As a foundational voice for Black geographies and Black methods of knowledge creation, Dr. McKittrick has re-imagined scholarship to be both documentation and instigation in modes that are poetic, sonic, material, and rhetorical. In every new, surprising iteration, her work offers “curiosity, wonder, citations, numbers, playlists, friendship, poetry, inquiry, song, grooves, and anticolonial chronologies as interdisciplinary codes that entwine with the academic form,” according to Duke University Press.

Katherine McKittrick is professor of Gender Studies and Canada Research Chair in Black Studies at Queen’s University in Kingston, Canada. She is the author of Dear Science and Other Stories (Duke University Press 2021), which both analyzes and challenges scientific practice for its inherent ties to colonialism and anti-Blackness. Her 2006 book Demonic Grounds: Black Women and the Cartographies of Struggle has had a lasting impact on both Black and feminist studies since its publication by University of Minnesota Press. She has also contributed dozens of scholarly articles and edited and contributed to Sylvia Wynter: On Being Human as Praxis (Duke University Press, 2015).

McKittrick continually probes the boundaries and possibilities between scholarship and imagination, challenging conventionalized methods and demonstrating the range and collective power of all ways to knowledge creation, particularly Black knowledge creation. In 2023, McKittrick published Trick Not Telos, a boxed set of texts that takes its initial inspiration from Ruth Wilson Gilmore’s reading of McKittrick’s “Plantation Futures” (Small Axe 2013, 17: 3). Although the project was initially conceived as a modest response, it grew into a creative meditation—with designer Cristian Ordóñez, project curator Liz Ikiriko, and French translator Lyse Hébert—on the nature of reiteration, revision, bibliography, and translation. In 2024, she published Twenty Dreams (2024), a limited-edition hand-made book; and is preparing an installation honoring nourbeSe philip, A Smile Split by the Stars (2025).

Margaret Wickens Pearce is cartographer and founder of Studio1:1, a cartographic artistic practice. A member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation, Pearce is dedicated to cartography as a form of writing that can combine and highlight narratives and dialogues across cultures and viewpoints. A focal point of her work is the application of cartography to express and elevate Indigenous geographies.

Pearce’s creative work in mapping has brought Indigenous knowledge more prominently into public discussion. Working with the elements of cartographic language, informed by Indigenous methodologies, she seeks to create ruminative spaces for restoring shared memory and creating change. Recent work includes the Land-Grab Universities project (2020), and numerous projects that map Indigenous place-name knowledge into the present, such as Coming Home to Indigenous Place Names in Canada (2017). Pearce and her collaborators often use mapping to open up literal and figurative spaces of consideration, such as the large-scale 2020 installation of two maps at the Field Museum as part of Native Truths: Our Voices, Our Stories. The maps create a place in which to confront and investigate the concept of “Removal” through the mapped experiences of Myaamia and Hoocąk people.

Among Pearce’s current projects is Inuit Nunangat, a map about the ways our carbon emissions interfere with Inuit self-determination and earth’s balance, and Mississippi Dialogues, a public art project resituating testimonies about flooding into an Indigenized Mississippi River.

Susanna Hecht, UCLA, is recognized for creative work to contribute to our understanding of the cultural, political, and natural conditions for deforestation and reforestation in the Amazon.

Kathryn Yusoff, Queen Mary University London, for her research drawing from contemporary feminist philosophy and critical human geography as well as her multi-disciplinary investigations at the intersection of the arts and the earth sciences.

Chief Scientist at Esri, is recognized for her extraordinary contributions to science, pioneering and synthetic thinking about oceanography, geography, and GIS, and for her years of leadership. Over the course of her career, Dr. Wright has combined her expertise in spatial data science and oceanography to make creative and pioneering contributions to geograp
Her saltwater fieldwork began with many expeditions on the scientific research ship, the JOIDES Resolution. She was a key leader of a joint Esri/U.S. Geological Survey team that developed the first 3-Dimensional map of the waters within the world’s ocean, also known as the Ecological Marine Units. During her career, she has also received a innumerable awards and recognitions, including: the 25 BadAxx Women Shaping Climate Action in 2021, the American Geographical Society’s George Davidson Medal, the Extraordinary Leaders Award from the Society of Extraordinary Women in Science and Innovation, the AAG Presidential Achievement Award, and is a Fellow of many notable societies including AAAS, the Geological Society of America, the AAG, the Oceanography Society, and the California Academy of Sciences.

Brian J. Berry, is one of the most influential figures in the disciplines of geography, urban studies, and regional planning. Berry’s early urban and regional research helped spark the scientific revolution that occurred in geography and urban research in the early 1960s, making him the world’s most frequently cited geographer for more than 25 years. Throughout his distinguished career he has successfully bridged theory and practice and has been heavily involved in urban and regional planning in both advanced and developing countries. In addition, the AAG recognizes Dr. Berry’s service to the discipline, including as AAG President (1978-1979), and as dean of the former University of Texas at Dallas School of Social Sciences, transforming it during a period of rapid growth into the (now) School of Economic, Political and Policy Sciences. Berry’s over 500 books, and his countless significant awards speak volumes on the impact of his research in geography, and its recognition in other scientific fields.

Janice Monk, Research Professor, School of Geography and Development, and Research Social Scientist Emerita at Southwest Institute for Research on Women, at the University of Arizona, is one of the most influential figures in the disciplines of geography and women’s studies. Her interdisciplinary research in geography education and feminist/gender studies has played a pivotal role in within the discipline. Her two decades as Director of the Southwest Institute for Women’s Studies, focusing on women’s employment, education, health, as well as encouraging science and math education for girls, have introduced feminism to multiple generations of geographers. In addition, the AAG recognizes Dr. Monk’s work on university-level teaching and graduate level geography education; her early and significant involvement in the Geography Faculty Development Alliance (GFDA); and her work on AAG projects (EDGE and others) researching career opportunities and professional development for geographers. The AAG also applauds Dr. Monk for her large body of publications, and your co-editorships of two series: International Studies of Women and Place and of Society, Environment and Place. Professor Monk forcefully demonstrates the highly creative and consequential place that geographers can have in engaging in and shaping broader transdisciplinary discussions and debates.

Mei-Po Kwan of the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign is one of the most creative and transformative geographers of our time. Her research has made groundbreaking theoretical contributions to health, mobility, urban and transportation geographies, and to GIScience, broadly. Kwan’s articulation of the uncertain geographic context problem highlights a fundamental methodological problem in studies of the effects of environmental variables on individual behaviors or outcomes. Combining empirical research with original theory, Kwan has developed and advanced paradigm- shifting ideas (e.g. feminist visualization, hybrid geographies, and more) that profoundly challenge how geographers think about the disciplinary dynamics, geographic method, and quantative vs qualitative geography; or GIScience vs social theory. Kwan’s work on space-time accessibility fundamentally affected the study of access to urban facilities and opportunities by underprivileged populations. She also played a key role in the intergration of GIS with qualitative methods, and pioneered the development of a GIS- based approach to narrative analysis.

David Harvey, Distinguished Professor of Anthropology & Geography at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, is one of the most influential figures in geography and urban studies ranking among the most cited intellectuals of all time across the humanitites and social sciences. His work is foundational to the emergence of Marxist and radical geography. His many writings and lectures have introduced Marxism to multiple generations of geographers and established the importance of space and uneven geographical development to the survival of capitalist accumulation for non-geographers. Professor Harvey forcefully demonstrates the highly creative and consequential place that geographers can have in engaging and shaping broader transciplinary discussions and debates.

Michael Goodchild, Emeritus Professor of Geography at the University of California, Santa Barbara, transformed GIScience from a fledgling field into a credible new science respected by the academic establishment. Not only can Dr. Goodchild be credited with naming the field of Geographic Information Science, but his continuous and creative work has also opened up GIS and spatial analytical methods to many other disciplines. These outstanding contributions stand in addition to Dr. Goodchild’s many other notable achievements over the last 45 years including his academic scholarship and prolific publications output, his effectiveness as an educator who inspired thousands of students, and his tireless service to the discipline through journal editing, editorial boards, advisory committees and so on.

Susan Hanson, Professor Emerita at Clark University and Fellow of the National Academy of Sciences, was instrumental in introducing feminist theories and gendered analysis to geography, thus creating new modes of interpreting and explaining our everyday worlds. Her work challenged the field of transportation geography by bringing to the fore how difference (gender, class and race) matters in people’s mobility, job opportunities, and access to services. She deepened these insights by extending her research into the gendered character of local labor markets, women’s entrepreneurship, and the role of networks in enabling and constraining women. Through her writing, teaching and everyday life, she has provided inspiration to several generations of geographers by understanding the importance of integrating familial responsibilities and the caring for others with career aspirations and obligations.

Robert B. (Bob) Kates’s work (and indeed his life) has transformed how the community of knowledge pursues a social objective of the sustainability of the systems that we care about at scales from global to local, and it has shaped the activities in both research and practice of a host of people and institutions worldwide who are joining in the pursuit of this elusive goal. From the beginning, as a graduate student at Chicago studying with Gilbert White, the grand query of Robert W. (Bob) Kates was “What is and ought to be the human use of the earth?” Starting with floodplain management, his probing intellect and restless curiosity have led him to focus on three main issues: living with hazard, ending hunger, and sustaining life on Earth. The remarkable focus, quality, and quantity of Bob Kates’s scholarly career have earned him recognition unmatched by any other geographer in his generation. For example, in 1975 he was elected to the National Academy of Sciences; in 1981 he was awarded a MacArthur Prize Fellowship; and in 1991 he was awarded the National Medal of Science in a ceremony at the White House in Washington, D.C.

Yi-Fu Tuan, Vilas Research Professor emeritus at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. His scholarship has transformed how geographers conceptualize place, not only in ways that have reoriented the discipline, but also in ways that draw considerable attention from non-geographers. Today, his scholarly writings, creative essays, and texts for artistic exhibitions continue to epitomize innovation. His path-breaking has created an intellectual place where generations of cultural geographers have flourished in a variety of new directions. Tuan has pioneered new themes in geography that continue to resonate broadly and deeply across many disciplines and around the world. AAG recognizes him for his foundational scholarship on place and home, and his formative role in the emergence of humanistic geography as a vibrant contemporary field of human geography.