Welcome to our newest graduate student cohort! You'll find their biographies below...
Estelle Broyer
MSEE, Electronics Engineering, CPE Lyon (France); BA, Integrated Social Sciences, UW. Research interests: economic geography; urban, social and political geography; women in technology; class and gender discrimination; racism; poverty and homelessness in American cities; urban segregation; regional focus: United States. I have worked for 15 years in the semiconductor industry (mostly in Silicon Valley) as a chip design engineer, engineering manager, technical writer, and program manager. However, I have always dreamed of studying social sciences to better understand the world we live in and promote social justice. I volunteer weekly at my children's school and with Toastmasters International.
Phoebe Clark
BA, Law Politics, & Society and Rhetoric, Media, & Social Change, Drake University. Research interests: the intersections of gender, race, class, and legality in everyday life; the influences of design on social interaction and the tactics and arguments of contemporary protest movements. I recently finished a research and data processing internship in the development department at Planned Parenthood of the Heartland. During undergrad I served as a confidential advocate for survivors of sexual violence, and taught violence intervention and prevention skills to my peers. My hobbies include hiking, knitting, dreaming, and poorly playing the banjo.
Theodore Davenport
BA, Geography, University of Georgia. Research interests: feminist and queer geographies, urban studies, critical cartography/GIS, digital humanities, political ecology. As an undergraduate, I worked as a research assistant in a political ecology research collective and a community GIS lab. My professional background includes several years of GIS work, and most recently, I served as an AmeriCorps VISTA working in nonprofit development. My hobbies include gardening, cooking, baking, playing violin, and listening to podcasts.
Emma Gause
BA, Honours Anthropology, McGill University. Research Interests include: medical geography; GIS; health and vulnerability; disease patterns/spread; impacts of physical geography on population health and wellness; disaster preparedness. My professional background is primarily in Public Health working for the Vermont Department of Health (VDH) as a GIS Intern in the Division of Health Surveillance and Statistics, and then as the EMS Data Program Manager for the State of Vermont EMS Office in the Division of Emergency Preparedness, Response, and Injury Prevention. I helped staff the GIS desk of the Health Operations Center in the event of an emergency and served on the VDH Health Equity workgroup, which was one of the most rewarding aspects of my time in Public Health. Most recently I worked at Apple as a GIS Analyst in Maps. Outside of school I like to hike, yoga, bake my own sourdough bread, and pet as many dogs as I can.
Soohyung Hur
BA, Geography, Dartmouth College. Research interests: Social in/justice, feminist movement, citizenship, moral cosmopolitanism, feminist geography, postcolonial geography, South Korea, qualitative methods. My hobbies include cooking and sharing good food, going on scenic runs and bike rides, and attending all kinds of performances.
Alex Ramiller
BA, Geography and Economics, Macalester College. Research interests: urban political economy and urban political ecology; urban sustainability; housing markets; demographic change; regional focus: North America and Europe. While completing my undergraduate degree, I worked with several housing and economic development organizations in St. Paul, Minnesota. My hobbies include biking, hiking, skiing, reading, exploring the urban landscape, and traveling the country by train.
Isaac Rivera
BA and MA in Geography from the University of Colorado. I also have certificates in GIS and Development Studies. My research and teaching interests include: political ecology, feminist political geography, critical GIS, political economy, development, knowledge production, indigenous studies, social movements, and environmental justice. I take full advantage of the breadth of geography to conduct research projects ranging from indigenous territorial struggles in Nicaragua, India, Ghana, and Standing Rock, to questions of environmental injustice and development within urban spaces in the U.S. and Denver, Colorado in particular. My current projects include building an Indigenous Atlas with the Fourth World Center for the Study of Indigenous Law and Politics, and developing interactive maps for visualizing displacement and environmental injustice in Denver. My hobbies include organizing for liberation, making music, and biking.
Amelia Schwartz
Bachelors in Geography and Civil Engineering minor in Water and Sanitation for Health and Sustainable Development. Former GIS Technician for the City of Tulsa, in Oklahoma, IT Technician, and Program Coordinator for the Oklahoma Regional Food Bank. Research Interests include working with Indigenous Peoples to reclaim stolen or damaged water resources. I have researched and am inspired by the work within my own tribe and others within Oklahoma, and the ability to use Geography, Engineering, and Law to right some of the environmental and humanitarian wrongs of the American society. I worked with the National Environmental Engineering Research Institute in Nagpur, India for work on E. Coli and fluorosis due to unsafe drinking water conditions. This research simultaneously sparked a passion for travel as a political act and I have been fortunate enough to travel and study, often solo, in 15 countries and plan to add two more in the next year. I enjoy petting stray cats (much to the dismay of my own), cooking new recipes, hiking, and badly playing tennis.
Aja Sutton
MSc Palaeopathology, Durham University; MA History, Western University (UWO); BAH History and Classics, Queen’s University. Research interests: human health and society, disease and contagion (especially cholera, tuberculosis), land use and public/private spaces, industrialization, health and seasonality, critical analysis of public health, culture and the body, historic and modern health data narratives. My background as both a bioarchaeologist and historian of the body has shaped my interest in the temporospatial intersection of modern epidemiology and palaeopathological research. I am a trained human osteologist with a specialty in the study of ancient diseases and the life course in past individuals and populations. I have also spent significant time studying the social history of health, and the politics of leisure and display. I am fascinated by long-view social and data-driven narratives of ongoing global health crises, particularly cholera and tuberculosis. My experiences have been broad: I have served as the President of the Middle Common Room at St. Chad’s College, Durham University; as an independent consultant in the cultural resource sector; and in regional heritage public programming, education and outreach. When I am not working, I enjoy long-distance walks in faraway places, learning new languages, satire, and textile arts.
Samantha Thompson
AA, International Studies, Capilano University; BA, History, Simon Fraser University; MA, Geography, Simon Fraser University. My research interests center around feminist and urban geographies, including: urban politics and policy; women’s experiences of housing; housing politics with a focus on tenants’ experiences; critical geographies of home; care work; feminist care ethics; and community-focused research. My regional focus is Canada and the U.S. My recent professional background includes one year as a research assistant with the Downtown Eastside SRO Collaborative Society; two years as an editorial assistant for the EPC: Politics and Space journal; and seven years in student journalism as the editor of two university newspapers. Some of my hobbies and interests include reading, swimming, dogs, writing, crafts, and hiking with my pup Diesel.