Regional GEOGRAPHIES

"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

"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.ubc.ca/dedgington/

Email contact: david.edginton@ubc.ca

Office Phone: 604-822-5612

Room Number: GEOG 215C

"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: blogs.ubc.ca/glassman/

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

Office Phone: 604-822-1892

Room Number: GEOG 140

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

My research interests focus on pre-Hispanic wetland agriculture; cultural-historical geography of Mesoamerican tropical lowlands; and the recent impact of agricultural globalization. I am currently working on an environmental history of the Candelaria River Basin in southwestern Campeche, Mexico, from the recent extraction of the river's age-old transportational function by a road network, back to the Archaic period and very early evidence (ca. 7000 BP) for human intervention in the river system.

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

Email contact: asiemens@interchange.ubc.ca

Honours: Fellow of The Royal Society of Canada

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

Office Phone: 604-822-6226

Room Number: GEOG 236

"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

"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

"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