Yi-Fu Tuan was a towering intellectual figure and Professor Emeritus of Geography at UW-Madison. Tuan was a prolific writer and deep thinker who was known as the father of humanistic geography. See: UW–Madison mourns influential, beloved geography professor Yi-Fu Tuan.

The Yi-Fu Lecture Series features a wide variety of U.S. and international guest lecturers from all geographic disciplines. Lecturers at these Friday seminars also often speak at brown-bag lunches, one-on-one student sessions, and breakfast meetings with student interest groups as part of their visit. Doctoral students are invited to present their final research. The lecture series was initiated by Dr. Tuan (pictured at left) and receives enthusiastic support as a department and campus tradition.
All lectures are presented fully online via Zoom every Friday at 3:30 PM. The meeting can be joined via Livestream: https://go.wisc.edu/l1880yf except when otherwise indicated. Brown bag sessions start at noon on the days there are speakers. Alumni, friends and the public are always invited to attend.
While significant attention has been given to critical accounts of borders and bordering in recent decades, the same cannot be said of routes and routing. People and things do not move at random across an isotropic plain. This is the first lesson of mobility – people and things follow, and create, routes. This presentation argues […]
There has been a recent uptick in interest in social medicine – the combination of clinical care and an attention to the social determinants of health – worldwide. In this talk, Abigail Neely asks what we can learn about the possibilities and limitations of social medicine from the people who lived in the catchments of […]

The relationship between the Republic of Ireland and the United Kingdom is often framed through competing claims to space, power struggles, and exclusionary ethnonationalism. To explore the means through which space becomes a fundamental element of conflict and peacebuilding, this paper focuses on contemporary Northern Ireland. Much of this region remains divided as it emerges […]
In the spirit of the ongoing conversations around improving departmental climate and culture, please join us for a facilitated discussion around field research safety and security (physical, mental, emotional, and financial). Field research is exciting but can also come with challenges and uncertainties. Security also raises issues of equity and access, affecting all of us […]
More information to follow…