Maynooth University Department of Geography

I am a cultural geographer, ethnographer and curator who engages in collaborative research about place, memory and creative practice. Working with local experts, I seek to reconsider, and thereby contribute to, political, feminist and urban theory. I received a Ph.D. in Cultural Geography at the University of Wisconsin-Madison (1996), a research M.A. in Cultural and Urban Geography (1991) and B.A. in Ecosystems (1986) at the University of California, Los Angeles. Previously I held tenured posts in Geography at Louisiana State University, University of Minnesota, and Royal Holloway, University College London, and in Urban Planning, and Government and International Affairs at Virginia Tech University. At Maynooth Geography, I am currently the Head of the Postgraduate School, and am Director of the MA in Geography. I also direct the Space&Place Research Collaborative (Ireland). Internationally, I am founding co-Convener of the Mapping Spectral Traces network of artists, practitioners and scholars. My book in progress, Wounded City, highlights the significance of place-based memory-work and ethical forms of care at multiple scales that may contribute to creating more socially just futures. Through geo-ethnographic research in Berlin, Bogotá, Cape Town, Dublin, Minneapolis, and Roanoke, I examine the significance of place in personal and social memory-work and an ethics of care, to address the ongoing legacies of forms of state-perpetrated and systemic violence. My curatorial work invites artists, practitioners, community leaders, scholars and publics to explore how creative practices might enable more responsible and sustainable approaches to caring for places, shared environments and cities.