Race, Ethnicity, and Place Conference and Pre-Conference Workshop: Mapping and Empowerment

This award supports the 2023 Race, Ethnicity, and Place Conference (REP) and its pre-conference workshop. The biennial REP meetings bring together diverse groups of scholars to encourage and facilitate research in geography and related scientific disciplines. Through a focus on mapping as a tool for empowerment, especially among racial, ethnic, and other minorities, the 2023 REP pre-conference workshop examines justice and equity issues within the discipline. In addition to social science research and teaching, the conference and workshop seek to promote greater participation of historically underrepresented groups within the discipline of geography and to support the professional development of minority graduate students as well as early and mid-career faculty through mentoring, networking and program development. The REP 2023 conference advances research and teaching of mapping perspectives by recruiting a cadre of new scholars—geography graduate students and early and mid-career faculty—from a broad range of institutions (community colleges, liberal arts colleges, and research universities). The conference focuses especially on the role of mapping in representing and promoting diverse voices, experiences, and knowledge within the classroom, in research endeavors and through public pedagogy. Conference participants examine how cartography may be used in curricula, research and in the public realm as an important tool in recruiting students, future scholars, and other professionals from traditionally marginalized groups and to advance geography as an inclusive discipline that seeks to advance equity. The conference and workshop are vehicles for strengthening and disseminating knowledge regarding alternative research methods, to increase and strengthen resources available to underrepresented scholars, to support graduate students and to aid faculty to be better mentors. The conference integrates new participants through active recruitment and engagement, by designing strategic panels and keynotes to attract a broader audience, and by offering a pre-conference mentoring and professional-development workshop for early-career faculty and advanced graduate students, especially from underrepresented groups. Responding to national workforce needs, the conferences advances goals of training early-career scholars in cartographic skills and geospatial analysis. The conference and workshop also facilitate new collaborative relationships and sustainable networks across educational institutions, governments, and civil society organizations. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.