Colloquium Series

This presentation focuses on the traditional Brazilian community of Kalunga. It is one of the remaining Quilombo, which are Afro-Brazilian settlements initially established by escaped slaves. I will contextualize the locality from a historical-geographical point of view, in which I consider the physical environment, as well as political, social, economic, and cultural issues.

Maria Lidia Bueno Fernandes has a PhD in Geography from the University of São Paulo - USP. Magister Artium in Ethnology and Social Psychology by Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität in Munich, Germany. Graduated in Geography from the University of São Paulo - USP. Professor of the Faculty of Education and the Postgraduate Program in Education - PPG E of the University of Brasília - UnB, in the Line of Research: School, Learning, Educational Processes and Subjectivity. She completed post-doctoral training at the Universidade Federal Fluminense - UFF with the theme: Geography and childhood: culture and territory in dialogue with Cultural Historical Theory. She is the leader of the Research Group, Territories and the Construction of Knowledge - GPS / CNPq; member of the Research and Study Group on Childhood Geography; member of the Interdisciplinary Research Network on the protagonism and human rights of Latin American infants; member of the Rural Studies Network on Families, Infancy and Youth - RER-FIJ and the Latin American Network for Research and Reflection with Children and Youth - REIR.

Settler colonialism as a violent land-orientated, social-spatial system/structure isdeeply committed to projects of spatial dominance that include conceptions of “nation” and “home” as fixed, bounded, and unchanging sites. In addition to this allegiance to spatial rigidity, settler colonialism also has dominant andoppressive attitudes toward both movement and migration, especially that of non-dominant, non-white Others. Critical geographers, especially those invested in complicating hegemonic constructions of space and place through exploring investigations of Black and Indigenous geographies, give us insight into how dominant spatial constructions cannot only be disrupted, but also (re)storied for the purposes of resistance. In this presentation, I will focus on the (re)storying of both migration and movement as a site of resistance, futurity, and self-determination as presented in the centering of Black and Indigenous women’s lived knowledges in North America. Specifically, I will examine how the migration and movement, as well as the obstacles to such migration andmovement, of Black and Indigenous women reveals ruptures ripe for theorizing the indeterminacy and incompleteness of settler colonial projects of spatialclosure.

Esme G. Murdock is Assistant Professor of Philosophy and Associate Director of the Institute for Ethics and Public Affairs at San Diego State University. She works in the areas of environmental philosophy and environmental ethics and social and political philosophy with particular attention to environmental justice, philosophies of race and gender, and settler colonial theory. Her research explores the intersections of social/political relations and environmental health, integrity, and agency. Specifically, her work troubles the purported stability of dominant, largely euro-descendent, and settler-colonial philosophies through centering conceptions of land and relating to land found within African American, Afro-Diasporic, and Indigenous eco-philosophies.

Integrating my recent research, I will discuss how individual-level bicycling attitudes and behavior demonstrate opportunities for reducing automobility. Using psychological experimentation, travel surveys, and GIS/GPS data to understand travel behavior, I focus my analysis on environment-behavior interactions in a variety of Californian urban contexts. I will discuss the role of local and state planning and policy in shaping those interactions and suggest ways to leverage bikes, electric bikes, electric scooters, and future micro-modes to improve transportation sustainability.

Dillon Fitch is the Co-Director of the BicyclingPlus Research Collaborative at the Institute of Transportation Studies, UC Davis. His research focuses on bridging disciplines and institutions in studying bicycle mobility and emerging forms of micromobility. His recent published work spans travel behavior and transportation planning, and has current projects on micromobility service impacts to car use and the evaluation of bike/pedestrian project benefits among others. Dillon received a BA in Political Science from UC Irvine, MS in Geography from San Diego State, and PhD in Transportation Technology and Policy from UC Davis.

In this series of lightning talks, graduate students returning from the Annual AAG Meeting will have two slides and three minutes to present their research. After these short presentations, students will reflect on their conference experience and answer questions from the audience. Presentation topics will cover the range of research our students are engaged in, from predicting restaurant survival using neural networks to changing water supplies in California’s Imperial Valley, UAVs and animals, detecting dangerous driving, shrubs on San Clemente Island, Taiwan’s urban land use, and invasive plants.

Drawing on his latest book, “Geography: Why It Matters,” Murphy explains why geography, a subject concerned with how people, environments, and places are organized and interconnected, is so important. Geographical perspectives and techniques provide critical insights into a planet undergoing unprecedented change as a result of rising sea levels, deforestation, species extinction, rapid urbanization, modern technologies, and mass migration.