Contact Information
Fields of Interest
Biography
Sarah Elwood is a Professor in the Department of Geography at the University of Washington, and a faculty affiliate of the UW’s West Coast Poverty Center, Center for Studies in Demography and Ecology, and Certificate in Public Scholarship. With Vicky Lawson, she co-directs the Relational Poverty Network (RPN), a transnational interdisciplinary community of scholars collaborating to develop conceptual frameworks, research methodologies, and pedagogies for the study of relational poverty.
Elwood received her Ph.D. in Geography from the University of Minnesota and previously held faculty positions at DePaul University and the University of Arizona. Her research contributes to relational poverty studies, critical GIScience and digital geographies, visual politics and mixed methods, and urban geography. Current activities include research on poverty politics of creative activisms around homelessness, feminist and critical race theorizations of digital geographies, and a collaborative public scholarly project on horizons of critical poverty studies under emerging nationalist populisms. Her work has appeared in Progress in Human Geography, Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, Annals of the Association of American Geographers, International Journal of Geographical Information Science, among others. She is co-editor of 3 books, Relational Poverty Politics: Forms, Struggles, Possibilities (with Victoria Lawson), Crowdsourcing Geographic Knowledge: Volunteered Geographic Information in Theory and Practice (with Daniel Sui & Michael Goodchild), and Qualitative GIS: A Mixed Methods Approach (with Meghan Cope).
Elwood's work has been supported by the National Science Foundation, Spencer Foundation, National Geographic Education Foundation, and others. Her research, teaching and community collaborations have been recognized by the University of Washington Distinguished Teaching Award, the Department of Geography’s Student Award for Faculty Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching, Sustainable Seattle’s Sustainable Community Outstanding Leadership Award, and the Richard Morrill Public Outreach Award from the AAG’s Political Geography Specialty Group.
Research
Selected Research
- Lawson, V., Elwood, S., Daigle, M., González Mendoza, Y., Gutiérrez Garza, A., Herrera, J., Kohl, E., Lewis, J., McCutcheon, P., Ramírez, M. Reddy, C. 2023. Abolishing Poverty: Towards Pluriverse Futures and Politics. Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press.
- 2018. Elwood, S. and Leszczynski, A. Feminist Digital Geographies. Gender, Place and Culture. https://doi.org/10.1080/0966369X.2018.1465396
- Lawson, V. and Elwood, S. 2018. Relational Poverty Politics: Forms, Struggles, Possibilities. University of Georgia Press.
- 2017. Elwood, S., Lawson, V., Sheppard, E. Geographical relational poverty studies. Progress in Human Geography 41(6): 745 – 765.
- 2017. Elwood, S. and Hawkins, H. Intra-disciplinarity and visual politics. Annals of the Association of American Geographers 107(1): 4-13. DOI: 10.1080/24694452.2016.1230413.
- 2017. Elwood, S. and Wilson, M. Critical GIS Pedagogies Beyond “Week 10: Ethics”. International Journal of Geographic Information Science 31(10): 2098-2116. DOI: 10.1080/13658816.2017.1334892.
- Elwood, S. and Mitchell, K. 2015. Guest editors Cultural Geographies, “Technology, Memory, and Collective Knowing,” 22, 1.
- Mitchell, K. and Elwood, S. 2015. Intergenerational Mapping and the Cultural Politics of Memory. In Hakli, J. and Kallio, K. eds., The Beginning of Politics: Youthful Political Agency in Everyday Life. Routledge/Taylor&Francis, 33-52. [Reprint]
- Victoria Lawson, Sarah Elwood, Santiago Canevaro and Nicolas Viotti, ‘”The Poor are us”: middle class poverty politics in Buenos Aires and Seattle’. Environment and Planning A Vol. 47
- Elwood, Sarah, Victoria Lawson, and Samuel Nowak. "Middle-Class Poverty Politics: Making Place, Making People." Annals of the Association of American Geographers 105, no. 1 (2015): 123-43.
- Elwood, S., Lawson, V., Nowak, S. "Negotiating Poverty and Privilege: Middle class place-making and poverty politics" The Annals of the Association of American Geographers 105(1): 123-143
- Lawson, Victoria, and Sarah Elwood. "Encountering Poverty: Space, Class, and Poverty Politics." Antipode46, no. 1 (2014): 209-28.
- Mitchell, K. and Elwood, S. 2013. Intergenerational Mapping and the Cultural Politics of Memory. Space and Polity 17, 2, 33-52.
- Elwood, S. and Mitchell, K. 2013. Another Politics is Possible: Neogeographies, Visual Spatial Tactics and Political Formation. Cartographica 48, 4, 275-292.
- Mitchell, K. and Elwood, S. 2012. From Redlining to Benevolent Societies: The Emancipatory Power of Spatial Thinking. Theory and Research in Social Education 40, 134-163.
- Mitchell, Katharyne, and Sarah Elwood. "Mapping Children's Politics: The Promise of Articulation and the Limits of Nonrepresentational Theory." 30, no. 5 (2012): 788-804.
- Elwood, Sarah. "Volunteered geographic information: future research directions motivated by critical, participatory, and feminist GIS." GeoJournal 72, no. 3-4 (2008): 173-183.
- Elwood, S., 2006. "Critical issues in participatory GIS: Deconstructions, reconstructions, and new research directions." Transactions in GIS, 10(5), pp.693-708.
- Elwood, Sarah A., and Deborah G. Martin. "“Placing” interviews: location and scales of power in qualitative research." The Professional Geographer 52, no. 4 (2000): 649-657.
Research Advised
- Rivera, I. J., & Elwood, S. (2023). Mapping the terms of freedom & the ongoing refusal of settler imaginaries. [University of Washington Libraries].
- Espinosa Guarderas, Juan Mateo. "Herbs, Soil, and Health: Beyond Human and Planetary Medicine." University of Washington, 2023.
- Thompson, S. (2023). Caring in Crises: Spatializing Infrastructures of Care Through Tenant Protections [Dissertation]. University of Washington.
- Anderson, R., Biermann, C., & Elwood, S. (2022). Killing for coexistence : the bio- and necro-political ecology of wolf conservation and management in Washington State. [University of Washington Libraries].
- Thompson, S. (2022).“Homes not shelters”: co-productions of home in financialized social housing for women in Vancouver, Canada. DOI: 10.1080/02723638.2021.2014668.
- Thompson, S. (2022). Caring Housing Futures: A Radical Care Framework for Understanding Rent Control Politics in Seattle, USA. Antipode. DOI: 10.1111/anti.12874.
- Slager, E. J., & Elwood, S. (2018). Infrastructures of survival : digital justice and black poetics in community Internet provision. [University of Washington Libraries].
- Gordon, E., & Elwood, S. (2017). Social justice philanthropy as poverty politics : a relational poverty analysis of alternative philanthropic practices. [University of Washington Libraries].
- Young, J. C. (Jason C., & Elwood, S. (2017). Encounters across difference : the digital geographies of Inuit, the Arctic, and environmental management. [University of Washington Libraries].
- Burns, R., & Elwood, S. (2015). Digital humanitarianism and the geospatial web : emerging modes of mapping and the transformation of humanitarian practices. [University of Washington Libraries].
- Garcia, L., & Elwood, S. (2014). The revolution might be tweeted : digital social media, contentious politics and the Wendy Davis filibuster. [University of Washington Libraries].
- Young, J. C. (Jason C., & Elwood, S. (2012). Refining a conceptual basemap : critical GIS and political theory. University of Washington.
- Gordon, E., & Elwood, S. (2012). Cultivating good workers : youth gardening, non-profits and neoliberalization. University of Washington.
- Leszczynski, A., & Elwood, S. (2012). Thinking the geoweb : political economies, ’neo’geographies, and spatial media. University of Washington.
- Thompson. S. (2022). “Not your ‘poor dear’”: Community, care, and support in women’s non-profit housing. Gender Place & Culture 29(8), 1121-1140. DOI: 10.1080/0966369X.2021.1937063.