Mapping the Future - The New Reality of World Geography

May 8, 2011

Speaking to PLC 1st year lecture Tuesday night, CU Geography Professor Joe Bryan told of his path to Boulder - a story that began with his undergraduate career at UC Santa Cruz, through grad school at UC Berkeley and led from the northern plains, to Central and South America with stops in nearly every continent on the globe.   It was a personal refllection on a fascinating career as well as an eye-opening exploration of geographpy in higher education - a discpline that is virtually unrecognizable from the map making courses most of us grew up with.

Bryans' research focuses on indigenous politics in the Americas, human rights, and critical cartography. His most recent work addresses the role of community-based mapping in a 2001 ruling by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights. The case concerned a land claim brought by the indigenous Mayangna community of Awas Tingni against the Republic of Nicaragua, and set an important legal precedent for recognizing indigenous land rights.  He has also worked on issues related to indigenous land rights in Honduras, Chile, Ecuador, and the western United States. 

Bryan is currently developing a new project that examines the legacy of the Contra War in Nicaragua and Honduras as it relates to contemporary concerns with security, development, and resource claims. [From: CU website]