Critical GIS .com

It's very interesting to see a faculty position announced so clearly in "critical GIS"! Definitely feels like a first... Lecturer in Human or Environmental Geography (Critical GIS Specialism) Fixed-term for 2 years The Department of Geography, Royal Holloway, University of London invites applications for a fixed-term lectureship in Human or Environmental Geography with a specialism in Critical GIS. A research focus on the interface between geo-technologies and environmental and/or development themes is particularly desirable. Indicative areas of interest and research include Participatory GIS, location-based digital technologies and their relationships with communications technologies, and the politics and governance of spatial data and geo-technologies. The successful applicant would join the Politics, Development and Sustainability (PDS) Research Group. This group of about 20 research-active staff and 35 PhD students works in locations across the globe w...

This semester I've helped to facilitate nine university-community partnerships in my upper-division GIS classroom (GEO509), drawing on previous instantiations of this program in 2011 and in 2010 .  The students will be presenting their work on these projects on May 2nd, and have composed abstracts and provided snapshots of work-in-progress to help describe their projects. Lawrence County, Kentucky Vaccination Campaign Pilar Desha, UK Geography Alli Sehon, UK Anthropology Ron Enders, Lawrence County Health Department With a grant from CancerFreeKY, the Lawrence County Health Department launched a vaccine campaign in 2011 to combat the growing HPV infection rate in Eastern Kentucky.  The HPV vaccine is administered in three separate doses spread over a period of several months and can be extremely costly to patients even with insurance coverage.  The Lawrence County HPV Vaccine Campaign is offering the full shot series for free to all county residents betwe...

Students in my Digital Mapping course (UKC101, soon to be GEO109), with TAs Ryan Cooper and Sonya Prasertong , worked on a 'generative constraint' project -- a module that Jentery Sayers and I developed as part of our Huckabay Teaching Fellowship while at the University of Washington. The constraint was to take photos of a celebrity cutout around Lexington, developing a creative story that links together the photos and places.  The students then tagged these photos to a collaborative Google Map. Celebrity Mapping Project with Matt Wilson from UK College of Arts & Sciences on Vimeo .

This video highlights/promotes a specific community-based GIS project in partnership with OpenLexington and Lexington-Fayette Urban County Government .  Students in this year's GIS workshop will work with OpenLexington to collect data to demonstrate the utility of open data within municipal government. Matt Wilson on GIS Workshop from UK College of Arts & Sciences on Vimeo . UPDATE (2/3):  See an article written by UK PR about this effort: Lexington, Ky. (Feb. 3, 2012) -- The University of Kentucky  College of Arts and Sciences  is partnering with the  Lexington Fayette Urban County Government  in an effort to open the municipal government's data practices. The call for open data, or publicly available data, has been widespread throughout Lexington government. Mayor Jim Gray included the initiative in his election platform, and the Urban County Council agreed that open data is important for Lexington Fayette Urban County development. ...

The Arts & Science PR team created this podcast describing the GIS Workshop course I'm offering this semester.  More details about the partnerships/projects will be posted, soon.

In fulfillment of the University of Kentucky   Arts & Creativity Core Curricula , I'll be offering Digital Mapping next semester (UKC101, eventually GEO109).  I'm excited about this course, as it will be an opportunity to experiment with web-based mapping tools to provide the foundation for more advanced curricula in critical cartography and GIS.  Excerpts from the syllabus follow: Course Description: Mapping has been considered both an art and a science, as part of artistic, communicative, and analytical processes in the geographical tradition.  This course will serve as an introduction to the concepts, techniques, and histories that enable mapping as a creative and artistic practice, with particular attention to the digital.  It covers the centrality of the map in everyday life and considers the changing role of the map-maker as society becomes increasingly saturated by digital information technologies.  Of particular interest will be the use of...

In TSP's Sunday paper, Seth Slabaugh gives a good overview of our interactions with community partners this semester, with quotes from two students: Ryan Cooper and Bryan Preston.  Read the story, here . MUNCIE -- Ball State University is making maps to help the community identify its neediest areas, including severely eroded river banks, neighborhoods heavy with low-income residents who are without health care and historic homes lacking attention. Then it's up to the agencies to use those maps to visually see solutions. Two of Ball State's geographic information system (GIS) workshops are helping the United Way and Open Door Health Services locate low-income residents who need public assistance. Another one is showing the city of Muncie which of the century-old homes in the Emily Kimbrough Historic District need to be repaired. A fourth shows where soil is eroding into the White River, turning the water the color of coffee with cream. "We know the data, we know the po...