In its December 2011 Newsletter, the American Association of Geographers announced that Laura Pulido of the University of Southern California and Dawn Wright of Oregon State and ESRI have been named as recipients of the 2012 Presidential Achievement Award. Both scholars have strong ties to UCSB: Pulido is currently a visiting scholar teaching Environmental Racism and Environmental Justice in the UCSB Black Studies Department where she is also working to complete several projects left by her recently deceased friend and colleague, Clyde Woods; Wright is an alumna of UCSB Geography, having received joint PhDs in Physical Geography and Marine Geology in 1994, and she won UCSB Geography’s Raymond C. Smith Distinguished Alumni Award in 2007, the same year that she was the Commencement Speaker for the UCSB Division of Science and Mathematics.
“Pulido and Wright are researchers of exceptional achievement whose work highlights the remarkable breadth and diversity of contemporary geography. Though working in very different fields, their work shows how geography can engage important topics across the social and natural sciences while also making contributions to broader public debates on critical social, environmental, and geographical issues” (AAG Newsletter).
The AAG Presidential Achievement Award was established by the AAG Council to recognize individuals who have made long-standing and distinguished contributions to the discipline of Geography. Past recipients include Patricia Gober (2011), Peter Meusburger (2010), Douglas B. Richardson and Thomas J. Wilbanks (2009), David Ward (2008), Laura and Jack Dangermond and James C. Knox (2007), Trevor Barnes and Wilbur Zelinsky (2006), Donald W. Meinig (2005), and Bruce Alberts, Harm J. de Blij, and Alan M. Voorhees (2004).
Editor’s notes: Thanks to David López-Carr for bring this to our attention. For more about Dawn Wright, see the June 21, 2011 article “ESRI Appoints Dawn J. Wright as Chief Scientist,” the March 2, 2011 article “Dawn Wright Selected as Leopold Leadership Fellow,” and the January 7, 2009 article “Dawn Wright Named Fellow of AAAS.”
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