Progressive Geographies

I’m sitting at Tampa airport, waiting to fly to Newark to begin six weeks in New York. The Association of American Geographers meeting is over for another year. It was a good meeting, beginning – for me – with a very generous ‘author meets critics’ session on The Birth of Territory, and ending with receiving the Meridian award for the book. I’m very grateful for both, especially to Claudio Minca and Jeremy Crampton for organising, and Juliet Fall, Alec Murphy, Joe Bryan and Anssi Paasi for speaking in the session on the book. Juliet’s Lego and Playmobile movie presentation stole the show. I was delighted that my predecessor as Society and Space editor, Michael Dear, received the Globe book award for his Why Walls Won’t Work, and to be there as Alec Murphy was given a lifetime achievement award and Sara Koopman received an award for public engagement. [Update: pictures from the lunch are here]

In between these events I was one of the respondents to John Agnew’s Dialogues in Human Geography lecture – a response that was described as ‘sparky’ (this will all appear in the journal in due course); attended some very interesting sessions including ones on land and territory disputes in South America; caught up with good friends; made a few new ones; had meetings with publishers about future projects; and enjoyed the Tampa sunshine. Sorry to all the friends I only saw in passing in lobbies or meeting rooms and didn’t get to talk to. Chicago in 2015…