UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Joshua Inwood, professor of geography and senior research scientist at the Rock Ethics Institute at Penn State, has been selected to receive the Media Achievement Award from the American Association of Geographers (AAG). The award is “conferred in recognition of exceptional and outstanding accomplishments in publicizing geographical insights in media of general or mass communication.”
According to his award citation, Inwood is being recognized “for his distinguished record of achievement in media engagement on important topics that advance societal understanding of racism, civil rights, and social justice. Inwood has authored and co-authored more than 35 op-eds over the past 15 years, including eight articles with The Conversation that have attracted more than half a million readers. Many of these contributions have been distributed or recirculated in prominent news outlets such as Newsweek, The Associated Press, the Huffington Post and the Houston Chronicle. Inwood has also promoted the discipline of geography and articulated an anti-racist view on social issues through interviews with various local, national, and international print, television and radio media outlets, including USA Today, The Atlantic Magazine, PBS, The Christian Science Monitor, France24 and El Confidencial. In particular, Inwood’s research has been quoted in two Atlantic articles that advanced arguments in support of a truth commissions for confronting social and political issues such as the #MeToo movement and the January 6th capital riot.”
“This award means a lot to me because it reflects the ability to communicate the importance of geography to a wider audience and to engage the public and to hopefully inform understandings about important events and topics,” Inwood said. “Science communication is key to helping create an informed electorate and public.”
Inwood, a cultural and urban geographer who has a joint appointment with the Rock Ethics Institute, seeks to understand the social, political and economic structures that make human lives vulnerable to all manner of exploitations, as well as how oppressed populations use social justice movements to change their material conditions.
Inwood has authored more than 50 peer-reviewed articles, book chapters and book reviews with publications in leading journals such as the Annals of the American Association of Geographers and Geoforum. Inwood and his research group have secured multiple external grants to support his civil rights research, including two recent National Science Foundation grants to evaluate a truth and reconciliation commission in Greensboro, North Carolina, and to explore the use of geospatial intelligence by civil rights organizations.
Inwood received bachelor’s degrees in both history and geography from Michigan State University, his master’s degree in geography from Kent State University, and his doctorate in geography from the University of Georgia.
Inwood will be recognized at AAG’s annual meeting, scheduled to be held Feb. 25 to March 1, 2022, in New York City.
Since 1951, AAG honors have been offered annually to recognize outstanding accomplishments by members in research and scholarship, teaching, education, service to the discipline, public service outside academe, and for lifetime achievement.
For more than 100 years, AAG has contributed to the advancement of geography. With members in nearly 100 countries, members share interests in the theory, methods and practice of geography.