Featured Map April 2021
Ten Years of Excellence: Map of the Richard Murphy Memorial Lecturers, 2011-2021
The latest “Featured Map” from GES celebrates the tenth anniversary of the Richard E. Murphy Annual Memorial Lecture. Viewers can interact with the digital map to learn about the past decade’s speakers in this high-profile series, which brings important thinkers to UNM from across the breadth of Geography’s many subfields.
Dr. Leila Harris (University of British Columbia) will deliver the 2020-2021 Murphy Lecture on Friday, April 16 at 3pm. All are invited to attend her virtual lecture on “Infrastructures of Inequality.” The lecture will focus on Dr. Harris’s long-running research into the politics and processes of water infrastructure in Accra, Ghana and Cape Town, South Africa. This event is free and open to the public; click here for more information and free registration.
The Featured Map for April 2021 includes Dr. Harris and all previous speakers in an interactive platform that allows viewers to click on current and past lecturers to access information about their Murphy Lecture and scholarly profile. (A brief demo is available via the “About the map” button on the interactive platform.)
Geography PhD student Sarigai Sarigai designed the map in consultation with GES faculty member Dr. Liping Yang. Both are affiliated with the GeoAIR lab and are experts in the design and implementation of web-based maps. Special thanks to Sarigai for creating this map, which will be updated in future years to maintain an ongoing record of the Richard E. Murphy Annual Memorial Lecture.
The Murphy Lecture series began in 2011 with a generous endowment from UNM’s first department chair, Dr. Richard Murphy. This lecture series honors Murphy’s 16 years of service to Geography at UNM, from 1967-1983. The series highlights scholars from around the world who address key geographical issues in both theory and practice.
The first-ever Murphy Lecturer was Dr. Alec Murphy (University of Oregon, emeritus). He was selected not only because of his prominence as a political geographer and past president of the American Association of Geographers, but also to honor the Murphy family, since he is Richard Murphy’s son. Having grown up in Albuquerque and around the department before following his father’s footprints into academia, Dr. Murphy says he greatly enjoyed his 2011 return to UNM to deliver the inaugural lecture. During his visit, he shared stories with faculty about his teenage years working on the cleaning staff at De Anza Motor Lodge, and other reminiscences.
GES is looking forward to the tenth-anniversary installment of the Murphy Lecture, pandemic conditions notwithstanding. We hope you will join us for this special event.
