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Melissa Santiago in lab

Out of all of the U.S. geography programs, Clark University has granted the largest number of doctoral degrees. Clark’s Graduate School of Geography is top-ranked by the National Research Council, and our Ph.D. students graduate with a deep body of knowledge and a slate of research publications that enrich the field.

Research Interests

From agro-forestry to urbanization, and environmental modeling to post-colonial theory, our doctoral students’ research interests are multifaceted and interdisciplinary, touching on the four main areas of geography:

  • Earth System Science
  • Geographic Information Science and Remote Sensing
  • Human-Environment/Nature-Society Geography
  • Urban-Economic Geography

Peer-Reviewed Journal Publications

Professional publications play a large role in our Ph.D. students’ academic careers. By the time they graduate, our Ph.D.  students, on average, have published several peer-reviewed journal articles. Students collaborate with their advisers and sometimes with their committee members, and they also publish as sole authors.

Grants, Fellowships and Awards

Our Ph.D. students are extremely successful in securing grants to support their studies and their research. From 2014 to 2018, Ph.D. students secured more than $1.4 million in grants, often in collaboration with faculty, who provide critical feedback on proposals and write letters of support.  Students’ funding comes from the National Science Foundation Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement (NSF-DDRI) program, Society of Women Geographers, NASA and other organizations.

In addition, students earn fellowships and grants — such as the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship, Switzer Fellowship, Fulbright, Inter-America Foundation Fellowship, and Edna Bailey Sussman Fund Graduate Research Fellowship — for field work and other research activities.

The Graduate School of Geography supports Ph.D. students’ conference attendance and presentations through internal travel awards.

Student Agency/Award Grant/Research Title
Maddy Kroot National Science Foundation: Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement Grant Contesting Energy Transitions: Understanding Community Opposition to High-Voltage Transmission Lines in Northern New England
Julia Wagner National Science Foundation: Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement Grant Retro-fix? Urban Climate Finance and Digital Decarbonization in Multi-family Housing
Mwangi Chege National Science Foundation: Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement Grant Agrarian change in Kenya: Investor farmers and farming from afar
Jase Athay National Science Foundation: Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement Grant Accelerating sustainability Transitions in Politically Charged Spaces: Electrifying Automobility in the Nonurban United States
Clare Gaffey National Science Foundation: Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement Grant Resolving Novel Arctic Late Season Phytoplankton Blooms
Rahebeh Abedi Edna Bailey Sussman Fund: Graduate Internship for Summer Research Using transferable deep learning models to improve understanding of agricultural change in the U.S.
Maddy Kroot Edna Bailey Sussman Fund: Graduate Internship for Summer Research Energy Transition by Wire: Energy Governance, Interstate Transmission Development, and Decarbonization Plans in Massachusetts
Hemant Ghimire Edna Bailey Sussman Fund: Graduate Internship for Summer Research Environmental and Social Concerns of Ground-mounted Solar Project Development in Worcester County, Massachusetts
Spandan Pandey Edna Bailey Sussman Fund: Graduate Internship for Summer Research Evaluating climate adaptation and resilience plans across municipalities in Massachusetts
Kwabena Antwi Edna Bailey Sussman Fund: Graduate Internship for Summer Research Scoping avoided deforestation as a climate opportunity in the United States
Jacob Mitchell Edna Bailey Sussman Fund: Graduate Internship for Summer Research A comparative study of three U.S. municipal stormwater infrastructural systems
Aiyin Zhang NASA FINESST (Future Investigators in NASA Earth and Space Science and Technology) Continuous detection and characterization of fine-scale land change over highly dynamic landscapes: as case study of coastal wetlands
Sitian Xiong NASA FINESST (Future Investigators in NASA Earth and Space Science and Technology) Impacts of the small- to medium-scale farm transition on the productivity and resilience of agriculture in African savannas.
Maddy Kroot National Science Foundation: Graduate Research Fellowship Program On the Line: A Comparative Political Ecology of Transmission Corridors and Low-Carbon Energy Transition in the US Northeast
Julia Wagner National Science Foundation: Graduate Research Fellowship Program
William Westgard-Cruice German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD)
William Westgard-Cruice Hans Böckler Foundation

Recent Dissertations

Our Ph.D. students conduct research across the world on issues ranging from the impact of mining on communities in South America to the decline of ice in the Arctic and Antarctica. For dissertation titles before 2012, visit the Burnham Index.

Thomas Bilintoh: Methods to Analyze Land Transitions at Multiple Temporal and Spatial Resolutions

Michael Cecil: Multi-modal Earth Observation for Scalable Monitoring of Smallholder Agriculture in Data Sparse Settings

Sam Khallaghi: Advancing the Use of Deep Learning Techniques for Earth Observation and Environmental Monitoring

Sarah SanGiovanni: From the Neighborhood Up: The Geographies of Sustainability Experiments in Pittsburgh Ecodistricts

Nicholas Geron: Reframing the Urban Forest: How to increase institutional capacity for the stewardship of urban forests in midsized cities to mitigate urban heat island effects

Karen Hudlet Vazquez: The Cenote Is My Neighbor: Litigation From Below and More Than Human Ethics of Care Against Meat Extractivism in Mexico

Wenjing Jiang: Transforming China’s Countryside: Politics and Practices in the Transfer of Agricultural Land Use Rights

Surendra Shrestha: Surface Biophysical and Vegetation Changes in Response to Wildfire and Reforestation with Implications for Climate Forcing

Lei Song: Combining Spatially-Explicit Simulation of Animal Movement and Earth Observation to Reconcile Agriculture and Wildlife Conservation

Nathaniel Strosberg: Cities Coping with Sea Level Rise: An Investigation of Political Catalysts for Increasing Local Agency

Mara van den Bold: Greening Energy: The Politics of Renewables in Senegal

Brittany Lauren Wheeler: Seats of Power & Space for Reparation: Small Island Displacement and the Compensatory Landscape

Melissa Bollman-Shih: Power, Knowledge, and Sociotechnical Reconfiguration: Investigating the Impact of Fossil Energy Discourses on Renewable Transition Policy in the Northeastern United States

Benjamin Fash: Izote Flowers: Socioecological Movements to Resist Extractivism and Survive Well

Marc Healy: Trees in the City: Spatiotemporal Dynamics, Benefits, And Management of Urban Tree Canopy Cover in Massachusetts Gateway Cities

Roopa Krithivasan: Collective Action and Animal Agency in Human-Wildlife Conflict Management

Luisa Young: Characterizing Arctic Ocean Sea Ice Environments Across the Distributed Biological Observatory in the Pacific Arctic: From Melt Ponds to Phytoplankton Community Structure

Jacob Chamberlain: On Migration and Justice: Rights, Laws, and Resistance in the Age of Removal

Janae Davis: Race, Integrity and Conservation – Development in the Postcolony

Azadeh Hadizadeh Esfahani: Neighborhood as a Site of Policy and Activism: Exploring Citizenship, Belonging, and Identity building in Tehran’s Neighborhoods

Alireza Farmahini Farahani: Learning in development policy and practice: Inequality reduction and regional development in Iran

Jaclyn Guz: Climate Change Influence on Post-Fire Regeneration Across Spatially Heterogeneous Landscapes

Mario Machado: Sustainable landscapes, sustainable communities: Landscapes, livelihoods and ecology through Cuba’s agrarian transition

Helen Rosko: Delivering Development’s Target: Aiming for Adaptation Subjects in Mali

Michelle Cole Wenderlich: Reconcile Agriculture and Wildlife Conservation

Su Ye: A New Time Series Approach for Characterizing Forest Dynamics: Stochastic Continuous Change

Yu Zhou: Improving Carbon Cycle Modeling with Flux Measurements, Forest Inventories, and Satellite Observations

Elisa Arond: Investing Natural Resource Revenues in Science, Technology
and Innovation for Inclusive Regional Development in Colombia: Politics
of Scale, Politics of Knowledge

Yifan Cai: The Subaltern Innovates: Shanzhai Mobile Phones, South-South
Trade, and Counter-Narratives of Intellectual Property Rights

Leslie Gross Wyrtzen: Bordering Blackness: The Production of Race in the
Morocco-EU Immigration Regime

Dylan Harris: Telling the Story of Climate Change: Geographies of Climate
Consciousness

Son Ca Lam: Shifting Grounds: Embodies Geographies of Displacement
and Home for Vietnamese Women Across Generations

Alex Moulton: Plotting Maroonage: Mapping the Black Socio-Spatial
Struggles of the Jamaican Maroons

Carlos Dobler Morales: Smallholder Dimensions of Rural Change in Modern Mexico

Catherine Jampel: Scales of Inclusion: Disability Employment in the U.S. Federal Government and Fortune 500 Companies

David Lukens: Shifting Roles of the State and the Evolution of Neighborhood Change in Seoul

Patrick Bright Mutegeki: Household Livelihood Strategies: Analyzing Multi-Local Strategies’ Dynamics and Effects in Kabarole District, Uganda

Ali Santacruz-Delgado: Recent and future anthropogenic transformation of the Colombian Llanos

Melishia Santiago: Multi-year Variations in Chromophoric Dissolved Organic Matter (CDOM) Distribution in the Pacific Arctic Region Using In-situ and Satellite Remote Sensing Measurements

Laura Sauls: Territorial Claims and Climate Change Governance in Mesoamerica

Kristen Shake: Sociolegal Dynamics of Sea Ice in a Changing Pacific Arctic Marine Environment

Renee Tapp: Taxes, Banks, and Renters: Urban Redevelopment in the United States after the 2008 Crisis

Ashley York: The West Greenlandic Cryosphere in a Changing Climate: Decadal Trends, Seasonal Variability, and Critical Thresholds

Teresa Bornschlegl: Three Snapshots into Complexity: A Political Ecological Analysis of Environmental Law Enforcement in the Oil and Gas Sector: Ecuador 2005–2015

Juan Luis Dammert Bello: Contested Booms: The Politics of Palm Oil Expansion in the Peruvian Amazon

Nathan Gill: Disturbance Interactions in Subalpine Forests: Compound Effects and Adaptive Resilience

Young-Long Kim: The Role of Big Data in Understanding Urban Vitality

Lauren L. Bonilla: Extractive Infrastructures: Social, Environmental, and Institutional Change in Resource-Rich Mongolia

Nicholas Joseph Cuba: Interannual Variability in the Extent and Intensity of Tropical Dry Forest Deciduousness in the Mexican Yucatán (2000-2016): Drivers and Links to Regional Atmospheric Conditions

Arthur Francis Marett Elmes: Assessing the Impact of Asian Longhorned Beetle in Worcester, MA: Thermal Effects, Community Responses, and Future Vulnerability

Miles Richard Kenney-Lazar: Resisting with the State: The Authoritarian Governance of Land in Laos

Dexter Henry Locke: A New Look at Residential Ecosystems Management: Heterogeneous Practices and the Landscape Mullets Hypotheses

Nathan Paul Mietkiewicz: Interactions Between Bark Beetle Outbreak and Wildland Fire in Intermountain Subalpine Forests of the Western United States: Legacies and Future Projections Under a Changing Climate

Padini Nirmal: Disembodiment and Deworlding: Taking Decolonial Feminist Political Ecology to Ground in Attappady, Kwala

Jefferson Alex Sphar: Politics, State Power and Policies: Exploring the Contemporary Nature of Economic Governance Through the Case of Brazil

Kevin Surprise: Preempting the Second Contradiction: The Political Economy of Solar Geoengineering

Mireya Bravo: Trajectories of Empathy and Institution Building: The Micropolitics of Environmental Governance in the Oxapampa-Ashaninka-Yanesha Biosphere Reserve

Alida Anna Cantor: Dust Storms and Dying Lakes: Wastefulness, Reasonable and Beneficial Use, and Water Transfers in California

Katherine E. Foo: Parks and Recreation Departments are Not a Joke: Environmental Governance in an Age of Post-Apocalyptic Climate Change

Emily J. Gallagher: Ghana is Cocoa, Carbon is Ghana: Sustaining Cocoa Landscapes and Governing Forest Livelihoods Through Agri-Environmental Extension

Daniel S. Jarvis: Disturbance History and Fuel Consequences of Mountain Pine Beetle in Western Colorado

Adrienne Johnson: Participatory Governance, Plant Disease, and Post-Neoliberalism: Governing Ecuador’s Palm Oil Industry through the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO)

Kelly Kay: Taxes, TIMOs, and Trusts: 21st Century Land Conservation in the United States

Christopher Storr Knudson: Predictable Loss: Climate Risk Insurance in St. Lucia

Kathryn-Louise Meng: Transition through Co-optation: Harnessing Carbon Democracy for Clean Energy

Pheakkdey Nguon: Governing REDD+ in Cambodia: Co-production of Salient, Credible and Legitimate Policy Knowledge

Khury Joseph Petersen-Smith: Pivoting to Asia: Sovereignty, Territory and Militarization

John Taylor Shelton: Geographies of Data: Toward a Relational Socio-spatial Analysis of Geotagged Social Media Data

Yueming Zhang: Capitalizing on Art, Aestheticizing Capital: The Making and Consuming of Arts Districts in Chinese Cities

John Lauermann: Event-Led Development: Sporting Mega-Events as Urban Policy Experiments

Oona Morrow: Urban Homesteading: Diverse Economics and Ecologies of Provisioning in Greater Boston

Kangping Si: Multiple-Objective Spatial Optimization with Application to Site Search Problems in a Raster Space

James E. Thatcher: Mobile Navigation Applications: Hidden Ontologies, Epistemic Limits, and Technological Teleology

Luke David Trusel: Quantifying Antarctic Ice Sheet Surface Melt: Recent Dynamics and Future Trajectories

Melanie Vanderhoof: The Impact of Mountain Pine Beetle Outbreaks on Surface Energy and Water Fluxes, South Central Rocky Mountains

Connie Lewis Johnston: The Social, Spatial and Scientific Aspects of Farm Animal Welfare in the US and European Union

William E. Kutz: Financing Demand-Side Urbanism: Lessons from the “Spatial-Fix” in Tangier, Morocco

Elisabeth Anne Stoddard: Livestock Vulnerability to Disasters in North Carolina’s Hog Industry: Neoliberal Governance and Differential Risk in an Industry Too Big to Fail

Qingling Wu: From Phenomena to Objects: Segmentation of Fuzzy Objects and its Application to Oceanic Eddies

Nicholas M. Giner: Validating, Analyzing, and Predicting Lawn Maps: Application of GIScience and Spatial Analysis in the Northern Boston Suburbs

Daniel Haberly: Sovereign Wealth Funds, Dependent Development, and the New Alliance Capitalism

Edmund Harris: Visions, Plans and Maps: Making Space for Food Systems Change in Massachusetts

Rory William Horner: The State, Patents and the Development of India’s Pharmaceutical Industry

Maya Manzi: Agrarian Social Movements and the Making of Agrodiesel Moral Territories in Northeast Brazil

Prajjwal Kumar Panday: Hindu Kush-Himalayan Region at the Forefront of Global Change: An Assessment of Snowmelt, Hydrology, Vegetation, and Climate

Seth D. Schindler: Producing Urban Space and the Transformation of the Retail Sector in Delhi, India

Jill Marie Williams: When Arrest Becomes Rescue: Border Enforcement and the Politics of Humanitarianism on the US-Mexico Border

Safaa Aldwaik: Fundamental Concepts of Intensity Analysis to Understand Changes Among Categories

Susan Aragon-Carrasco: Evaluating Biodiversity in Rural Landscapes for Conservation and Livelihoods: Combined Botanical, Ecological and Land Use Analysis in Two Smallholder Communities in Peru and Mexico

Danielle Fontaine: The Landscape of Potential Harm: Understanding Parents’ Perceptions of the Build Environment and What This Means for Their Decisions about Their Child’s Mode of Travel to School in the City of Worcester, MA

Jayson Funke: Producing Investment Space: The International Finance Corporation, Institution Building and the Financialization of Development

Bardan Ghimire: Biological and Biophysical Consequences of Disturbances in Forests of the Western United States

Guoyi Han: Understanding Regional Dynamics of Vulnerability: A Historical Approach to the Flood Problem in China

Roberta Hawkins: Cause-related Marketing: Ethical Consumption as Development Intervention

Heladius Madoshi Makene: Gold Rush and its Implications for Communities Near Mines in Tanzania

Neeti Neeti: Implications of Space-Time Orientations for Spectral Decomposition of Geographic Image Time Series

Diana Ojeda: Producing Paradise: The Violent Geographies of Tourism in Colombia

Benoit Parmentier: Land Transitions from Multivariate Remotely Sensed Time Series: Using Seasonal Trends to Characterize and Categorize Land Cover Changes in Alaska over the 2001-2009 Period

Rahul Rakshit: Accuracy Assessments of Object-Based Image Analysis Maps

Daniel Runfola: Human-Environment Interactions across Space and Time: Examining Lawns and Land Change in the United States

Dominique Werboff: The Role of Institutions in Shaping Livelihoods and Land Use/Cover in Northern Negros Natural Park, Philippines

Contact Information

Graduate School of Geography

Office Location
  • Jefferson Academic Center, Room 220
    950 Main Street
    Worcester, MA 01610

  • 1-508-793-7336
  • 1-508-793-8881 fax
  • geography[at]clarku[dot]edu