May 26, 2009
Geography doctoral student wins AAG competition
Rory Horner, a doctoral student at Clark University's Graduate School of Geography, is the winner of the 2009 Association of American Geographers (AAG) Economic Geography Specialty Group Best Student Paper Competition.
Horner presented his winning paper on the emerging geography of India's pharmaceutical firms in the global economy, at the annual AAG conference in Las Vegas. He was among Clark graduates, undergraduates and faculty who joined some 7,000 geographers from around the world at the conference, March 22 to 27.
Horner, originally from Ireland, received his B.A. with honors in Economics and Geography from Trinity College, Dublin.
Horner's dissertation research focuses on the Indian Big Pharma multinational enterprises (MNEs). "The industry has been undergoing substantial restructuring in recent years, and I hope to understand the organizational and geographical dynamics involved," he said.
Last year, Horner received the John Henry Thompson '41 Endowed Summer Research Fellowship in Geography, which he said helped support him while he conducted the pre-dissertation work that formed the basis of his paper.
Horner was awarded a $250 prize, a certificate, a ticket to the AAG awards banquet, and formal recognition at the banquet and in the AAG Newsletter.
Economic Geography Specialty Group is one of the largest specialty groups of the AAG. Its purpose is "to stimulate research, teaching, and applications in industrial and economic geography; to aid in the advancement of its members and the field of economic geography; and to help represent economic geography within the discipline of geography and to related disciplines, agencies in government, the private sector, and the general public."