For Anna: After critical GIS, what next?

Abstract

• We present a tribute to our late colleague Anna Dvorak, featuring elements of her last (unfinished) manuscript. • We incorporate an examination of critical GIS education in the age of corporate story-telling. • A case study of Anna's engagement in environmental justice illustrates GIS advocacy through critical GIS education. In honour of our lost colleague Anna K. Dvorak, we draw from elements of her last unfinished manuscript to explore new directions in critical GIS education and practice. Anna was a recent PhD in Geography hired into a critical GIS tenure-track position. The ways in which she wove GIS practice through her research interests, teaching sensibilities, and community advocacy experiences defied easy categorization; we argue she represents a new generation of geography graduate student who is redefining where and how critical GIS education occurs. Anna's social and environmental justice work with the Pacoima Beautiful non-profit organization in southern California formed the basis for an ongoing research initiative that gave her the opportunity to experiment with GIS as advocacy tool in the hands of local high school students. At the time of her death she had completed an initial draft of a manuscript situating this work in broader community activism issues. We remember Anna by presenting large sections of her work unaltered, interwoven with our commentary on the significance of her approach to critical GIS in a time of shifting academic and corporate commercial relationships to the technology.

Introduction to the special section: Teaching critical GIS | Teaching GIS critically

“…I often find myself drawn back to April 2015, wondering what Anna would make of all that has changed since our last conversations. In the final essay in this section (Warren et al 2020), colleague Rob Sauders and I begin with our friend Anna's final unfinished manuscript on teaching critical GIS as a starting point to explore these ideas further.…”