In a departure from previous years, in 2024-2025 the Department of Geography faculty developed a variety of research assistant internships funded by the Halmo Geography Scholars Program. Students submitted applications for one of the internships with either the Anti-Eviction Lab, supervised by Professor Erin McElroy, or the Humanistic GIS (HGIS) Lab, supervised by Professor Bo Zhao. Through the generosity of the UW geography community, the geography department undergraduate program committee awarded four geography students the scholarship to fund the research assistant internship position in spring quarter. Selected Halmo Scholars included Edwin Bai, Kayla Ann Gibbs, Yuanfan Wang, and Lucy Zern.
Humanistic GIS Lab
Selected Halmo Scholar: Yuanfan Wang
The Humanistic GIS (HGIS) Lab is committed to exploring the Digital Earth as the home of humankind. Driven by this common interest, a group of UW scholars and student researchers have been working together (1) to explore innovative methodologies to improve geospatial technologies with the consideration of human experience, (2) to reflect upon the social implications of maps, geovisualization, and other geospatial technologies, and (3) to geo-narrate a variety of geographic phenomena, especially those related to vulnerable populations.
The HGIS Research Intern contributed to cutting-edge research and projects in geographic information systems (GIS). The internship focused on skills such as front-end web development and geospatial technologies, enhancing proficiency with HTML, JavaScript, CSS, and GIS libraries such as Mapbox, MapLibre, or ArcGIS JavaScript.
Anti-Eviction Lab
Selected Halmo Scholars: Edwin Bai, Kayla Gibbs, Lucy Zern
The Anti-Eviction Lab brings together spatial, racial, and technological justice collective projects with student researchers. Housed at University of Washington, it prioritizes collaborative knowledge making in collaboration with groups such as the Anti-Eviction Mapping Project. One of its current focuses is Landlord Tech Watch, aimed at producing scholarship and popular education materials related to the real estate industry’s surveillance and platform technologies that contribute to gentrification. The lab is also launching a new project to improve the study of worldwide housing, property, and land owned by the tech industry. At the same time, the lab will begin mapping out autonomous spatial justice software and digital projects created outside the parameters of the tech industry.
Anti-Eviction Research Interns completed a number of tasks such as creating a database and map of tech clusters and smart cities globally based upon media and secondary source research; mapping out the geographies and histories of various property technology companies and their usage, including here in Seattle; geospatially analyzing these companies in relationship to eviction and demographic datasets; coding interview transcripts based upon an oral history and ethnographic project with tenants experiencing harms related to landlord technologies; compiling a database of news and media articles related to property technologies and coding them by theme, location, and scale; and supporting in the organizing of and notetaking for the Political Software: Mapping Digital Worlds from Below conference in early May.
Edwin Bai, a rising senior in the geography major data science option as well as majors in political science and law, societies and justice, researched 15 libertarian tech cities in the Americas, including "projects such as California Forever, Sidewalk Labs in Toronto, and Prospera in Honduras. We focused on these cities to analyze the dangers and consequences of private cities built on libertarian ideologies: how they displace and come into conflict with local residents, the struggles they face in maintaining their existence, and the concerns that stem from large tech corporations managing urban areas... After reading and researching libertarian tech cities, it became clear to me that despite their claims of dense housing and walkability, the aim of most of these cities is to generate a profit, create living spaces for selected individuals, or provide a place for people to get away from the rest of society. Urban privatization leads to developments that are implicitly not for all to benefit from, particularly people in poverty, which is disproportionately composed of people of color."
In the future, Edwin intends to "explore trends of homelessness across the US, and even in our neighboring countries, such as Canada and Mexico. Despite having a population almost as large as Los Angeles, other major cities such as Houston and Phoenix do not suffer such high rates of homelessness, despite being less dense cities. In fact, both cities are known for uncontrolled suburban sprawl and poor dense development even in their urban core, so why don’t they face the same housing problems as LA? Additionally, I would like to research how other countries, such as Mexico, deal with the housing crisis differently despite being a poorer country."
With the Halmo Scholarship, Edwin was able to increase enrollment credits in spring quarter: "This has offered me greater flexibility in choosing my courses and completing my degree on time."