If you spent any time walking along the Lakeshore Path this fall, odds are you walked past a member of the UW–Madison Geography Department’s newest cohort of research-based master’s and PhD grad students.
The new cohort of students come from as close as St. Paul, Minnesota to as far as Kerala, India. They’ve all jumped head-first into making their new home in Madison—enjoying lake time, biking, birding, hiking, snapping photos, seeing live music, shopping at the farmer’s market, and much more. They are:
Alton Hipps, Natalie Correa, Jane Krohn, Leah Bulbula, Le Nguyen Hong Xuan, Paul Thomas, Tang Sui, Chen Wei, Susannah Cox, Miriam Bartleson, Mauricio De La Parra Gurr, Stacy Nuryadi, Mae Wallace, and Helen Asimina Tosteson.
These students are passionate about their studies on unique and fascinating topics, including:
- Trust in maps
- Storytelling with maps and community mapping projects
- Queer geographies and disability geography
- Children’s geographies and how economic geography can impact youth literacy
- The relationship between GIS, transportation, and human health
- Diverse perceptions of environmental change, especially how the accumulation of climate and anthropogenic impacts affect understanding of water conservation
- International student mobility, political economy of development, and Kerala studies
- Using deep learning methods to solve hydrology and image fusion problems
- Modeling and analyzing driving risks in the comprehensive road traffic environment
- Blending the world of cartography with neuroscience; studying how people process spatial information and navigate, and how disorders such as PTSD impact navigation abilities
- Environmental policy and its impact on environmental justice issues
- Effects on soils and above and belowground biomass from hurricanes in Caribbean tropical dry forests; the imperial history of field and research stations in the Caribbean
- Cumulative effects of Hurricane Fiona and legacies of former sugar cane plantations affecting forest structure, composition, carbon stocks, and belowground nutrient pools in Estate Thomas, a tropical dry experimental forest in Saint Croix (U.S. Virgin Islands)
- Exploring biogeochemical cycling by studying soil erosion and soil carbon on hillslopes
Being part of a cohort with such wide-ranging scholarly pursuits is a big plus for our students. Paul Thomas says, “Geography is the most interdisciplinary that a discipline can be, and I am learning a lot from my fellow geographers about their varied interests.”
Students enjoy the welcoming nature of the department, noting that they feel inspired by how close-knit and collaborative it is. “I like being a part of one of the most supportive and progressive departments on campus where I feel safer being myself,” says Mauricio De La Parra Gurr.
In addition to drawing inspiration and joy from Madison’s beautiful scenery and the supportive camaraderie of the Geography department, students appreciate the building we call home. “Science Hall has character (I believe it inspired Frank Lloyd Wright!) and I like how my office is next to the “haunted” attic,” notes Stacy Nuryadi. Mae Wallace agrees: “My favorite thing about Science Hall is the [fifth floor] geograd lounge, provided the elevator works.”
To our new Geograds: welcome! We’re so glad you’re here, and we’re eager to see what valuable contributions you’ll make to our community—and to the field of geography as a whole. Or, as your fellow student Le Nguyen Hong Xuan so eloquently states, “Everyone in the Department comes here with a mission, and after my conversations with faculty and other graduate students, I was always left more hopeful about positive impacts we can make as a small group in this fast-changing world.”
Learn more about our research-based graduate programs and all of our research-based graduate students.
