The American Association of Geographers (AAG) will convene its Annual Meeting as a virtual conference February 25 through March 1, 2022. The meeting will offer sessions and panels on topics that include climate change and climate justice, political and social geographies, public health, the U.S. Census and redistricting, trends in geoethics and human rights, Indigenous sovereignty and geographies, race, and ethnonationalism’s impacts in the U.S. and worldwide. (Many sessions will be recorded, and access to those sessions will be available to registrants through August 29, 2022. Search the gallery of sessions here.
- WHO: 4,500 geographers and geospatial practitioners from the public and private sectors and academia, including
- WHAT: 1000+ sessions present geographers’ perspectives on climate change, economics, demographic shifts, disability, race, gender, Indigenous sovereignty, public health, immigration, planning, research, and advocacy. Highlights include:
- Winona LaDuke (Anishinaabe) at 7:00 PM EST on Sunday, February 27, Water Protectors and the Rights of Wild Rice: Traditional knowledge in the face of climate change. LaDuke is the founding executive director of Honor the Earth, where she advocates, raises public support, and creates funding for frontline Native environmental groups.
- Marcia McNutt, president of the National Academy of Sciences, recipient of this year’s AAG Atlas Award, AAG’s highest honor. On Tuesday, March 1, at 12:50 PM EST, Dr. McNutt will reflect on what she has learned in a trailblazing career that includes serving as President and CEO of the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute, and as the first woman to direct the US Geological Survey, where she led numerous disaster response efforts, including earthquakes in Haiti, Chile, and Japan, and the Deepwater Horizon oil spill.
- Cynthia Miller-Idriss, Director of Polarization and Extremism Research & Innovation Lab (PERIL) at American University, among the panelists for the Presidential Plenary on Resurgent Ethnonationalism: The Politics of Purity in a World of Difference at 12:50 PM EST on Sunday, February 27. Miller-Idriss is the author of numerous books on far-right extremism, most recently Hate in the Homeland: The New Global Far Right. Also on the panel: Andreas Wimmer, author of Ethnic Boundary Making and Nation Building: Why Some Countries Come Together While Others Fall Apart; Samuel Goldman, executive director of the John L. Loeb, Jr. Institute for Religious Freedom at The George Washington University and author of God’s Country: Christian Zionism in America and After Nationalism; and Caroline Nagel, Professor of Geography at University of South Carolina who has written extensively on immigration, transnationalism, multiculturalism and Islamophobia. The panel will be moderated by AAG Past President David Kaplan, Kent State University.
- Themed sessions on the topics of Climate Justice, Ethnonationalism, Access and Inclusion both within the geography discipline and broadly in public life, and the Changing North American Continent, including a series on Friday, February 25 and Saturday, February 26 on Multispecies Climate Justice.
- WHEN: February 25 – March 1, 2022. All times posted are Eastern Standard Time
- WHERE: Online. Search the gallery of virtual sessions here. Please note that some session links may not be live until the time of the session.
