Dissertations & Placements

2023

Gabe Schwartzman

  • "After Coal: Power, Development, and Post-Coal Politics in Appalachia"
  • Placement:  Assistant Professor in the Department of Geography and Sustainability at the University of Tennessee

Matthew Trumper(MA)

  • Multi-Scale Topographic Influences on Tree Growth: A Case Study of Quercus lobata in the Tehachapi Mountains, California
  • Placement: Research Specialist, Department of Geography, Environment and Society, UMN

Judith Avila(MA)

  • Exploring Hydroclimatic Variability on the Red River of the North, the Least Stationary River of the United States
  • Placement:  U.S. Department of the Interior, Missouri Basin Region

Mara McPartland

  • "Schools for Sale: Contested Geographies of Education, Urban Development, and Political Imaginaries in Chicago"
  • Placement:  post-doctoral researcher at the Alfred Wegener Institute in Potsdam, Germany

2022

Anindita Chatterjee

  • "The Knowledge Thief? Intellectual Property Disputes and Copying for Development in India"
  • Placement:  Instructor, Institute of Global Studies, UMN

Spencer Cox

  • "Neoliberalism’s Last Days: Amazon and the Rise of America’s New Working Classes"
  • Placement: Data Scientist at Stantec, a global design and engineering firm

Keavy McFadden

  • "Schools for Sale: Contested Geographies of Education, Urban Development, and Political Imaginaries in Chicago"
  • Placement:  Kelter Postdoctoral Fellow in Urban Studies at the Center for Urban and Global Studies, Trinity College, Hartford, CT

Robin Wright

  • "Liberty, Guns, and Pocket Constitutions: Constructing a White Nation Through Legal Discourse in the Pacific Northwest"
  • Placement: Core Fellow in Environmental Studies at Boston College

2021

Chelsea Cervantes De Blois

  • "Examining Well-being and Vulnerability in Data-Poor Nations: Azerbaijan and Kyrgyzstan"
  • Placement: Climate Change Analyst for the Bureau of Intelligence and Research's Office of the Geographer and Global Issues (GGI) in the US Department of State

Jacqueline Daigneault

  • "Making Markets Modern: Development, Displacement, and the Politics of Inclusion in Togo’s Everyday Economy"
  • Placement: User Experience Researcher, Asset Management division, JP Morgan

Brittany Krzyzanowski

  • "Enabling Neighborhood Health Research and Protecting Patient Privacy"
  • Placement:  postdoctoral fellowship in the Neurology Department of the School of Medicine at Washington University

2020

Maryia Bakhtsiyarava

  • "Household Agriculture as a Determinant of Household Food Security and Child Undernutrition in Ethiopia"
  • Placement: Postdoc in Urban and Regional Development at UC Berkeley

Jacob Coburn

  • "Wind in the Upper Midwest: Assessing Wind Resource Variability and Representation in Reanalyses"
  • Placement: Postdoc in Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at Cornell University

Eric Goldfischer

  • "The Difference that Seeing Makes: Homelessness and Visuality in Urban Ecology"
  • Placement:

Joe Getzoff

  • "Wasted Lands: Zionist Development and Settler Colonialism in the Naqab/Negev"
  • Placement: Visiting Assistant Professor position in the Graduate School of Geography at Clark University

Aaron Mallory

  • "In the Life: Accounting and Triage for Black LGBTQIA Communities in HIV Prevention"
  • Placement: Assistant Professor of Geography at Florida State University

Elizabeth Schneider

  • "Spatiotemporal Complexity of Fire in an Island-Lake Landscape, Border Lakes Region, Minnesota, USA"
  • Placement: Instructional Design Specialist in the Center for Excellence and Innovation in Teaching, Scared Heart University

Uday Kuwar Thapa

  • "Investigating Changes in Forest Growth and Atmospheric Circulation in the Himalayan Region During the Past Four Centuries"
  • Placement: Researcher in Climate and Global Change program at The National Atmospheric and Oceanographic Administration, UC Santa Barbara

Kevin Van Meter

  • "Theory Moves: Autonomist Marxism, Social Movement Publications, and the Production of Space"
  • Placement: Labor Organizer in the Pacifi Northwest, specifically; Internal Organizer with SEIU49

2019

Kwame Adovor

Megan Snow

  • "The Shelterbelt “Scheme”: Radical Ecological Forestry and the Production of Climate in the Fight for the Prairie States Forestry Project"
  • Placement: Program Director for Geospatial Support in the University Library and Adjunct Professorial Lecturer in the Department of Public Administration and Policy at the American University in Washington DC

Hillary Waters

  • "Undermining the urban present: Struggles over toxicity and environmental knowledge in Zambian mining cities"
  • Placement:  Postdoctoral Research Associate with CREATE Initiative at Humphrey School of Public Affairs

2018

Kai Bosworth

Damien Carriere

Julia Corwin

Ding Fei

Jessica Finlay

  • "Cities of (In)Difference: A Mixed-Methods Analysis of Place and Wellbeing in Later Life"
  • Placement: Postdoc in the Social Environment & Health Program, University of Michigan

Asli Ikizoglu

  • "Spacing Asylum: Orders of Protection in a Turkish City"
  • Placement: Assistant Professor in Cultural Studies at Sabanci University, Istanbul, Turkey

Laura Matson

  • "Multiple Sovereigns and Transient Resources: Contested Ecosystems and Expanding Tribal Jurisdiction in the Great Lakes Region"
  • Placement: Postdoc, Grand Challenges, University of Minnesota

Gwen McCrea

Todd Morehouse

Bryan Runck

  • "GeoComputational Approaches to Evaluate the Impacts of Communication on Decision-making in Agriculture"
  • Placement: postdoctoral in College of Food, Agriculture and Natural Resource Science(CFANS) UMN

2017

Laura Cesafsky

  • "Divided Together:  Traffic and Democratic Life in Bogota'"
  • Placement:  Researcher: Nissan Corporation

Alicia Lazzarini

  • "‘Açúcar nem Sempre Doce’:  Reinvestment, Land, and Gendered Labor in a ‘New’ Mozambique"
  • Placement: Consortium for Faculty Diversity postdoctoral fellowship in Geography at Bucknell University

Ben McDaniel

  • "At Odds with Progress: An Analysis of Minnesota's Municipal Tax Legislation, Metro-Area Fiscal Control, and the Taxpayer's Income Conundrum, 2003-2012"
  • Placement: Lecturer, North Hennepin Community College

Sara Nelson

  • "Neoliberal Environments: Crisis, Counterrevolution, and the Nature of Value"
  • Placement: University of British Columbia as a Killam Postdoctoral Fellow.

2016

Dudley Bonsal

  • "Local in Space and Time: Acoustic Environmental Policy in Minnesota and a Fine-Scale Spatiotemporal Representation of Aircraft Noise Impact  on Residential Life"
  • Placement: James Madison University, Assistant Professor, tenure track

Sian Butcher

  • "Infrastructures of Property and Debt: making affordable housing, race and place in Johannesburg"
  • Placement:  Human Geography Lecturer in the School of Geography, Archaeology and Environmental Studies at the University of Witwatersrand, South Africa.

Jessica Lehman

  • "Planetary Sea: Oceanography and the Making of the world Ocean"
  • Placement: Mellon Postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Wisconsin-Madison

2015

Basil Mahayni

  • "Crisis in Jordan's Water Sector? Understanding the Dynamics of Institutional and Political Constraints in Water Management and Corporatization Reforms"
  • Placement: Practice manager with Chemonics International (Washington DC)

Bill Lindeke

  • "In Search of New Riders: Affective Exclusions and Bicycle Planning in Minneapolis/Saint Paul"
  • Placement: St Paul Planning Commission and a freelance journalist, blogger, and activist

Ursula Lang

  • "Cultivating Everyday Life: Yards, Nature and Time in the City"
  • Placement: Postdoctoral Research Associate in urban geography at Glasgow University, UK

Katharine H. Kindervater

  • "Lethal Surveillance: Drones and the Geo-History of Modern War"
  • Placement: Society of Fellows 3 year postdoc at Dartmouth

Jeff DeGraves

  • "Electricity, Marginalization, and Empowerment: For Whom? And Who Decides? Evaluating Participatory Mapping in Río Negro, Honduras"
  • Placement: University of Wisconsin—Eau Claire, lecturer

Catherine Chang

  • "Variegated Geographies of Ecological Urbanization: China's Eco-Cities in Global Context"
  • Placement: Macalester College, Assistant Professor, tenure track

Ilona Moore

"The Work of 'Feeding the World:' from India's Green Revolution to the Paradox of Plenty"
Placement: Bucknell University, Assistant Professor, tenure track

Renata Blumberg

"The Spatial Politics and Political Economy of Alternative Food Networks in Post-Soviet Latvia and Lithuania"
Placement: Montclair State University, NJ, Assistant Professor in Food Systems

Ivan Bialostosky

"Urban Sustainability and the Technopolitics of Order"
Placement: Century College, MN, Adjunct faculty

Chris Crawford

"Assessing Historical Trends in Snowpack Variability Across the Northern Rocky Mountains Using Remote Sensing and Dendrochronology Approaches"
Placement: NASA Postdoctoral Fellowship, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center

Smai Eria

"The State of GIS in Developing Countries: A Diffusion and GIS & Society Analysis of Uganda, and the Potential for Mobile Location-Based Services"
Placement: ERSI analyst

Elizabeth Fairly

"Upholding Customary Land Rights through Formalization? Evidence from Tanzania’s Program of Land Reform"
National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, Washington DC

Jennifer Kotting

"Baltimore’s Urban Fix: Sounds of Excess and Exclusion in Station North"
Placement: Communications Director, Illinois Caucus for Adolescent Health, Chicago

Jerry Shannon

"Rethinking Food Deserts: the practice and politics of food access"
Placement: University of Georgia, Assistant Professor, tenure track

Omar Tesdell

"Shadow Spaces: Territory, Sovereignty, and the Question of Palestinian Cultivation"
Placement: Birzeit University, Palestine, Assistant Professor of Geography; 2014-2015 Abu-Lughod Postdoctoral Fellowship at Columbia University

Luke Bergmann

"Capital, Carbon, Context, and Concepts: Geographies under Globalization"
Placement: Assistant Professor, tenure track, University of Washington

Adam Berland

"Twin Cities Urbanization and Implications for Urban Forest Ecosystem Services"
Placement: Assistant Professor, tenure track, Ball State University

Stefano Bloch

"The Changing Face of Wall Space: Graffiti-murals in the context of neighborhood change in Los Angeles"
Placement: Mellon postdoctoral fellowship, Brown University; Lecturer, California State University

Dinesh Paudel

"The Double Life of Development: Peasants, Agrarian Livelihoods, and the Prehistory of Nepal’s Maoist Revolution"
Placement: Assistant Professor, tenure track, Appalachian State University

Kathryn Pratt

"Fleshing out Conservation: Performative Ecologies and Embodied Practice in Chilean Temperate Rainforest Management"
Program Development Specialist, Macalester College

Christopher Strunk

"Circulating citizenship practices: Bolivian routes of migration, hometown associations, and development"
Placement: Augustana College, Assistant Professor, tenure track

Nathan Clough

"Constituent Space: Re-theorizing the Geographies of Contestation and Control"
Placement: Assistant Professor, tenure track, University of Minnesota Duluth

Nicholas Handler

"Technocenosis: As Assessment of Efforts to Identify the Sources of Derelict Trawl Nets in the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands"
Placement: Assistant Professor, tenure track, Pierce College

Elizabeth Johnson

"Reanimating Bios:Biomimetic Science and Empire"
Placement: Mellon Postdoctoral Fellowship, University of Wisconsin Madison

Tatiana Matejskova

"Everyday Landscapes of Immigrant Integration in Post-Socialist Berlin: Integration Projects, Othering, and Meanings of Work"
Placement: Assistant Professor, Roskilde University, Denmark

Emily Murai

"Mapping Qualculative Geographies: User Interface Design and the Production of Space"
Placement: Lecturer, University of California Santa Clara

Rajyashree Narayanareddy

Placement: Assistant Professor, tenure track, University of Toronto

Ebenezer Nikoi

"Child Nutritional Well-Being in Ghana: An Analysis of Associated Individual, Household, and Contextual health Indicators and Socioeconomic and Biophysical Environmental Variables"
Placement: University of Ghana

Nicole Simms

"The Counterfeit Consumer: Counterfeit Luxury Goods and the Negotiation of Space and Subjectivity"
Placement: Researcher, The Hospital for Sick Children, Minneapolis.

Kyle Walker

"The Geographies of Local Immigration Policies in the United States"
Placement: Assistant Professor, tenure track, Texas Christian University

Justin Jacobson

"Japanese Transit-Oriented Development: the Framed Market and the Production of Alternative Landscapes"
Placement: Secondary School, Japan

Ozan Karaman

"Remaking Space for Globalization: Dispossession Through Urban Renewal in Istanbul"
Placement: Lecturer, University of Glasgow, UK

David Maralack

"Transforming Sport and Identity in the Post-Apartheid South African Nation State"
Placement: Senior Lecturer, University of Cape Town, South Africa

Moira McDonald

"Political Economy of Agriculture in the Yazoo Delta: how Federal Policies Shape Environmental Quality, Livelihood Possibilities, and Social Justice"
Placement: Program Officer, Freshwater Conservation Initiative, Walton Family Foundation, DC

Iam Muehlenhaus

"Lost in Visualization: Using Quantitative Content Analysis to Identify, Measure, and Categorize Political Cartographic Manipulations"
Placement: Lecturer and GIS Lab Manager, University of Wisconsin River Falls

Samuel Schueth

"State Assemblage in the Republic of Georgia"
Placement: USAID, Afghanistan

Marion Traub-Werner

"Global Displacements: Geographies of Work and Industrial Restructuring in the Dominican Republic"
Placement: Assistant Professor, tenure track, University of Buffalo

Christopher William

"Ecology, Conservation, and Climate-Fire Challenges on Uruguru Mountain Biodiversity Hotspot, Tanzania"
Placement: Assistant Professor, University of Dar es Salaam

Grant Elliot

Placement: Assistant Professor, tenure track, University of Missouri

Debarchana Ghosh

"A Geospatial Analysis of West Nile Virus in the Twin Cities Metropolitan Area of Minnesota"
Placement: Assistant Professor, tenure track, Kent State University

Jason Jindrich

Placement: Associate Researcher, Brown University

Evan Larson

"Status and Dynamics of Whitebark Pine (Pinus Albicaulis Engelm.) Forests in Southwest Montana, Central Idaho, and Oregon, USA"
Placement: Assistant Professor, tenure track, University of Wisconsin Paletteville

David Menyah

"The Informal Sector Revisited: Botswana’s Developmental State and Micro-Enterprise Development"
Placement: Manager, Programme Development, Commonwealth Association for Public Administration & Management, Canada

Julia Rachfuss

"Dynamics of Old-Growth Forests of Minnesota"
Placement: Postdoctoral Fellowship, Mid Sweden University

Jonathan Schroeder

"Visualizing Patterns in US Urban Population Trends"
Placement: Assistant Professor, tenure track, Middlebury College

Shipeng Sun

"Intraurban Migration in the Twin Cities of Minnesota"
Placement: Postdoctoral Fellowship, University of Waterloo, Ontario

Kenneth Blumenfeld

"Convective Weather Hazards in the Twin Cities Metropolitan Area, MN"
Placement: Lecturer, University of Wisconsin Paletteville

Christopher Hagerman

Placement: Bureau of Planning and Sustainability, Portland, Oregon; adjunct faculty, Portland State University

Tiffany M. Myrdahl

Placement: Assistant Professor, tenure track, University of Lethbridge; board member of Women in Cities International

Judith Otto

"Representing Communism: Discourses of Heritage Tourism and Economic Regeneration in Nowa Huta, Poland"
Placement: Assistant Professor, tenure track, Framingham State College

Frank Shockey

"Geography and the Rule of Law in the Making of Two American Indian Reservations: a Geographic Study of Law as a Social System"
Placement: Community Development Director, City of Ft. Myers, Florida; Senior Natural Hazards Program Specialist

Peter Anthamatten

Placement: Assistant Professor, tenure track, University of Colorado Denver

Jennifer Blecha

Placement: Assistant Professor, tenure track, San Francisco State University

Patricia Boda

Placement: Assistant Professor, tenure track, Middle Tennessee State University

Mark Brinda

Placement: Workforce Manager, City of Minneapolis Employment and Training Program; Lecturer, University of Minnesota

Ryan Holifield

Placement: Assistant Professor, tenure track, University of Wisconsin Milwaukee

Annemarie Kiaga

Placement: National Program Coordinator, International Labor Organization, Tanzania

Opportuna Kweka

Placement: Assistant Professor, tenure track, University of Dar es Salaam

Kai-Chi Leung

Placement: Assistant Professor, University of Hong Kong

Elizabeth Lunstrum

Placement: Assistant Professor, tenure track, York University Ontario

Ananthakrishna Maringanti

Placement: Postdoctoral Fellowship, University of Singapore

Timothy Mennel

Placement: Senior Editor and Acquisitions Manager, American Planning Association

Roxanne Ornelas

Placement: Assistant Professor, tenure track, Miami University of Ohio

Farhana Sultana

Placement: Assistant Professor, tenure track, Syracuse University

Kristin Sziarto

Placement: Assistant Professor, tenure track, University of Wisconsin Milwaukee

Annette Watson

Placement: Assistant Professor, tenure track, College of Charleston

Jun Zhang

Placement: Assistant Professor, tenure track, National University of Singapore

Helen Hazen

Placement: Assistant Professor, tenure track, University of Denver

Sook-Jin Kim

Placement: Assistant Professor, tenure track, Kon-Kuk University

Yvette Pye

Placement: Assistant Professor, tenure track, St. Mary’s University

Xuejin Ruan

Placement: GIS/IT specialist, Pierce County Washington

Sula Sarkar

Placement: Coordinator, Minnesota Population Center, University of Minnesota

Daisaku Yamamoto

Placement: Assistant Professor, tenure track, Colgate University

Gabriela Valdivia

Placement: Assistant Professor, tenure track, University of North Carolina

Rafael Arias Ramirez

Placement: Assistant Professor, tenure track, National University of Costa Rica

Laura Smith

Placement: Assistant Professor, tenure track, Macalester College