People of PIP
Faculty Sponsors
Dr. Shaul E. Cohen
Dr. Alexander Murphy
Alec is a political-cultural geographer with a particular focus on the ways in which political-territorial ideas and practices reflect and shape senses of identity, social networks, and geopolitical visions. In his research and teaching, he seeks to show how material arrangements and historically rooted normative ideas influence dominant ways of thinking about the world, while also encouraging consideration of the insights that can be gained from looking at issues and challenges through a geographical lens. Alec is a past president of the American Association of Geographers and a senior Vice-President of the American Geographical Society. For many years he served for many years as a journal editor, first of Progress in Human Geography, and then of Eurasian Geography and Economics.
Lab Coordinator
Emily S. Doerner
Emily is a second-year master’s student. She is interested in using an environmental justice lens to explore changing eco-social relationships in conflict areas. Her current work focuses on questions of land and belonging. Before attending the University of Oregon, Emily worked as a conservation GIS specialist for The Nature Conservancy. See her work here.
Student Members
Samantha R. Brown
Samantha (Sam) is a third-year PhD student. She uses food as a lens to examine sociopolitical processes (and environmental consequences) such as nation-building, processes of racialization, reproductions of whiteness, approaches to immigration and legacies of colonialism. Her current primary case study is a conflict about whether to serve pork as a means of “preserving Danish culture” and/or halal and kosher-friendly food to accommodate Muslim and Jewish students in Danish daycare centers. She’s exploring potential other case studies, such as related to vegan/vegetarian movements, milk consumption, and Danish colonial legacies in Greenland (and beyond). Check out Sam’s work here.
Cy Abbott
Cy is a first-year PhD student. He is interested in Historical and Political Geography, with specific attention paid to spatializing borders and nationalism. His research focuses on Turkey and Greece and draws on historical and cartographic methods.
See Cy’s recent lecture on borders delivered at NACIS:
Graduates
Dr. Sanan Moradi
Sanan Moradi is a political and cultural geographer focusing on Iran, the Kurds, and the Middle East. He has recently finished his doctoral degree in the Geography Department at the University of Oregon and has joined the university’s Prison Ed. Program as Pro Tem. Instructor. Sanan’s research interests include territory, securitization, resistance, and social media; authoritarian politics; language; and qualitative methods
Dr. Adam Morse
Adam is a recent graduate.