Borchert Lecture

John Borchert
Dr. John Borchert in the field near Medora, North Dakota (1960).
2024 Borchert Lecture and Spatial Forum - Maggie Cawley

Save the date! The annual Spatial Forum and Borchert Lecture will take place on Monday, November 18 from 1:00 to 5:30 pm in Wilson Library. The Borchert Lecture will be given by Maggie Cawley, Executive Director of Open Street Maps US. We hope to see you there! 

The Borchert Lecture series was established in April 2008 with the inaugural lecture delivered by Jack Dangermond, founder/president of ESRI and graduate of the University of Minnesota (master's of architecture, 1968). This annual event honors the late John R. Borchert, University of Minnesota Regents Professor in the Department of Geography, Environment & Society and member of the US National Academy of Science.

The lecture series features notable speakers in the area of geographic information science and, since 2014, is part of the campus-wide UMN Spatial Forum event. The Spatial Forum is a yearly event highlighting spatial research, teaching, and outreach.

This event is free and open to the public and is co-sponsored by the MGIS programGeography, Environment & SocietyU-Spatial, and DASH. Below is a list of Borchert Lecture speakers and the titles of their presentations. To learn more about Dr. Borchert's impressive life and career, please read the biographical memoir written by John Adams and Vernon Ruttan.

Date Presentation Title & Speaker
November 2023 "My Geospatial Tech Journey -- What's next?"
Nadine Alameh
November 2022 "A Cartographic Bookending of the 20th Century: the contributions of Minnesotans J.Paul Goode and John Borchert"
Robert McMaster
November 2021 "From cougars to penguins: Pushing boundaries in spatial ecology"
Michelle LaRue
November 2020 "Re-thinking the Growth of London: An interactive multi-stakeholder perspective derived in geodesign and negotiation"
Carl Steinitz
November 2019 "Geospatial Discovery and Innovation in the Era of Artificial Intelligence and CyberGIS"
Shaowen Wang
November 2018 "Swells, Soundings, and Sustainability in the Ocean"
Dawn Wright
November 2017 "Vignettes in Natural Resource Management; Rocks, Wood & Water"
Rolf  Weberg and Lucinda Johnson
November 2016 "Challenges and Opportunities in Modeling--and Managing--Biodiversity in a Future Under Climate Change"
Jessica Hellmann
November 2015 "Big Data and Visualization: Deriving insights from global data to identify and warn of food systems disruption"
Amy Kircher
November 2014 "Understanding Global Change: Opportunities and challenges for data-driven research"
Vipin Kumar
November 2013 "What is GeoDesign and Why Does It Matter?"
Tom Fisher
November 2012 "From Disease to Disaster: Geospatial analysis for environmental decision making"
Nina Lam
November 2011 "Ways Forward for Geographic Information Science and Technology Education"
David DiBiase
November 2010 "Online Participatory GIS for Decision Support of Regional Transportation Improvement"
Timothy Nyerges
November 2009 "Coastlines, Boundary Lines, and the Cartographies of Protection and Control"
Mark Monmonier
November 2008 "Geographic Information in the World Wide Web 2.0"
Michael Goodchild
April 2008 "The Geographic Approach: A cross-cutting methodology"
Jack Dangermond