Faculty
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Kathleen Benison
PROFESSOR OF GEOLOGY
Kathy uses sedimentary geology, geochemistry, and geomicrobiology to study the deposition and diagenesis of continental evaporites and red beds. Her active research projects include modern acid saline lake systems in Western Australia and Chile, their Permian analog deposits in the U.S. midcontinent, and similar systems on Mars.
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Jamison Conley
ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR OF GEOGRAPHY
The overarching theme is an interest in the statistics, algorithms and techniques for the analysis of spatial data. Jamison has worked in the past on methods for finding and analyzing disease clusters, but is venturing beyond that narrow focus. He has open-source projects that are available for those interested.
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Karen Culcasi
ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR OF GEOGRAPHY
Karen’s research and teaching uses critical and feminist geopolitical frames to examine contested places and identities. Her work focuses on the Middle East and the Arab world.
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Dengliang Gao
PROFESSOR OF GEOLOGY
Gao is interested in developing and applying 3D seismic interpretation technologies for more effective subsurface structure, facies, and reservoir characterization.
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Cynthia Gorman
ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR OF GEOGRAPHY
Dr. Gorman’s research examines the legal geographies of political asylum in the U.S. and advocacy to expand human rights protections outlined in UN Refugee Conventions and Protocols. Using feminist legal archeology, her work traces how gendered and racialized logics of border control shape immigration categories and refugee status in the United States with a particular focus on those displaced from Central America. More recently, her work explores how immigration raids shape the politics of community life for immigrants who live in rural towns due to employment in meatpacking industries.
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Michael Harman
TEACHING ASSISTANT PROFESSOR OF GEOGRAPHY
Michael's area of interest includes analysis of spatial data, 3D visualization, modeling complex landforms and processes, teaching GIS and GISci, and mentoring geoscientists. In 2020, Michael mentored a team of students in the National Geothermal Design Challenge who won the contest with the poster, “Geothermal Locality Index: Where to Find ‘The Heat Beneath Our Feet'”.
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Amy Hessl
Director of Undergraduate Research, Honors College, and Professor of Geography
Dr. Hessl uses the environmental information stored in the growth rings of trees to study climate variability, ecosystem processes, and human activities over the last 2000 years.
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James Lamsdell
ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR OF GEOLOGY
Paleobiology, Paleontology, Arthropods, Macroevolution, Mass extinction, Macroecology, Paleoecology, Phylogenetics
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Rick Landenberger
SERVICE ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR OF GEOGRAPHY
Rick’s research combines forest ecology with land use management and restoration, using mapping and spatial analysis as tools to address basic questions of ecosystem structure and function. Working closely with the land conservation community in West Virginia through the West Virginia Land Trust, his research applies primarily to properties managed through conservation easements or other land use protection strategies.
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Aaron Maxwell
ASSISTANT PROFESSOR OF GEOGRAPHY
Dr Maxwell’s research interests are in geospatial instruction, hands-on learning, and learning via travel. His primary research is in remote sensing image analysis, spatial modeling, GIS, object-based image analysis, terrain analysis, physical geography, geomorphology, and hydrology.
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Brent McCusker
PROFESSOR OF GEOGRAPHY; DEPARTMENT CHAIR
Brent is concerned with how the environment is produced, reproduced, and commodified to promote development in historically lesser developed areas, specifically sub-Saharan Africa. His research is focused around two themes (environment and development) with an interest in interaction between academia and policy makers, specifically the international development donor community.
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Brenden McNeil
ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR OF GEOGRAPHY
Brenden uses fieldwork, remote sensing, and GIS to examine human impacts on the spatial patterns of forest ecosystem services, particularly in the eastern USA. In addition to the geography senior capstone course, he teaches undergraduate and graduate classes in physical geography, resource sustainability, environmental GIS, and spatial ecosystem ecology.
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Maria Perez
ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR OF GEOGRAPHY
I am an Associate Professor here in the Geography Program at West Virginia University’s Department of Geology and Geography. A cultural anthropologist by training, I investigate the cultural and historical context of scientific practice. More specifically, I approach science as a cultural activity. Speleology (cave science and exploration) serves as a case study with which I examine a range of topics such as identity (Who are we? What brings us together?), place and emotion (How do places become meaningful? Why is it that we come to love some places more than others?), value (How do we come to value, beyond economic considerations, places that are hidden or not part of our everyday livelihoods?). Really, these questions are relevant well beyond caves, karst, and even bunkers, another site of research!
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Shikha Sharma
PROFESSOR OF GEOLOGY
Dr. Sharma’s research bridges the fields of stable Isotope geochemistry, biogeochemistry, and hydrogeochemistry to address a wide variety of issues related to the “Energy-Environment” nexus.
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Jamie Shinn
ASSISTANT PROFESSOR OF GEOGRAPHY
Jamie is interested in topics of environmental governance, political ecology, and adaptation to climate change, especially in relation to water and flooding. Her work investigates sources of vulnerability to climate change and seeks to identify possibilities for transformation that can lead to more just climate futures. She has research projects in Southern Africa and Southern West Virginia.
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Charlie Shobe
Assistant Professor of Geology
Geomorphology, Earth Surface Processes, Landscape Evolution, Rivers, Source-to-Sink, Numerical Modeling
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Jaime Toro
PROFESSOR OF GEOLOGY, ASSOCIATE CHAIR for GEOLOGY
Zircon Geochronology of Middle Devonian (Tioga) Ash Beds in the Marcellus Shale, Tectonic Evolution of Chukotka (NE Russia), Intelligent Systems Approach to Reservoir Characterization, Fault-related gas reservoirs in the Appalachian Foreland.
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Dorothy Vesper
PROFESSOR OF GEOLOGY
Dorothy is a low-temperature geochemist with a focus on karst hydrogeology, temporal changes in water quality (diel and storm), high-CO2 waters, metal geochemistry, thermal-mineral springs, coal-mine drainage, and how contaminant move in karst aquifers. Much of her recent research considers the relationship between inorganic carbon and sulfur in natural waters.
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Amy Weislogel
ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR OF GEOLOGY
Dr. Weislogel's research group uses grain-scale to basin-scale techniques in Sedimentary Basin Studies to reconstruct tectonic and climatic controls on paleoenvironments. Our primary tools include provenance, stratigraphic and sedimentologic analyses and our projects investigate both subsurface and outcropping sedimentary records.
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Bradley Wilson
ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR OF GEOGRAPHY and Director, WVU Center for Resilient Communities
I am a broadly trained human geographer. My research is rooted in fields such as community economies, agrarian studies, political ecology, post-colonial theory, and rural development. For 20 years I have focused on the response of communities to regional economic crises - in coffee and coal country - and the central role of solidarity, mutual aid, grassroots initiatives and social movements in forging alternative rural development pathways in those regions. Methodologically I practice critical ethnography but in recent years have more fully embraced my identity as a participatory action researcher - working in teams to accompany community partners as they work for social change. With my students I have established a robust action research program and experiments focused on cooperative economics, food justice, food system development, community health and environmental justice in West Virginia and Appalachia which is now housed in the WVU Center for Resilient Communities. In recent years I have been thinking about pragmatist pedagogies and how to practice community geographies.