Nikolai Alvarado
Nikolai Alvarado presented a paper entitled Urban Informality, Migration, and Waste: Spatio-Corporeal Cartographies of Environmental Oppression at the second annual UIC Encounter on Migration and Indigenous People last fall. He was also awarded a Humanities Research Institute (HRI) 2025 Faculty Summer Fellowship for his proposal entitled: Counter-Cartographies of Migration and Urban Informality: Rap Music as Living Archives of Radical Place-Making in Costa Rica.
Geoffrey Hewings
The Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies (CLACS) and Lemann Center for Brazilian Studies hosted a special seminar last November to celebrate the lasting contributions of emeritus professors Geoffrey Hewings and Werner Baer (economics) to the Center’s legacy. Through their work with CLACS, the Lemann Center, and the Regional Economics Applications Laboratory (REAL), professors Hewings and Baer trained multiple generations of scholars and equipped them to tackle the social, environmental, and macroeconomic challenges facing the region. The conference brought together 30 participants from diverse fields, offering insightful discussions on current and emerging issues in Latin America and the Caribbean.
Marynia Kolak
Marynia Kolak was a co-author on a study published last year in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) entitled Factors Associated with the Availability of Medications for Opioid Use Disorder in US Jails. The National Institutes of Health later published a press release and many news outlets covered the story, including the Minnesota Star Tribune, USA Today, and The Hill. Marynia also presented Environmental Inequality Formation and Participatory Design: Developing ChiVes, a Mapping & Data Collaborative for Chicago Climate Resilience at the Center for Health Informatics (CHI) Spring 2025 Speaker Series, which brings together and encourages discussion and collaboration among Illinois researchers whose work examines environmental impacts on health.
Bruce Rhoads
Bruce Rhoads gave a keynote address entitled Dynamics of River Systems in Intensively Managed Landscapes: Lessons from the Midwestern United States for the Geomorphology and Society Distinguished Lecture, sponsored by the Geomorphology and Water Resources Specialty Groups at the 2025 AAG Annual Meeting in Detroit.
Jida Wang
Jida Wang was among 15 Illinois faculty members selected for the 2024-25 Emerging Research Leaders Academy (ERLA) by the Interdisciplinary Health Sciences Institute (IHSI).
Designed for mid-career faculty to achieve research success, the ERLA program provides vital leadership and team science training to pursue large, multi-PI grants, lead campus research initiatives, enhance their own research programs, and ultimately position the University of Illinois for research excellence. Jida’s work focuses on surface water abundance and dynamics, particularly in lakes, reservoirs, and wetlands.
David Wilson
David Wilson delivered the 35th Annual Space and Polity Plenary Lecture, entitled The New Immigration Politics in Cities of the Global North at the 2024 International Geographical Congress Meeting in Dublin, Ireland last August.
Sofía Zaragocín
Sofía Zaragocín received honorable mention for the AAG Feminist Geography Specialty Group’s Rickie Sanders Junior Faculty Award, which recognizes outstanding intersectional and anti-racist contributions to geography and the public. The awards committee noted that Sofia's "ongoing activist-research deeply complicates our understanding of extraction and indigeneity in Latin America. Beyond this setting, her work is truly transformative in pushing for decolonial indigenous feminist geographies in and beyond the Americas.” The committee also noted her important activism as amicus curia in the case against the Furukawa Plantaciones company for modern-day slavery in Ecuador.
Welcome, Jodi McDuffee
Jodi started last October as office manager in a dual role that supports Geography & GIS and the School of Earth, Society & Environment (SESE).
She coordinates travel and other expenses for GGIS and ESEC (Geology) faculty, students, and colloquium speakers, assists the SESE Business Office with grants and accounting, and facilitates our undergraduate Roepke Scholarship program. Jodi is a University of Illinois alumna with a degree in Recreation, Sport, and Tourism and her professional career has focused on community work, where she has enjoyed working with individuals of all ages and backgrounds. When not at work, Jodi can be found in the bleachers cheering on her two children at their various sporting events or taking hikes with Griswold, the family Goldendoodle.