Association of American Geographers
West Lakes Division
Annual Meeting
November 8-10, 2007
Illini Union, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
The 2007 annual meeting of the West Lakes Division of the Association of American Geographers was held in the Illini Union of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) on November 8-10. The meeting was attended by over 120 participants drawn from Departments of Geography and allied disciplines in Iowa, Illinois, Indiana, Minnesota, Missouri and Wisconsin. In addition to paper and poster sessions, the meeting featured a number of special events such as plenary speakers, student paper competitions and field trips focused on the historical and urban geography of Urbana-Champaign and Illinois agriculture which is poised to become the biofuel belt of the 21st century.
Dr. Tom Baerwald, President of the Association of American Geographers presented the opening keynote address titled “Broadening Our Connections,” while Dr. William Brustein, the Association Provost of International Programs and Studies at UIUC was the featured speaker at the West Lakes Division Banquet where he presented a speech titled “It Takes an Entire Institution: A Blueprint for the Global University.” The papers and posters presented at the meeting fell under a diverse set of themes. In total there were 85 paper presentations and 19 posters. A significant proportion of these presentations were by graduate and undergraduate students. The following were the major themes under which the program was organized: mobility and migration, historical geography; place and cultural landscapes; political geography; geopolitics, war and terrorism; perspectives in economic geography, innovative environmental research; green buildings; ecosystem and forest dynamics; geospatial analysis; public health; geographic perspectives on HIV/AIDS in Africa; neoliberalism and urban landscapes; gentrification and environmental justice in U.S. cities; agriculture; water and geomorphology (dams, levees and flash floods); and modeling in physical geography.
The meeting was largely sponsored by the Department of Geography and the newly formed School of Earth, Society and Environment at UIUC in collaboration with other units on campus which included the Center for Advanced Study, the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, the Institute of Government and Public Affairs, the Office of the Provost, the Illinois Program for Research in the Humanities, the Illinois State Water Survey, the Illinois Geological Survey, and the Illinois Water Science Center of the United States Geological Survey. The organizers of the meeting wish to extend their gratitude to the generous financial support from these sponsors which ultimately resulted in a very successful and exciting gathering of geographers. The meeting was also honored by the presence of the Council of the Association of American Geographers which held its meeting concurrent with the West Lakes Division meeting in the Illini Union.