UC Davis wins big at California Geographical Society annual meeting

The Geography Graduate Group made a great showing at this year’s California Geographical Society meeting, held at Shasta College in Redding, CA in April 2024. Every participant from Davis earned a research award in their category, with PhD candidate (now graduate!) Mitch Snyder winning 2^nd place in the Tom McKnight Professional Paper Awards for his presentation Disaster displacement and Quality of Life following the 2018 Camp Fire and PhD Candidate Ana Zepeda winning 3^rd place for her presentation Food security and compounded disasters in a community kitchen in Merida, Mexico. Master’s Student Ben Kopania won the prestigious Outstanding Research in Social and Environmental Justice award for his presentation Lies in the Archives: Tracing the Creation of the Toledo Development Corporation. Lastly, PhD Candidate Ryan Miller earned this year’s CGS Outstanding Service Award for his years of volunteering as the Northern California student representative on the CGS Board.

The California Geographical Society is the state’s foremost higher-education geographic organization, and strives to support student scholarship through research awards and publication of the California Geographer. Next year’s annual meeting will be held at California State University, Stanislaus.