AAG recognizes geographers for their work and achievements in geography. We will continue to add our awardees as soon as they are announced.
AAG Honors
AAG Honors are offered annually to recognize outstanding accomplishments by members in research and scholarship, teaching, education, service to the discipline, public service outside academe and for lifetime achievement. The AAG Honors are selected by the AAG Honors Committee, which is elected by the AAG Membership. The committee for the 2026 AAG Honors is comprised of Yongmei Lu, Texas State University (chair); Cindi Katz, The City University of New York; Chandana Mitra, Auburn University; Joann Mossa, University of Florida; LaToya Eaves, University of Tennessee; Kara E. Dempsey, Appalachian State University; Joseph Oppong, University of North Texas; Dawna Cerney, Youngstown State University; Michaela Buenemann, New Mexico State University; Ashley Wallace, AAG (staff liaison).
Presidential Achievement Award
Chosen by the AAG Past President, recognizing individuals who have made long-standing and distinguished contributions to the discipline of geography
Sarah Elwood
This award is presented in recognition of Sarah Elwood’s outstanding and sustained scholarly contributions, specifically her work on participatory, collaborative, and community-based GIS, relational poverty, and the broader dedication of her research and scholarship to social justice in the contemporary world. She is professor and chair of Geography at the University of Washington, doing research that focuses on digital technologies, urban geographies, and creative politics forged by structurally disadvantaged peoples fighting for equity, self-determination, and everyday thriving. Dr. Elwood has studied the use of geographic information systems (GIS) by neighborhood groups fighting gentrification and racial dispossession, interactive online mapping by children whose spatial knowledge and agency often go unseen, digital apps used in low-barrier employment by unsheltered people living and working in public space, and visual poverty politics advanced by unsheltered people and their allies. Works published from these lines of research have opened theoretical and methodological horizons in urban and digital geographies, relational poverty studies, critical and qualitative GIS, visual politics and mixed methods.
Dr. Elwood co-founded and co-directed the Relational Poverty Network (2013-2023) with Vicky Lawson. She is past editor of Progress in Human Geography, co-author of Abolishing Poverty: Toward Pluriverse Politics and Futures (University of Georgia, 2023), and co-editor of Relational Poverty Politics (University of Georgia, 2018) and Qualitative GIS (Sage 2009). Dr. Elwood’s undergraduate and graduate courses focus on spatial technologies and urban geographies, with emphasis on impoverishment, and feminist, critical race, and queer theory. At the University of Washington and prior faculty appointments at the University of Arizona and DePaul University, her pedagogies are rooted in a commitment to experiential learning and collaboration as ways that students can carry out intellectually and socially significant scholarship, incorporating peer-based teaching and learning with spatial technologies, student-designed course readers, ethnographic data collection, student-led field research, and mapping collaborations with community partners.