Five American Association of Geographers Fellows Associated with UGA Geography

The AAG Fellows is a recognition and service program that recognizes geographers who have made significant contributions to advancing geography. UGA Geography is proud to have five AAG Fellows associated with our department including three alumni and two current faculty members. 

UGA Geography Alumni 

Chandana Mitra - Associate Professor, Auburn University Dept. of Geosciences - 2024 AAG Fellow 

Derek Alderman - Professor and President, Faculty Senate - 2021 AAG Fellow 

Derek Alderman is recognized as an AAG Fellow for his outstanding and impactful contributions to mentorship of students and early career faculty colleagues. The committee particularly noted the caring and inclusive environment Dr. Alderman creates which supports a highly valued climate of collegiality within the University of Tennessee Department of Geography and Sustainability, the impressive number of students mentored throughout his career, his holistic “coaching up” mentorship style that centers diversity, equity, and inclusion, draws upon his own life experience, and goes far beyond a one-size-fits-all mentorship approach. The committee was moved by the testimonies and letters of support submitted by Dr. Alderman’s mentees which embody the spirit, memory, and legacy of the late Dr. Susan Hardwick. Derek Alderman received his Ph.D. from the University of Georgia Department of Geography in 1998. 

Derek Alderman received his Ph.D. from the University of Georgia Department of Geography in 1998. 

UGA Geography Faculty

Nik Heynen - Distinguished Research Professor, UGA Dept. of Geography - 2023 AAG Fellow 

Nik Heynen's research has explored areas of urban political ecology, abolition ecologies and geographies, and geographies of neoliberalism and racial capitalism. He's tried to theorize and demonstrate empirically how racialized processes of capitalism, white supremacy, and settler colonialism produce structurally unjust geographies and ecologies. He discovered geography after having double majored in philosophy and religious studies for a couple years as an undergraduate student. He did so because he saw geography as providing the clearest opportunity to work toward a social justice-oriented research agenda that takes rigorous, theoretically sophisticated scholarship seriously, but also focuses on practical, justice-centered work. 

Thomas Mote -  Distinguished Research Professor Associate Vice President for Instruction, UGA - 2019 AAG Fellow 

Thomas Mote is an internationally known scholar, award-winning instructor and mentor, respected university administrator, and engaged leader of the AAG. Mote currently serves as Associate Dean at the University of Georgia’s Franklin College of Arts and Sciences, as well as being a Distinguished Research Professor in the Department of Geography.  His research involves climate change, one of the earth’s most pressing and timely problems, which Mote approaches by participating in interdisciplinary research teams that study the effects of Greenland ice sheet melting on oceans—a major contributor to sea level rise. His research is recognized and funded, among others, by NASA, NOAA, and the USDA’s Forest Service. Thomas Mote has been selected to become an AAG Fellow for the scientific and societal significance of his research program, his mentoring of graduate students, and for raising geography’s profile through his outstanding service in influential administrative and professional positions.