Dissertations & Placements

We are proud of our graduate students, who achieve remarkable things throughout their time at the University. After completing their degrees, they go on to make meaningful contributions in communities and organizations around the world. We provide a listing of our graduates and their current positions on this page. 

Looking for job placements for our professional MGIS students? Check out the Job Placements webpage on the MGIS website to find out more. 

2025

Mohsen Ahmadkhani

  • Topologically-Enchanced Deep Learning for Spatial Image Processing and Generation
  • Placement:  Fraud Identity Analytics; Data Scientist

Isaac Asante-Wusu

  • "Water for all" in a Democratic Africa: Rhetoric versus Reality in Accra and Pretoria
  • Placement: Geography department at Central Michigan University

Liz Calhoun

  • Mapping the Future: On the Politics of Algorithms, Policing and Community
  • Lecturer in Human Geography in the Department of Geosciences at Auburn University

 

2024

Ruth Burrows

  • Seasonal Climate Connections to Food Insecurity and Child Undernutrition in Senegal
  • Population-Environment Researcher; Project Drawdown.

Joshua Eichen

  • "Racialization, Climate Change and the Birth of Capitalism: 1449-1720"
  • Placement: 

John Kendall

  • "Oil is Where You Find It:  Mediations of Technology, Labor and Value in the Oilfield"
  • Placement: Penn State, NSF Funded, 2 year post doctoral research on the political-industrial ecology of petrochemicals in Appalachia 

Yaxuan Zhang

  • "Using GPS-enabled Activity-Travel Surveys to Understand Individuals' Spatiotemporal Behaviors and Promote Equitable Mobility"
  • Placement:  Transportation Planner at Modern Mobility Partners, Atlanta, GA
     

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