geography,” helping to develop GIS coding curricular materials, such as python programming for spatio-temporal analysis and many other topics, and is helping to plan a series of workshops on coding for girls and women beginning at the AAG Annual Meeting in New Orleans in 2018. In addition, she is working with the AAG team on a series of webinars and podcasts for the Secondary Cities project.

When not working, Coline likes to watch TV, especially her favorite show: Rectify (on Sundance). Coline also likes to swim and is learning Japanese.