2019-2020 M.A. and Ph.D. Graduates

Professor Michael Brown

Professor Brown Congratulates Will McKeithen, Ph.D.

"Dr. Will McKeithen’s Ph.D. research has been sophisticated, courageous, and intrepid.  Broadly speaking it is a political ecology of women’s incarceration.  Their research investigated how racial-capitalism works through the socio-biological relationships of access, control, neglect, and resilience that women in prison experience. This research contributes to ongoing academic debates within bio-political geography, feminist political economy, and critical prison-studies. Drawing on in-depth qualitative interviews, archival research, and critical policy analyses, it masterfully shows how structural inequality—and resistances to it—impact healthcare-access and bodily autonomy for incarcerated women. It is a fine example of critical human geography by one of our most committed graduates."

Professor Vicky Lawson

Professor Lawson Congratulates Estelle Broyer, M.A.

"Congratulations Estelle! Your work is wonderful, it is a powerful reflection of your own journey to understand white privilege and racial capitalism in Seattle's South Lake Union. Your work contributes by unpacking the place-making and place-taking practices of Seattle’s tech professionals who contribute to transforming they city into a gleaming monument to avant-garde wealth and technology optimism. It has been a real pleasure to work with you and to be a part of your journey. I admire you as a scholar and a person and I am going to miss you! Congratulations, I wish you all the best for the great things to come! I will see you in London."

Professor Larry Knopp

Professor Larry Knopp Congratulates Teddy Davenport, M.A.

"Teddy Davenport has done amazing work in his Masters thesis.  He has applied a diverse set of skills and a highly disciplined, thoughtful, and diligent work ethic to an enormously important set of questions confronting our discipline and society as a whole.  The result is a document that is brilliant, innovative, and cutting edge.  Teddy brings together and advances care theory, feminist and queer geographies, and trans studies through a deeply critical and intersectional study of the life experiences of a diverse set of trans folk, using an online oral history project as a data source.  In the process he illuminates the complex and at times contradictory nature of particular spaces of care and care practices experienced by the narrators, as well as the relationship between these spaces and practices and the ways in which the narrators have constructed and navigated their subjectivities.  This is outstanding work that promises to open up whole new worlds of knowledge production and potential for radical social change.

On a personal note, Teddy has been an absolute joy to work with.  He is organized, disciplined, and passionate not just about his scholarly work but about the larger social projects of justice and accountability of which it is a part.  He approaches all aspects of his work – including our routine meetings -- fully prepared and with clear agendas.  He is incredibly well organized and holds everyone with whom he works (including me!) to the same high standards to which he holds himself.  These include ethical and moral standards, which I find very inspiring.  It has been – and continues to be – an honor to work with him.  I am humbled by his success yet enormously proud of him.  Congratulations, Teddy!"

Professor Kim England

Professor Kim England Congratulates Soohyung Hur, M.A.

"Soohyung is smart, intellectually curious and has a deep personal and professional commitment to her work. In her MA thesis Soohyung proposes a fresh way of thinking about issues to do with feminist social movements and international human rights activism. She takes up decolonial theory alongside scholarship on emotion to explore their potential for building solidarity around wartime sexual slavery survivors in South Korea and in VietNam. This intellectually ambitious, beautifully written thesis weaves together theory and empirical evidence in compelling ways. I consider myself so lucky to work with such an incredibly talented scholar. Way to go, Soohyung!"

Professor Mark Ellis

Professor Mark Ellis Congratulates Alex Ramiller, M.A.

"Alex has done outstanding work on housing policy and social justice issues in his nearly two years at UW. His two research papers are high quality interventions about the spatio-political processes and outcomes of built environment change in Seattle, one focusing on how development generates displacement of residents through eviction and the other on how the possibilities for affordable new housing construction are restricted by neighborhood opposition to upzoning. I have no doubt these papers will make a big splash when published and it is for this reason that it was no surprise that he was awarded the Ullman prize for MA work this year. In addition to their obvious policy relevance, Alex's papers are examples of the innovative use of new types of data and methods for advancing urban research. They fuse administrative data on building permits, eviction court records, and US Census survey data and make effective use of new techniques in social science research, such as Natural Language Processing, to distill the ways people frame their reaction to zoning changes. His cutting-edge skills in these frontier approaches to urban research will serve him extremely well in his agenda for future urban research. I have no doubt he will carry out this agenda and I look forward to reading the resulting publications. Many congratulations and my very best wishes for your future Alex!"

Professor Megan Ybarra

Professor Megan Ybarra Congratulates Amelia Schwartz, M.A.

"Amelia, your work is a thoughtful blend of the urgency and intentionality we need to bring the insights of critical physical geography together with Indigenous studies. Your analysis of climate change as it impacts the Lummi Nation, and the broader need for data access generally and Indigenous data sovereignty for Coast Salish peoples is so necessary in these times. I admire you as a scholar and a fellow traveler who is learning about what relational accountability looks like, both between Indigenous nations and across Indigenous nations and settlers. I am so proud that you are going to apply these insights in your work with the Washington Department of Ecology, and I look forward to visiting you in Olympia and learning about the next steps in your journey. Congratulations, Amelia!"