BIO

Teaching is my great love. It is wonderful to meet students, hear their ideas, and help them learn to express those ideas as part of the ongoing conversation of education. My first PhD was in Slavic Languages and Literature, which means that I learned Russian, Polish, and French, and visited Russia several times. A desire to better understand changes in the world then led me to Human Geography, my second PhD and the basis for most of my teaching at CofI. In many of my classes, once you look at our topics they will seem obvious to you—but you won’t have looked before. I enjoy making people more aware of rivers and canals, soil, economic landscapes, urban development, and the possibilities of messy maps. Every other fall I get to teach Russian History. I also love teaching First-Year Seminar because I want everyone to feel that writing is “theirs.” My favorite exercise is to ask you to write until you surprise yourself!

EDUCATION

Ph.D., Geography, University of Oregon, 2009

Ph.D, Slavic Languages and Literature, University of Wisconsin-Madison, 1999

B.A., Russian, Rice University, 1991

SCHOLARSHIP & RESEARCH

2026, forthcoming. Mapping socio-ecological interactions in Russia’s hinterland: Grounding the study of diversity. Accepted to Sharafutdinova and Hashamova, eds., Race, Nation, and Nature.

2026, forthcoming. Indigenous place against imperial space: integrating Eurasia into the Russian imagination. Accepted to Bassin and Rudling, special issue of SpatioTemporality.

2026. Book contract from Lexington Press, April 2023. Tentative title: Uncolonizing Russia with Aleksei Ivanov. Due to Bloomsbury Press in September 2025.

2023. “Mapping Metals for Renewable Energy.” StoryMap hosted on Esri platform via College of Idaho institutional account.

2022. Seeking Ecology and Equity Along the Boise Greenbelt. Changing Societies and Personalities 6 (2): 350-363.

2020. Mapping the “Material Substrate” as Analysis of the Capitalocene. EuropeNow 35.

2017. The restructuring of public space in St. Petersburg’s ‘Baltic Pearl.’ In M. Czepczynski and S. Hristova, eds., Public Space: From Reimagination to Occupation. Ashgate.

2016. With J. Graybill. Uncertainty in the Urban Form: Post-Soviet Cities Today. E. C. Holland and M. Derrick, eds., Questioning Post-Soviet. Woodrow Wilson Center. 19-37.

2013. The Southern Square in the Baltic Pearl: Chinese ambition and “European” architecture in St. Petersburg, Russia. Nationalities Papers 41.4: 552-569.

2013. Transformations of the Spatial Hegemony of the Courtyard in Post-Soviet St. Petersburg. Urban Geography 34.3: 353-375.

SPEAKING ENGAGEMENTS

2025. (Also 2017-2024). “A social-ecological portrait of Lake Lowell.” Presenter at Master Naturalist session on water quality, Deer Flat National Wildlife Refuge. Synthesis of research and analysis about Lake Lowell done for and by students in CofI Environmental Studies Capstone courses from 2014-2016 and in succeeding years.

2024. Osher Institute at Boise State University, Short Courses in Russian history, literature, and culture (also 2017-2020, 2022).

2024. “Geography’s contribution to discussion of decolonization: mapping the specificities of socio-ecological interactions” (paper). Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies (ASEEES), Boston. November.

2023. “‘Russian’ Identity in the Novels of Alexei Ivanov: considering one end of geopolitics” (paper). Invited Conference in Honor of Geography Professor A. B. Murphy. Eugene, OR. June.

2023. “Imagining ‘Russia’ from east to west: integrating Eurasia into the Russian imagination” (paper). Workshop on Geographical Imaginaries in Central and Eastern Europe: Space in politics, history, culture and religion after 1989. Lund University, Sweden. May.

2023. “Digging Under Regionalization: How to Re-map ‘Russia’ in Eurasia” (paper); co-organizer of session “Words for Mapping Eurasia: Vectors of Colonization and Nation-State Formation.” Annual Meeting of American Association of Geographers (AAG), Denver, CO. March.

PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE

2023-2025. Title VIII Fellow at University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign Russia and East European Summer Research Workshop.

December 2021. Writer-in-residence at Hemingway House, Community Library, Ketchum, ID.

July 2019, 2016. ArcGIS mapping Workshop and attendance at Esri User Conference, San Diego, CA. Supported by Mellon Travel Grants, The College of Idaho.

June-July 2017. Short-term Research Grant, Kennan Institute, Woodrow Wilson Center, Washington, DC.