The recipient of the Dr. Pradyumna P. Karan Memorial Lecture Series in Geography is selected by the graduate students in the Department of Geography at the University of Kentucky to honor the doctoral program that Professor P.P. Karan launched in 1968. Supported by an initial donation by the family of Professor Karan, this memorial lecture series is meant to serve the graduate program and the department in perpetuity.
Geography faculty, friends, and alumni gathered in Detroit, MI at Mootz Pizzeria and Bar on March 26, 2025 to celebrate a remarkable milestone—80 years of Kentucky Geography.
The University of Kentucky Department of Geography invites you to our 51st Annual Geography in the Bluegrass Day, a celebration of the Geography program, our history, our students and faculty, our alumni and friends, and the achievements of all.
The city of Cartagena, located in the Colombian Caribbean, has become an emblematic case of climate change risk and vulnerability. Industrial, urban and tourism development has resulted in the dramatic loss and deterioration of mangrove ecosystems that, despite their strategic importance for climate change mitigation and adaptation projects, have historically been sites of industrial waste dumping and organized abandonment. In this presentation, I analyze the efforts led by four different Black grassroots organizations that have dedicated their efforts to reclaim, defend and recover Cartagena's mangroves. Drawing from ethnographic research, I seek to better understand mangrove spaces as Black ecologies that materialize a politics of life at the frontlines of climate change.
Diana Ojeda is a Colombian geographer working at the intersections of feminist political ecology and critical agrarian studies. She is currently Professor in the Department of Geography and the Department of International Studies at Indiana University Bloomington where she directs the Commons Program at the Ostrom Workshop. She is also member of the Latin American feminist collective Miradas Críticas al Territorio.
How do environmental and climate justice advocates mobilize to pursue their goals in moments when much of the political establishment is openly hostile to those ends? In this presentation I explore several cases where grassroots activists and organizations worked to create collective practices and infrastructures aimed at achieving measures of environmental and climate justice for marginalized communities, despite opposition and/or neglect from elected officials and government agencies. Finally, I consider what lessons these struggles offer for a range of social movements during the current moment of intensified state repression in the U.S.”
Dr. David Pellow is the Dehlsen Professor of Environmental Studies and Director of the Global Environmental Justice Project at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Dr. Pellow’s talk is entitled "Environmental and Climate Justice Politics and Practice in Troubled Times” (abstract below, flyer attached).
Dr. Alvarez León will be presenting via Zoom.
Digital technologies have changed how we shop, work, play, and communicate, reshaping our societies and economies. To understand digital capitalism, we need to grasp how advances in geospatial technologies underpin the construction, operation, and refinement of markets for digital goods and services. In this talk, based on his recent book, The Map in the Machine, Luis F. Alvarez León examines these advances, from MapQuest and Google Maps to the rise of IP geolocation, ridesharing, and a new Earth Observation satellite ecosystem. He develops a geographical theory of digital capitalism centered on the processes of location, valuation, and marketization to provide a new vantage point from which to better understand, and intervene in, the dominant techno-economic paradigm of our time. By centering the spatiality of digital capitalism, Alvarez León shows how this system is the product not of seemingly intangible information clouds but rather of a vast array of technologies, practices, and infrastructures deeply rooted in place, mediated by geography, and open to contestation and change.
Luis Felipe Alvarez León is Associate Professor of Geography at Dartmouth College. In 2016, he completed his PhD in Geography at the University of California, Los Angeles, and was presented with the Best Dissertation Award by the AAG Economic Geography Specialty Group (EGSG). From 2016 to 2018, he was a Postdoctoral Scholar at the Sol Price Center for Social Innovation and in 2018 he was Visiting Assistant Professor of Urban and Economic Geography at Clark University. His work focuses on the political economy of geospatial data, media, and technologies. He is currently working on the geographies of autonomous vehicles, and the changing political economy of remote sensing. He is the author of The Map in the Machine: Charting the Spatial Architecture of Digital Capitalism(University of California Press, 2024).
Bergeron's talk will explore the "Land Back" movement by considering the Onondaga Nation's ongoing efforts for sovereignty and self-determination in central New York. Focusing on the Nation's 2005 land rights action and ongoing efforts to reclaim and care for Onondaga Lake—a sacred and heavily polluted site—this presentation examines the historical dispossession of Onondaga territory, the limitations of U.S. legal frameworks, and the Nation's recent grant of 1000 acres from the State. The talk situates the Onondaga case within the broader context of land justice and argues that "Land Back" is a path towards sovereignty and environmental justice.
Emily Bergeron, JD, PhD, is an Associate Professor in the Department of Historic Preservation at the University of Kentucky. She is affiliate faculty with both the Center for Equality and Social Justice and the program in Environmental & Sustainability Studies. Her legal scholarship and professional service center on advancing equity, access, and justice at the intersections of historic preservation, environmental and cultural resource law, sustainability, Indigenous rights, and environmental justice. Dr. Bergeron’s work has appeared in publications such as Human Rights, Natural Resources & Environment, and The Environmental Forum. She is also a contributing author and editor for several books, including the forthcoming Environmental Law Horror Stories. She serves on the editorial boards of Human Rights and Preservation Education & Research, holds leadership roles within the American Bar Association on committees dedicated to civil rights and social justice, and serves on the board of the Blue Grass Trust for Historic Preservation.
