Dear Friends,
Hello from the University of Washington Department of Geography! I write to wish you well and share recent news and highlights. We just wrapped up a busy spring quarter and celebrated another year of accomplishments by members of our community!
In student news, 2025 B.A. alum Franck Kepnang’s journey as a student and athlete was featured in the University of Washington Magazine story, “Center of Attention," and Ph.D. Candidate Olivia Orosco’s research on gardens, environmental justice, care and resilience was featured in a story by the UW Graduate School, “Rooted in Community.” Honors in Geography student Allison Nicole McClaughry received the UW Center for American Indian and Indigenous Studies Qacagʷac Award for her project, “Pishno Yakni (Our Land): Environmental Justice, Colonialism, and Indigenous Land Sovereignty of the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma.” Allison presented this research along with many other outstanding geography student projects at our 2026 Geography Undergraduate Research Symposium in early June. Our 2026 Halmo Scholars included Li-An Song, Robert Williams and Margaret Yang, who are now completing their research internships with the Anti-Eviction Lab (Professor Erin McElroy), the Engaging Care Project (Professor Kim England), and the “Dream Palaces: Black Independent Cinemas” (Professor Chrystel Oloukoï). And on June 11, we celebrated over 100 B.A., M.A., and Ph.D. graduates at our annual Department of Geography Convocation!
In faculty news, Professor Jen Rose Smith’s book, Ice Geographies: The Colonial Politics of Race and Indigeneity in the Arctic, has been selected for the University of New Mexico’s 2026 On the Brinck Book Award and the AAG Cultural and Political Ecology Specialty Group’s 2026 Outstanding Book Award. Professor Mia Bennett was awarded a prestigious New Directions Fellowship by the Mellon Foundation, for a two-year program of interdisciplinary research and training entitled, “At the internet’s edge: Starlink and cultures of connectivity and control in the Arctic.” Professor Chrystel Oloukoï was selected to the 2026-28 cohort of the CIFAR Global Scholars, a program that supports highly talented junior faculty who are exploring boundary-pushing new directions in interdisciplinary research.
Professor Michael Brown retired from his regular faculty position in June and will continue to be part of the life of the department as an emeritus professor. Michael joined the Department of Geography as an assistant professor in 1998 and has charted an impressive path of accomplishments ever since. He has conducted field-defining scholarly work on sexuality and space, including decades long collaborations with UW-Tacoma Professor Emeritus Larry Knopp and Seattle’s Northwest Gay and Lesbian History Project. He is a four-time winner of the department’s Undergraduate Award for Excellence in Teaching; supervisor of 20 M.A. & Ph.D. advisees; and has taught thousands of UW undergraduates, including the hundreds who have taken GEOG 315: Explanation and Understanding in Geography, a required course for geography students that Michael created many years ago. We wish Michael well for this next chapter of life!
Sneak preview: The Department of Geography’s 100th anniversary is coming soon! We hope you will join us in Seattle in mid-2028 to celebrate the department’s past, present and future. If you have ideas or want to support our planning process, please reach out to me.
We are so grateful for your gifts, your involvement in department events and programs, and your efforts to champion geography in your professional and personal communities. Please stay connected as we are always happy to hear from you!
Warm wishes,
Sarah Elwood-Faustino, Professor and Chair
