Continuing Faculty

B.A.Sc., McMaster University; D. Phil (1999) Oxford University

"I work at the intersection of economic and environmental geography. My primary research interests span political economy, political ecology, environmental studies, development studies, and resource and environmental management. I conduct research in both the 'developing' and 'developed' world, and consequently have an interest in debates over postcolonialism and development. My theoretical interests currently focus on the debate over the use of markets and market instruments in environmental management (the 'neoliberal nature' debate). My primary research focus forthe past few years has been on water governance in the context of neoliberalism (water privatization, decentralization of water management). Another theme of my work is water governance in Canada (delegated water governance, municipal water reform, transboudary (Canada-US) water management). I am also the Director of the Program on Water Governance UBC, which conducts applied research and collaborates with a broad range of civil society organizations, policy makers, politicians, and water managers."

Website: www.geog.ubc.ca/~bakker/

Email contact: karen.bakker@geog.ubc.ca

Office Phone: 604-822-6702

Room Number: GEOG 142

B.Sc.-Econ., University College London; M.A., Ph.D. (1983), University of Minnesota

"I have three main research projects. The first is investigating Vancouver’s new economy and its effects on the city.  I am undertaking this project in collaboration with Tom Hutton, School of Planning UBC.  We have examined the video game industry, as well as architecture, and plan also to investigate the film and TV, and fashion industries.  The second is a history of American geography from the Second World War through the Cold War.  The project stems from an earlier one concerned with geography’s quantitative revolution.  It became clear that the roots of that revolution lay in Cold War, and earlier, Second World War, social scientific methods, aims, and above all money.  The research is primarily archival.  The last is a continuing interest in forest economies, primarily BC’s, but also those in the Antipodes."

Website: www.geog.ubc.ca/~tbarnes/

Email contact: trevor.barnes@geog.ubc.ca

Office Phone: 604-822-5804

Room Number: GEOG 140 C

Diploma in Geography, University of Basel; Ph.D. in Meteorology, University of Basel

"My research focuses on land-atmosphere interactions, carbon cycling, and atmospheric turbulence. I use experimental methods to investigate and measure physical and chemical processes relevant in land-atmosphere exchange in forest and urban ecosystems. Current research projects include basic turbulence and dispersion studies (exchange processes in forest canopies, urban dispersion processes) and applied approaches that link greenhouse gas exchange to ecosystem management practices. Our lab is equipped with several eddy covariance systems, a tunable diode laser absorption spectrometer for carbon and oxygen isotopes, a sonic array, autonomous meteorological stations, radiation instruments, and towers."

Website: www.geog.ubc.ca/~achristn/

Email contact: andreas.christen@ubc.ca

Office Phone: 604-822-6620

Lab Phone: 604-827-4520

Room Number: GEOG 132

Lab Number: GEOG 249, MCML 136

B.Sc. Honours, University of Manitoba; M.Sc., UBC; Ph.D. (2000), University of Colorado, Boulder

"My research is focused on impacts of natural and anthropogenic disturbance and climate variation in temperate forests. My research program has four major themes: (1) mechanisms of change and influence of climate variation on altitudinal treelines, (2) successional processes, natural disturbance and ecosystem management of coastal temperate rainforests of British Columbia, (3) temporal dynamics and function of coarse woody debris in terrestrial and riparian forests, and (4) historic fire regimes and fire-climate interactions in montane forests of the Canadian Rocky Mountains. My research has important implications for conservation of biodiversity through ecosystem restoration and management. To ensure the academic and applied relevance of my research, I have established collaborations with local to international level governments, non-governmental organizations, and forest management companies. I have established and equipped the Tree-Ring Lab at UBC in order to realize my research objectives and facilitate partnerships."

Website: www.geog.ubc.ca/~ldaniels/

Email contact: lori.daniels@geog.ubc.ca

Office Phone: 604-822-3442

Room Number: GEOG 143

B.A.Sc., McMaster University; M.E.M., Duke University; Ph.D. (2002), University of Wisconsin-Madison

"Why does climate matter? This question is the basis of a broad program of modelling and field research examining how changes in the climate over time affect biogeochemical cycling and the function of marine ecosystems like coral reefs. This research provides insight into the causes and effects of human-induced climate change, the efficacy of policy and mitigation options, and the consequences for human welfare. Current areas of research include the climate change and coral reefs in the central equatorial Pacific; the obstacles to public education about climate change; the effect of climate and agriculture on nutrient loading to large river systems; and trade-offs between food, feed and fuel production."

Website: www.simondonner.com

Email contact: simon.donner@ubc.ca

Office Phone: 604-822-6959

Room Number: GEOG 133

B.Sc. Honours, UBC; M.Sc., McGill University; Ph.D. University of British Columbia (2004)

"I am a fluvial geomorphologist interested in how gravel bed rivers respond to landuse and environmental changes in general, and to forest fire disturbances in particular. My research group is conducting laboratory experiments and field studies as part of a larger effort to improve our ability to model channel change as a function of the relevant governing conditions. I am also interested in the arrangement of and interaction between different geomorphic processes within a watershed, as well as the closely related topic of landscape evolution."

Website: www.geog.ubc.ca/~beaton/

Email contact: brett.eaton@ubc.ca

Office Phone: 604-822-2257

Room Number: GEOG 232

B.Sc., London; M.Sc., University of Edinburgh; M. Urban Planning, University of Melbourne; Ph.D. (1986), Monash University

"My current research focuses on aspects of economic geography in the Pacific Rim, including Japanese trade and investment patterns in East Asia, urban and regional change in Japan, Japanese tourism in Canada, and multicultural planning in cities of Pacific Rim countries. One major project has been examining the rebuilding of Kobe after the 1995 Hanshin Earthquake. This has been carried out with a Japan Foundation Grant and in the context of changing urban governance systems in Japan. Another study looks at Japanese electronics firms and their production networks in the Greater China Circle. This is funded by the SSHRC and is being carried out in conjunction with Dr. Roger Hayter (SFU) and graduate students. Through my PhD student, Tom Woodsworth I am becoming interested in environmental challenges in China and the problems surrounding e-waste. In Vancouver, I have a project studying how local governments in the Vancouver region have taken responsibility for including non-mainstream populations in the preparation and amendment of local plans as well as local social services."

Website: blogs.arts.ubc.ca/wordpressmu/dedgington/

Email contact: david.edginton@ubc.ca

Office Phone: 604-822-5612

Room Number: GEOG 215C

B.A. Honours, Queen's University; M.A., Ph.D. (2000), York University

"My research lies in environmental history and water history, with a regional specialization in Canada, particularly Alberta and British Columbia. I serve as a co-leader of the Canadian Water History Project (with Stéphane Castonguay, UQTR), and an executive leader of the Network in Canadian History and Environment. The politics of large rivers lies at the core of my research program. How have rivers been contested by different social and cultural groups? How have rivers been perceived and understood? And how have political economies shaped and been shaped by rivers and the resources drawn from them? I have explored these questions in a book on the environmental history of the Fraser River, "Fish versus Power", published by Cambridge University Press (2004), which received a Clio prize from the Canadian Historical Association. Recently I completed a co-authored book exploring the overlapping uses of and claims to the Bow River in Alberta, "The River Returns" (McGill-Queen’s UP) with colleagues, Christopher Armstrong and H.V. Nelles. I am currently working on a book-length manuscript, "Mobilizing Rivers", which analyzes the development of hydro-electricity in Canada during the Second World War."

Website: blogs.arts.ubc.ca/wordpressmu/waterhistory/

Email contact: mevenden@interchange.ubc.ca

Office Phone: 604-822-6407

Room Number: GEOG 251

B.A., St. Olaf College; Ph.D. (1990, 1999), University of Minnesota, Minneapolis

"I am currently carrying out research, funded by a grant from the Hampton Fund, on the formation of regional business networks in East and Southeast Asia during the Cold War period, focusing especially on firms from the Philippines, South Korea, and Thailand."

Website: www.geog.ubc.ca/~glassman/

Email contact: jim.glassman@geog.ubc.ca

Office Phone: 604-822-1892

Room Number: GEOG 140B

On Leave, September 1, 2009 - August 31, 2010

B.A. Honours, M.A., Ph.D. (1981), University of Cambridge

"My research has two interconnected themes.  Most generally, I am interested in the spatial modalities of late modern war, where military violence, occupation and ‘peace’ bleed into one another.  My focus for these investigations is the ‘Middle East’, specifically Iraq and Israel/Palestine, but I also consider Afghanistan/Pakistan, East Africa and the geography of the global war prison.  My particular concerns are in the production of spaces that make war possible and permissible – via practices of locating, inverting and excepting – and in the production of imaginative counter-geographies through artwork, drama and literature.  I am also interested in cultural and political geographies of bombing, from Europe bombing its colonial populations in the early twentieth century through Spain, the Second World War, the wars in Korea, Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam, to the Gulf War, Afghanistan / Pakistan and Iraq.  In both cases I draw (critically!) on ideas from cultural and political theory/philosophy (including Agamben, Butler and Foucault) and from the visual arts and literary studies (including Said and Sebald)."

Website: web.mac.com/derekgregory/

Email contact: derek.gregory@geog.ubc.ca

Office Phone: 604-822-4719

Room Number: GEOG 140F

B.A., Ben Gurion University of the Negev; M.Sc., The Hebrew University of Jerusalem; Ph.D. (1989), The Hebrew University of Jerusalem

"My research covers a wide range of topics in geomorphology and hydrology such as the interaction between hill-slopes and channels, channel stability and morphology, river sediment transport and sediment yield, stream ecology, in-channel wood dynamics, and modeling fine sediments and their interactions with stream physical and biological characteristics.  I have worked on fundamental processes involving flow and sediment transport and contributed to the advancement of river science at various scales, from sediment grains to watersheds, and in fields outside fluvial geomorphology such as urban hydrology, water quality, and water resources management. Model development has been a very important component of my research, with considerable experimental flume work used to complement field data. My current research concerns small, forested streams such as the routing of water and sediment, associated channel characteristics, and ecological processes. My field and laboratory experimental work has been published in leading international journals."

Dr. Hassan is currently the Chair of the Graduate Committee in the Department.

Website: www.geog.ubc.ca/~mhassan/

Email contact: marwan.hassan@geog.ubc.ca

Office Phone: 604-822-5894

Room Number: GEOG 253

B.Sc. Honours, M.E.S., Dalhousie University; Ph.D. (1987), University of Toronto

Email contact: ghenry@ubc.ca

Office Phone: 604-822-2985

Room Number: GEOG 231

B.A. Honours, M.A. (1984), Queen's University

"My main area of interest is Geographic Data Visualization, and I teach courses in Cartography, Geographic Information Science and Remote Sensing. I work on collaborative research projects that use GIS to visualize environmental history and I undertake research on the evolution of the teaching of cartography in academia, and the learning of spatial concepts by children. I teach an introductory course on geography (Vancouver and its Region) and specialized project courses on sustainability when the opportunity arises. "

Sally Hermansen is Assistant Dean Student Services, Faculty of Arts, July 2009 - July 2012

Website: www.geog.ubc.ca/~sallyh/

Email contact: sally.hermansen@geog.ubc.ca

Office Phone: 604-822-5970

Room Number: GEOG 144

B.A. Honours, University of Winnipeg; M.A., Ph.D. (1987), University of Toronto

"I conduct research on migration as a form of contemporary globalization. At the broadest scale, this includes an interest on how migration is controlled by nation states through policy and regulatory systems, and also how people become mobile, with or without the consent of states. I try to understand Canadian immigration policy within this wider context, and consider it in relation to the policies of other countries, especially in Europe and Australasia. At the local scale I study the consequences of immigration in Canadian cities, highlighting Vancouver’s situation (over 830,000 foreign-born in a population of 2.1 million people). More specifically, I look at the integration of newcomers in the labour and housing markets of cities, and how this changes their residential structure and social relations."

Daniel Hiebert is currently Guest Professor in Memory of Willy Brandt at Malmö University, in Sweden (until 30 June, 2010).

Website: www.geog.ubc.ca/~dhiebert/

Email contact: dan.hiebert@ubc.ca

Office Phone: 604-822-4500 or 604-827-5787

Room Number: GEOG 140E

On leave, July 1, 2009 - June 30, 2010.

B.Sc., University of Toronto; M.Sc., Ph.D. (1988), University of Western Ontario

"My work focuses on advanced spatial analysis in the physical, health and social sciences, and in the intersection of these areas (e.g., medical biogeography and Geographic Information Science).  This includes a focus on both theoretical investigations and innovative applications of GIScience in subject areas where space and place are considered important explanatory elements (e.g. wildlife use of landscape in the Serengeti).  My students and I explore such areas as neighbourhood theory and error and accuracy in GIS, modeling, and visualization. This includes the use of spatial analysis in landscape classification, biogeography, medical biogeography, environmental geography, human-ecosystem interactions and conservation biology. Biodiversity informatics is a current interest, as is exploring the social aspects of GIScience and Geospatial technologies, the reflexivities between technology and society. The thread that links this research is the understanding and insight that advanced spatial analysis brings to research and theoretical problems--often unveiling subtleties that would otherwise be overlooked. "

Dr. Klinkenberg is currently the editor and project coordinator of E-Flora BC / E-Fauna BC.

Website: www.geog.ubc.ca/~brian/

Email contact: brian.klinkenberg@geog.ubc.ca

Office Phone: 604-822-3534

Room Number: GEOG 209

Lab Number: GEOG 210J

B.A. Honours, Williams College; M.Sc., Ph.D. (2007) University of Washington

"My research focuses on glacier processes, glaciated landscapes and landscape response to climate change, from the long term (the Quaternary Era) to recent change (i.e. in the past century). I am fascinated with rates of geomorphic change, particularly the effects of humans on the landscape and how we compare to other ‘natural’ geomorphic agents such as glaciers and rivers. Some of my current research projects are focusing on quantifying glacier change, landscape response, and the effects of climate change on melt water resources in Alaska, southern Patagonia, Antarctica, and the northwestern Himalayas.

Website: www.geog.ubc.ca/~koppes/

Email contact: michele.koppes@geog.ubc.ca

Office Phone:

Room Number:

BA, University of Tartu; MSc, Western Washington University; Ph.D. (1999), Syracuse University

"My research focuses on political geography and geopolitics--particularly on security and state power, borders and surveillance, and policy-making processes in complex bureaucratic structures. In broad terms, I investigate how political practices are underpinned by spatially defined categories like center and margin, inside and outside, Self and Other. These categories, I contend, are central to the processes by which complex political issues come to be defined and managed in a particular manner.

Within that problematic, my interests converge on the question of how specifically spatial categories function in daily politics at various sites—for example, within foreign policy bureaucracies. I have also worked on, and continue to be interested in, political identity and subjectivity, nationalism and transnationalism, and citizenship and belonging, especially in contemporary Europe. By virtue of my ‘regional’ expertise, I am keenly interested in the ways in which places and regions are ‘written onto’ our mental maps on a daily basis."

Website: www.geog.ubc.ca/~kuus/

Email contact: merje.kuus@geog.ubc.ca

Office Phone: 604-822-3443

Room Number: GEOG 235

Honours Degree, Universite d'Angers; M.B.A., Institut d'Administration des Entreprises; D.Phil. (1999), Oxford University

"My research interests bring together political geography, political ecology, and war studies. I have focused most of my work on the links between natural resources and armed conflicts, but also examined the political economy of war and reconstruction, the ‘resource curse’, corruption, as well as ‘natural’ disasters and political crises. Most of my fieldwork has been conducted in South East Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa, but I also have a long-standing interest in Latin America. I tend to use historically grounded fieldwork approaches, occasionally using comparative and large-N quantitative methods. While remaining targeted at an academic audience, I have also thrived to make some of my work ‘policy relevant’. I am currently working on the political geography of oil, as well as ‘post-conflict’ violence."

Dr. Le Billon holds a joint appointment in the Department of Geography, Faculty of Arts, and the Liu Institute for Global Issues, College for Interdisciplinary Studies.

Website: www.geog.ubc.ca/~lebillon/

Email contact: philippe.lebillon@geog.ubc.ca

Office Phone: 604-822-5218

Room Number: GEOG 216

B.A. Honours, Oxford (1968); M.S., Ph.D. (1972), Pennsylvania State University

"I have undertaken a number of (sometimes comparative) projects on immigration to Canadian cities. Topics have included: immigration and housing and labour markets; offsetting immigration and domestic migration in world cities; immigration and poverty; immigrant churches as service hubs; multiculturalism and the governance of diversity. An abiding focus has been the experience of wealthy business migrants. This work is drawn together in a forthcoming book: Millionaire Migrants: Trans-Pacific Life Lines. I have always been concerned with processes of social and spatial change in older inner city neighbourhoods. A principle focus has been gentrification, processes of urban reinvestment leading to housing renovation or redevelopment and the replacement and displacement of poorer households by the middle-class. Currently, I am begining a project that extends the field site from Canadian Cities to the different economic and political contexts of Hong Kong."

Dr. Ley is the current Department Head (2009-2012). He was the UBC Director of the Metropolis Project, examining issues of immigration and integration in Greater Vancouver and beyond, from 1996-2003, and was appointed a Trudeau Fellow from 2003-2006. He holds a Canada Research Chair in Geography.

Website: www.geog.ubc.ca/~dley/

Email contact: david.ley@geog.ubc.ca

Office Phone: 604-822-3268

Room Number: GEOG 208 / GEOG 221

B.Sc, North Dakota State University; AM, University of Rochester; Ph.D (1974), University of Washington

Snow and avalanche mechanics, avalanche dynamics and engineering, avalanche prediction and forecasting.

Dr. McClung holds the NSERC Industrial Research Chair in Snow and Avalanche Science, supported by NSERC, Forest Renewal BC, Canadian Mountain Holidays, and UBC. The research program covers avalanche forecasting and interaction of avalanches and forest cover.

Email contact: dave.mcclung@geog.ubc.ca

Office Phone: 604-822-9157

Room Number: GEOG 123

B.Sc. Honours, Ph.D. (1985), University of Canterbury

"Long-term research goals have been primarily directed at understanding meteorological phenomena that develop in regions of complex, urbanized terrain. An important applied focus of this work has been the investigation of the role such phenomena (e.g. land sea breezes, slope winds and urban effects) have on the transport and dispersion of pollutants. Although much of this research has been site-specific (e.g. the Lower Fraser Valley, British Columbia) the findings are of general interest. Considerable progress has been made in understanding the processes contributing to, and the three-dimensional distribution of, air pollution in regions of complex terrain. This observational program has provided important information for development, initialization and validation of numerical models designed to forecast air quality and test pollutant abatement strategies. Recently, this research thrust has broadened to consider the impact of long-range transport of burgeoning pollutant emissions and crustal dust from Eurasia to North America. A central part of this work has been the installation of a state-of-the-art lidar facility at UBC in collaboration with Environment Canada."

Website: www.geog.ubc.ca/~ian/

Email contact: ian.mckendry@geog.ubc.ca

Office Phone: 604-822-4929

Room Number: GEOG 250

B.Sc. Honours, UBC; Ph.D. (1984), University of Canterbury

"I am trying to gain a better understanding of the ways in which climate variability and change on various time scales, in conjunction with forest and glacier dynamics, influence hydrological processes and the patterns of streamflow and water quality"

Dr. Moore currently holds the FRBC Chair in Hydrology.

Website: www.geog.ubc.ca/~rdmoore/

Email contact: dan.moore@geog.ubc.ca

Office Phone: 604-822-3538

Room Number: GEOG 225

Lab Number: GEOG 246

B.A. Honours, University of Manchester; Ph.D. (1988), University of Manchester

"I work, in the style of institutional political economy, on a range of issues relating to economic geography, urban restructuring, and state transformation.  Much of my research is concerned with the ways in which ostensibly “global” processes—for example, to do with rapidly disseminating urban and social policies, forms of market-oriented governance (a.k.a. neoliberalization), the international outsourcing of jobs, and the restructuring of low-wage labour markets—are variously made and remade through local sites and grounded practices.  Ongoing projects include: (a) outsourcing expertise, a study of the transformation of offshoring practices (funded by SSHRC); (b) policies without border,an investigation of transnationalizing “fast policy” regimes in urban governance and social welfare (funded by the Ford Foundation); (c) remaking the Vancouver model, a critical analysis of the city’s evolving development agenda over the past three decades (funded by the Hampton Fund); and (d) constructions of neoliberal reason, an historical geography of the free-market project, since the 1920s (funded by nobody)."

Dr. Peck holds the Canada Research Chair in Urban and Regional Political Economy.

Website: www.geog.ubc.ca/~peck/

Email contact: jamie.peck@ubc.ca

Office Phone: 604-822-0894

Room Number: GEOG 134

B.Sc. Honours, University of Toronto; M.A., Ph.D. (1984), UBC

"I am completing a 15 year research collaboration with the Philippine Women Centre of BC that has moved from looking at the circumstances of Filipino women working in Canada as domestic workers on temporary work visas, to the issue of family separation and the long term marginalization of families sponsored by domestic workers after they gain permanent resident status in Canada. This feeds into a larger debate about the growing number of temporary work visa and ‘bridging’ immigration programs. We are experimenting with novel ways of bringing our research to a wider public, most notably through testimonial theatre. Our play, Nanay was performed in Vancouver in February 2009 and at the Hebbel Theatre in Berlin in June 2009. I have been preoccupied with how to put stories of family separation into circulation, with the politics of testimony and witnessing, and the obligations of witnessing beyond national boundaries."

Website: www.geog.ubc.ca/~gpratt/

Email contact: gerry.pratt@geog.ubc.ca

Office Phone: 604-822-5875

Room Number: GEOG 140D

B.A., University of Toronto; M.E.S., York University; Ph.D. (1981), University of Toronto

"My research is centred around developing the research program for the CIRS project (www.cirs.ubc.ca); sustainable energy systems; sustainable building systems; the interaction among climate change mitigation, adaptation and sustainability; gaming and simulation tools; futures studies; the intersection of lay and expert knowledge; participatory integrated assessment; business and sustainability
issues; and generally the points of interaction among sustainability, climate change, socio-technical change, behaviour change, modeling and simulation, and community engagement processes. All my research has been on industrialized country applications.

Email contact: johnr@ires.ubc.ca

Office Phone: 604-822-9188

Room Number: 447, 2202 West Mall

Room Number: AERL Room 447, 2202 Main Mall

B.A., Trinity University; M.A., Ph.D. (1999), University of Texas, Austin

"My current project examines the environmental dimensions of United States' border security policies in the US-Mexico borderlands, with a specific focus on protected areas like national wildlife refuges."

Website: www.geog.ubc.ca/~sundberg/

Email contact: juanita.sundberg@ubc.ca

Office Phone: 604-822-3535

Room Number: GEOG 125

B.Sc., The Pennsylvania State University; M.A., Ph.D. (1995), University of Minnesota, Minneapolis

"I study the relations between market processes and state policy in producing and reinforcing urban social inequalities.  My approach blends elements of critical social theory, conventional legal and policy analysis, and multivariate quantitative methods designed to engage state and corporate institutions on their own terrain, with their own data. Current projects focus on class, racial, and gender discrimination in mortgage lending and foreclosures in the U.S. urban system; housing affordability in Canadian and U.S. cities; the transformation of public housing; new spatialities of class inequality in London; and the reconfiguration of segregation, displacement, and gentrification."

Website: www.geog.ubc.ca/~ewyly/

Email contact: elvin.wyly@geog.ubc.ca

Office Phone: 604-822-4653

Room Number: GEOG 252

On leave, September 1, 2009 - August 31, 2010.

B.A. Honours, University of Sheffield; M.A., Ph.D. (1974), University of Toronto

Former Head of the Department (1996-2002; 2005-2009). Former Associate Dean, Faculty of Arts, UBC (1990-1996).

Email contact: graeme.wynn@geog.ubc.ca

Office Phone: 604-822-6226

Room Number: GEOG 236