Experts of Latin American Geography awarded honors by the Conference of Latin American Geography (CLAG)

The Conference of Latin American Geography (CLAG) awarded seven honors to professors of Latin American Geography on May 23, 2024 at the banquet celebration in San Juan, Puerto Rico. The seven awardees research and teach across seven different institutions from Canada to Puerto Rico and have expertise in Latin American regions as disparate as the Amazon rainforest and the Peruvian Andes. What unites these eminent geographers is their dedication to furthering a deeper understanding of this fascinating and dynamic region. CLAG, founded in 1970, has over 250 members from around the globe who foster geographic education and research on and in Latin America.

Joel Correia receives the 2024 CLAG Ascendente Award from Kristin Conway-Gomez and Claudia Radel.

Dr. Joel Correia is recipient of the 2024 CLAG Ascendente Award. His nomination was supported by many of his colleagues over the last 7 years since he received his PhD. Joel’s scholarship, teaching, and engagement focuses on political ecologies of conservation and development, Indigenous environmental justice, and critical physical geography. Quoting from his nomination, “His work engages the uneven effects of climate change, extractivism, infrastructure development, and the destruction of South America’s most significant forests, with extensive field research experience in Paraguay, the Gran Chaco, and now Ecuador’s Amazon. Correia employs qualitative and quantitative methods through engaged, collaborative research with Indigenous partners, human rights advocates, and interdisciplinary science teams, to support pathways toward more just futures.” Joel’s first book, Disrupting the Patrón: Indigenous Land Rights and the Fight for Environmental Justice in Paraguay’s Chaco, was published last year, making a major contribution to the study of racial geographies and settler colonialism in Latin America. In his several roles since earning his doctorate, Joel also has worked to develop curriculum, outreach, and training based on critical geographic approaches to human-environment relations. Quoting from his nomination, “[Joel] demonstrates a deep commitment to engaged scholarship and transformative education in Latin American Geography, centering efforts to ensure diversity, equity, and justice for a more inclusive sub-discipline.”

Karl Offen receives the 2024 CLAG Carl O. Sauer Distinguished Scholarship Award from Kristin Conway-Gomez and Sarah Blue.

Dr. Karl Offen is recipient of the 2024 Carl O. Sauer Distinguished Scholarship Award. This Award is given in recognition for a corpus of important published work or other significant contribution towards Latin American geography. Karl is receiving this award for his consistent publication of high-quality peer-reviewed journal articles in leading journals on the cultural and historical geography of Mosquitia in sub-areas including cartographic representations, resource use, colonial-era trade, and land claims. One colleague wrote that Karl engages in “transnational” scholarship in that “he routinely collaborates with Latin American scholars, and has a demonstrated record of making his work available in Spanish in both academic and more general readership venues.” Another colleague wrote that “No-one else…has [produced] such long-standing and fruitful investigation of Mosquitia as Karl has.” and “Karl is “truly a Latin Americanist in the best possible sense of the term and tradition”.

David Lopez-Carr receives the 2024 CLAG Teaching Award from Kristin Conway-Gomez and Claudia Radel.

Dr. David Lopez-Carr is recipient of this year’s 2024 CLAG Teaching Award. David is a Professor at UC Santa Barbara, where he has taught for the last 20 years. He has a regular undergraduate and graduate teaching role and delivers various popular and highly-rated courses, including especially his Geography of Latin America course, an integrative human and physical geography intro to the history and current realities of the region and his Human-Environment Dynamics in Latin America course. He also offers a mixed methods field work course for graduate students, drawing on his own fieldwork experiences in Guatemala and Ecuador. Over the years, he’s mentored a large cadre of graduate students (a total of 65, mainly PhD students), as major professor or committee member, who have gone on to successful careers, including as Latin America focused Geographers.

Catherine Nolin receives the 2024 CLAG Public Engagement Award from Kristin Conway-Gomez and David Salisbury.

Dr. Catherine Nolin is recipient of the 2024 CLAG Public Engagement Award.  Catherine, former CLAG chair, and current holder of the Ehor Boyanowsky Academic of the Year Award from the Confederation of University Faculty Associations of British Columbia is not only a multiple award-winning teacher and scholar, but also a change maker.  Dr. Nolin’s morally-centered, engaged research requires high levels of courage, language, and dedication.  Moreover, working in remote, rural Guatemala, mostly with Indigenous women, entails an additional level of empathy, toughness, and shared community that marks her work as truly extraordinary.  Nolin’s second book, a co-edited volume with activist Grahame Russell, Testimonio: Canadian Mining in the Aftermath of Genocides in Guatemala takes on the Canadian mining    industry, and by extension the Canadian government which sanctioned and supported this industry, and thus the repression and violence to Guatemalan landscapes, livelihoods, and lives.  CLAG values scholarship, teaching, and service that engages publicly, directly and honestly with critically important, if unsettling, topics such as gendered violence, forced migration, and the global impacts of an unfettered extractive industry.  Participatory, courageous, and field-informed research like Dr. Catherine Lynn Nolin’s is what we need to justly and geographically forge a sustainable future. 

Karl Zimmerer receives the 2024 CLAG Preston E. James Eminent Latin Americanist Career Award from Kristen Conway-Gomez and Sarah Blue.

Dr. Karl Zimmerer is recipient of the 2024 CLAG Preston E. James Eminent Latin Americanist Career Award. This Award is given in recognition of a life-time achievement towards the understanding of the geography of Latin America. Karl is receiving this award in recognition of the depth and scope of his 35 years of scholarship dedicated to agrobiodiversity and smallholder agriculture in Latin America. It is a challenge to describe Karl’s many intellectual achievements and contributions to the discipline of geography in a few words. Karl is author or co-editor of several books that advance political ecology, energy geographies, and global conservation and agrobiodiversity. He has displayed an extraordinary commitment to advancing knowledge of Andean peoples and environments through his focus on agrobiodiversity and smallholder agriculture. His work on advancing cultural and political ecology is among the most influential of his generation. He has supported the discipline in many ways, most notably through editing our flagship journal and leading a top department. Before receiving this award, Karl has been recognized by prestigious organizations including the Guggenheim Foundation and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. One of our colleagues wrote that “Karl never stops researching. He is constantly working on something, continuously developing new projects” and affirmed his devotion to teaching and mentoring PhD students. Another colleague wrote that Karl is “generous with his time and energy, as a collaborator, mentor, and leader.”

Carlos Guilbe receives the 2024 CLAG Enlaces Award from Kristin Conway-Gomez and David Salisbury.

Dr. Carlos Guilbe is the recipient of the 2024 CLAG Enlaces Award. The Enlaces Award is given in recognition of contributions to improving relationships between geographers and geography departments throughout Latin America. Recipients have demonstrated success and commitment toward this goal.  One of his recommenders described Dr. Carlos Guilbe as, “One of the pillars of contemporary Puerto Rican Geography.  His academic work has had an immense impact on Puerto Rico and the Americas.  He, together with his students, has presented geographic research in a variety of conferences and meetings where he has been able to articulate the challenges of Puerto Rico with the rest of the region’s countries. Professor Guilbe also stands out as a facilitator and creator of geographic networks with different institutions throughout the region.  These “enlaces” have permitted the interchange of knowledge and ideas to find solutions to the challenges of Puerto Rico and the rest of the Americas.  Another of his recommenders said that Dr. Carlos Guilbe is known for three things: 1) Pasión por su trabajo; 2) Compromiso con sus estudiantes y compañeros; and 3) Amor incondicional por la Geografia. In the 38th Annual CLAG, Dr. Carlos Guilbe has demonstrated all of these and much more.

Andrew Sluyter, recipient of the 2024 Award for Outstanding Service to CLAG.

Dr. Andrew Sluyter is the recipient of the 2024 Award for Outstanding Service to CLAG. This award recognizes significant contributions to the improved functioning, broadened outreach, or enhanced impact of CLAG. Dr. Sluyter is a long-standing member of CLAG who served on the CLAG Board twice, first from 2005-08 and then from 2018-21 where he provided important contributions to the Honors and above all, Membership Committees.  From 2015-2017, Andrew contributed timely and strategic leadership to CLAG as Executive Director, while also Chairing the Local Arrangements Committee for the extremely successful 2017 CLAG Meeting in New Orleans, Louisiana.  The 2017 NOLA Meeting was an ideal platform for Andrew, now Doris Z. Stone Latin American Studies Distinguished Professor, holder of the Presidential Laurel Medal of the Louisiana State University System, and Carnegie Fellow, to combine his research interests and service contributions through the articulation of New Orleans as an extension of Latin America and the Caribbean, and thus a strategic node for scholarly interchange and CLAG community building.