Harold & Florence Mayer Lecture Series
This lecture series is made possible by an endowment from Harold and Florence Mayer. Harold Mayer (1916–1994) was a Professor of Geography at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and one of the leading scholars in the field of urban geography in the twentieth century. He specialized in Urban and Transport Geography of North America with a focus on New York, Chicago, Milwaukee, and British Columbia.
Fall 2023
Jennifer Fluri, Department of Geography, University of Colorado
“Afghanistan Evacuation Failure: Activism and Scholarship in a Time of Geopolitical Crisis.”
Spring 2023
Muki Haklay, Department of Geography, University College London
“From Public Participation GIS Citizen Science—Has Science been Democratized?”
Fall 2022
Heejun Chang, Department of Geography, Portland State University
“Urban Water Resilience in a Changing Environment and Society.”
Spring 2022
Kris Olds, Department of Geography, University of Wisconsin-Madison
“Education Hubs in the Asia-Pacific.”
Fall 2020
Rebecca Lave, Department of Geography, Indiana University Bloomington
“Bridging the gap: Integrating critical human and physical geography in practice.”
Spring 2020
Shaowen Wang, Department of Geography and Geographic Information Science, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
“CyberGIS: Retrospect and Prospect.”
Fall 2019
Jayajit Chakraborty, Department of Sociology & Anthropology, University of Texas at El Paso
“Flood Risks and Environmental Injustice: Case Studies from Houston and Miami.”
Spring 2019
Julie Winkler, Department of Geography, Michigan State University
“The complexities of climate change: examples from agriculture and natural resources.”
Fall 2018
Joe Darden, Department of Geography, Michigan State University
“Understanding Harold Rose’s Geography of Despair: The persistence of the black ghetto and neighborhood socioeconomic inequality”
Spring 2018
Seth Spielman, Department of Geography, University of Colorado Boulder
“How to fix a $400 billion map: Ways to improve the federal statistical system”
Fall 2017
Trevor Barnes, Department of Geography, University of British Columbia
“Unboxing economic geography”
Fall 2016
Becky Mansfield, Department of Geography, Ohio State University
“Epigenetic life: reconfiguring biological and social reproduction”
Spring 2016
John R. Logan, Department of Sociology, Brown University
“Before The Philadelphia Negro: Residential Segregation in a Nineteenth Century Northern City”
Fall 2015
Geoffrey Henebry, Geospatial Sciences Center for Excellence, South Dakota State University
“Remote Sensing of Land Surface Phenologies and Seasonalities Using Hot, Warm, and Cool Earthlight”
Spring 2015
Paul Robbins, Nelson Institute of Environmental Studies, University of Wisconsin-Madison
“Frogs and Workers: Biodiversity Amidst Global Commodity Production in India”
Fall 2014
Daniel Sui, Department of Geography, The Ohio State University
“Rethinking geographic research and education in the age of open science”
Spring 2014
Audrey Kobayashi, Department of Geography, Queen’s University
“Beyond the Chicago School: Urban Geography’s Revisionist Past”
William Woods, Department of Geography, University of Kansas
“Pre-European Amazonian Populations”
Spring 2013
Richard Walker, Department of Geography, University of California-Berkeley
“The Rise and Fall of the Golden State: Hard Lessons of Liberal Capitalism Learned in California”
Fall 2012
James McCarthy, Department of Geography, Clark University
“The Social and Environmental Geographies of Boston’s ‘Big Dig’”
Spring 2012
Janice Monk, School of Geography and Development, University of Arizona
“The Normal Way: Exploring the Career Paths of Early Women Geographers”
Fall 2011
Andy Herod, Department of Geography, University of Georgia
“Labour Union Organizing Strategies in Early 21st Century USA”
Spring 2011
Craig Colten, Department of Geography & Anthropology, Louisiana State University
“Forgetting the Unforgettable: Social Memory and Resilience in New Orleans”
Fall 2010
Julio Betancourt, U.S. Geological Survey
“Climate and Ecosystems in the American West: Past, Present, and Future”
Spring 2010
Mei-Po Kwan, Department of Geography, The Ohio State University
“Analysis of Time-Space Behaviour in the Urban Context: Geovisualization and Geocomputational Approaches”
Fall 2009
Sarah McLafferty, Department of Geography, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
“Locating Diversity: Place, Immigration and Women’s Health Inequities in U.S. Cities”
Spring 2009
Jennifer Wolch, College of Environmental Design, University of California-Berkeley
“Climate Change and the Carbon Footprint of Cities”
Fall 2008
Larry Knopp, College of Liberal Arts, University of Minnesota-Duluth
“Race, Gender, and Venereal Biopower in Wartime Seattle”
Spring 2008
Randall Schaetzl, Department of Geography, Michigan State University
“Geographic studies on loess in the Upper Midwest: New Findings and Potential”
Spring 2008
William Cronon, Department of Geography, University of Wisconsin-Madison
“Nature’s Metropolis: Chicago”
Fall 2007
Robert Beauregard, Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation, Columbia University
“The Spaces of Urban Theory: From Chicago to Johannesburg and Beyond”
Spring 2007
Robert Lake, Edward J. Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy, Rutgers University
“Fictitious Urbanization: The Multiple regional Geographies of Urban Redevelopment”
Fall 2006
James Duncan & Nancy Duncan, Department of Geography, University of Cambridge
“Colonizing Nature: The Production of an Environmental Disaster in 19th Century Ceylon”
Spring 2006
Glen MacDonald, Department of Geography, University of California-Los Angeles
Fall 2005
Allen Scott, Department of Geography, University of California-Los Angeles
“Creative Cities: Conceptual Issues and Policy Problems”
Spring 2005
Helga Leitner and Eric Sheppard, Department of Geography, University of Minnesota-Twin Cities
“Contesting Neoliberal Urbanization: Spaces and Scales of Activism”
Fall 2004
Neil Smith, Department of Anthropology, City University of New York
“The End Game of Globalization”
Fall 2003
Erik Swyngedouw, School of Geography and Environment, Oxford University
“Circulations and Metabolisms: Hybrid Natures and Cyborg Cities”
Spring 2003
Michael Batty, Center for Advanced Spatial Analysis, University College London
“Agent-based pedestrian modeling”
Spring 2002
Jamie Peck, Department of Geography, University of Wisconsin-Madison
“Workfare states: Geographies of Welfare Reform”
Spring 2000
John Gurda, Author and Independent Historian
“Where Milwaukee Is”
1997
Joseph Schwartzberg, Department of Geography, University of Minnesota-Twin Cities
“Deconstructing Two Cryptic Asian Maps”
1996
Ronald Abler, Department of Geography, Pennsylvania State University
“Geography, Striving and Thriving in the 90s”
1995
Harold Rose, Department of Geography, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
“Urban Violence and Urban Geography”
1994
Robert Sinclair, College of Liberal Arts & Sciences, Wayne State University
“Detroit – One City or Many?”
1993
James Duncan, Department of Geography, Syracuse University
1991
Eckart Ehlers, Department of Geography, University of Bonn
1990
Rutherford Platt, Department of Geography, University of Massachusetts
1989
Nick Crawford, Department of Geography, Western Kentucky University
“Environmental Problems in Urbanized Limestone Terrains”
Fall 1988
Philip L. Wagner, Department of Geography, Simon Fraser University
“Communication and Environment: Why We Change the Earth”
Fall 1987
Paul E. Lydolph, Department of Geography, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
“The Agriculture Situation in the Soviet Union”
Spring 1987
Jean Gottman, School of Geography, Oxford University
“Action at the Crossroads – Revitalizing the Cities”
Norton Ginsburg, University of Chicago
“The Extended Metropolis”
Chauncy Harris, Department of Geography, University of Chicago
“A Geographical Introduction to the Soviet Union”