Elyse Gordon

I am a doctoral candidate at the University of Washington Geography department, under advisement of Sarah Elwood (chair), Vicky Lawson and Steve Herbert (committee members). I am an active member of the Relational Poverty Network, and currently serve as a co-director with Imagining America’s Publicly Active Graduate Education network. Finally, am a pre-doctoral lecturer at the University of Washington Bothell for the 2015-16 academic year as a Project in Interdisciplinary Pedagogy Fellow.

As an urban political geographer, my work concerns social and spatial inequalities. I explore these questions through the nonprofit sector, specifically through contemporary forms of philanthropy. My dissertation research takes a deep dive on social justice philanthropy, seeking to understand the limits and possibilities for transformation throughout the philanthropic process. I am interested in the types of poverty knowledges expressed through philanthropy; the ways that philanthropy reflects material and cultural beliefs about class; and whether/how philanthropy encourages meaningful encounter across social, spatial and economic difference.