Chemistry Welcomes Two New Adjunct Assistant Professors
The Department of Chemistry is pleased to announce the appointment of Dr. Justin Mobley and Dr. Jesse Thompson as Adjunct Faculty at the level of Assistant Professor.
New Maps Plus Student Wins National Cartography Award
By Madison Dyment
Kerry Gathers’ map detailed the economic impact of the whaling industry throughout the 19th century.
A&S Researcher Suggests Rivers May Cause Earthquakes
By Jenny Wells
Thigpen suggests that river erosion may cause parts of the Earth's crust to move more quickly, resulting in large earthquakes far from plate boundaries, such as in Eastern Tennessee, where a 4.4 magnitude earthquake occurred just last week.
A&S Physics Contributes to Groundbreaking Experiment
By Jenny Wells and Sara Shoemaker
Courtesy of Andy Sproles/Oak Ridge National Laboratory, U.S. Dept. of Energy.
Part-Time Laboratory Analyst (Lexington, KY) at IEH Laboratories & Consulting Group
Job type:
Part-time
Job description:
IEH Laboratories, a Leader in Food Safety, is now accepting applications for Part-Time Laboratory Analyst at its facility in Lexington, KY.
Applicants must possess a BS or BA in the biological sciences or related field.
Ideal candidates should possess the following skills:
- Strong attention to detail
- Proficiency with data entry and computer applications
- Multitasking capability
- Ability to work in a fast paced environment
- Strong written and verbal communication skills
- Self-motivated
- Strong understanding of aseptic technique in the laboratory
Europe/Wrld In Age Of Rev 1760-1815
A study of the political, social, economic and cultural changes that transformed Europe during the age of the French Revolution and Napoleon, with special emphasis on the relations between Europe and the non-European world during this period.
Social Change in a Material World
Author(s):
Theodore Schatzki
Book summary:
Social Change in a Material World offers a new, practice theoretical account of social change and its explanation. Extending the author’s earlier account of social life, and drawing on general ideas about events, processes, and change, the book conceptualizes social changes as configurations of significant differences in bundles of practices and material arrangements. Illustrated with examples from the history of bourbon distillation and the formation and evolution of digitally-mediated associations in contemporary life, the book argues that chains of activity combine with material events and processes to cause social changes. The book thereby stresses the significance of the material dimension of society for the constitution, determination, and explanation of social phenomena, as well as the types of space needed to understand them. The book also challenges the explanatory significance of such key phenomena as power, dependence, relations, mechanisms, and individual behavior. As such, it will appeal to sociologists, geographers, org studies scholars, and others interested in social life and social change.
Publication year:
In Press
Publisher:
Routledge
Bio:
Photo:
Short bio:
Ted Schatzki is Professor of Geography and Philosophy. He is also former Senior Associate Dean in the College of Arts & Sciences, former Chair of the Department of Philosophy, and cofounder and former codirector of the University’s Committee on Social Theory, which oversees a multidisciplinary graduate-level teaching and research program in social thought. Schatzki earned a degree in applied mathematics from Harvard University (1977) and degrees in philosophy from Oxford University (1979) and UC Berkeley (1982, 1986). His research interests lie in theorizing social life, and he is widely associated with a stream of thought called practice theory that is active today in a range of social disciplines, including geography, sociology, organizational studies, education, anthropology, international relations, and history. Schatzki is the author of five books: Social Practices (1996), The Site of the Social (2002), Martin Heidegger: Theorist of Space (2007),The Timespace of Human Activity (2010), and Social Change in a Material World (forthcoming). He has also co-edited three volumes on practice theory: The Practice Turn in Contemporary Theory (2001), The Nexus of Practices (2017), and Questions of Practice in Philosophy and Social Theory (2018). In addition, he is author of numerous articles on such social topics as flat ontology, social space, learning, large social phenomena, art, social change, materiality, governance, and discourse, as well as many essays on human action and the philosophies of Wittgenstein and Heidegger, Schatzki has been a research fellow of the Fulbright Commission and the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation. He has also been a visiting professor or researcher at the University of Exeter, The Max Planck Institute for the History of Science in Berlin, Aalborg University Copenhagen, the Karl-Franzens University in Graz, the Institute of Advanced Studies in Vienna, Lancaster University, the University of Zurich, The University of Bielefeld, The Free University in Berlin, The Charles Sturt University in Australia, the Catholic University Eichstaett-Ingolstadt in Germany, and the University of Bergen. In the spring of 2018 he received an honorary doctorate from Aalborg University in Denmark.
A&S department affiliation:
The Geography of the Internet Industry: Venture Capital, Dot-coms and Local Knowledge
Author(s):
Matthew Zook
Book summary:
This groundbreaking book analyses the geography of the commercial Internet industry. It presents the first accurate map of Internet domains in the world, by country, by region, by city, and for the United States, by neighborhood.
Demonstrates the extraordinary spatial concentration of the Internet industry.
Explains the geographic features of the high tech venture capital behind the Internet economy.
Demonstrates how venture capitalists' abilities to create and use tacit knowledge contributes to the clustering of the internet industry
Draws on in-depth interviews and field work in San Francisco Bay Area and New York City.
Publication year:
2005
Publisher:
Blackwell
Bio:
Photo:
Short bio:
For the past several years I have studied how the geoweb is produced (particularly the practices surrounding user-generated data) in order to better understand where, when, and by whom geo-coded content is being created. I focus on how code, space and place interact as people increasingly use mobile, digital technologies to navigate through their everyday, lived geographies. Of special interest is the complex and often duplicitous manner that code and content can congeal and individualize our experiences in the hybrid, digitally augmented places that cities are becoming.
As an economic geographer I also study how flows of material goods in the global economy are shaped by immaterial flows of information. Just as the global financial system is enabled by the materiality of high-speed fiber optic cables laid across the ocean, so too are the movement of cargo containers dependent upon the halo of virtual information that surrounds them as they move through space. My interest is in the range of ways in which material and virtual flows are intertwined: sometimes complementary, sometimes contradictory, but always central to the evolution of spatial relations in the economy.
The FloatingSheep research blog provide an overview of this work, particularly some of the more quirky dimensions that are hard to place in more mainstream academic outlets. After all, the Internet (and information space more generally) can be a wild and woolly place.
I am also the Director of the The DOLLY Project (Data On Local Life and You) is a repository of billions of geolocated tweets that allows for real-time research and analysis. Building on top of existing open source technology, DOLLY ingests all geotagged tweets (~8 million a day), does basic analysis, indexing and geocoding to allows real-time search throughout the entire database (3 billion tweets since Dec 2011). DOLLY also forms the basis for establishing the Department of Geography at the University of Kentucky as a key center for critical research on big geosocial media data. We see DOLLY as both a key tool for our own work but also as a means to break down the technological barrier that is often present for researchers that would like to study big data but do not necessarily possess the required technical skills.
Most recently I joined the editorial team of the new journal, Big Data & Society: Critical Interdisciplinary Inquiries, an open access peer-reviewed scholarly journal that publishes interdisciplinary work principally in the social sciences, humanities and computing and their intersections with the arts and natural sciences about the implications of Big Data for societies. The Journal's key purpose is to provide a space for connecting debates about the emerging field of Big Data practices and how they are reconfiguring academic, social, industry, business and government relations, expertise, methods, concepts and knowledge.
As an economic geographer I also study how flows of material goods in the global economy are shaped by immaterial flows of information. Just as the global financial system is enabled by the materiality of high-speed fiber optic cables laid across the ocean, so too are the movement of cargo containers dependent upon the halo of virtual information that surrounds them as they move through space. My interest is in the range of ways in which material and virtual flows are intertwined: sometimes complementary, sometimes contradictory, but always central to the evolution of spatial relations in the economy.
The FloatingSheep research blog provide an overview of this work, particularly some of the more quirky dimensions that are hard to place in more mainstream academic outlets. After all, the Internet (and information space more generally) can be a wild and woolly place.
I am also the Director of the The DOLLY Project (Data On Local Life and You) is a repository of billions of geolocated tweets that allows for real-time research and analysis. Building on top of existing open source technology, DOLLY ingests all geotagged tweets (~8 million a day), does basic analysis, indexing and geocoding to allows real-time search throughout the entire database (3 billion tweets since Dec 2011). DOLLY also forms the basis for establishing the Department of Geography at the University of Kentucky as a key center for critical research on big geosocial media data. We see DOLLY as both a key tool for our own work but also as a means to break down the technological barrier that is often present for researchers that would like to study big data but do not necessarily possess the required technical skills.
Most recently I joined the editorial team of the new journal, Big Data & Society: Critical Interdisciplinary Inquiries, an open access peer-reviewed scholarly journal that publishes interdisciplinary work principally in the social sciences, humanities and computing and their intersections with the arts and natural sciences about the implications of Big Data for societies. The Journal's key purpose is to provide a space for connecting debates about the emerging field of Big Data practices and how they are reconfiguring academic, social, industry, business and government relations, expertise, methods, concepts and knowledge.
A&S department affiliation:
Kentucky's Frontier Highway: Historic Landscapes along the Maysville Road
Author(s):
Karl Raitz
Nancy O'Malley
Book summary:
Eighteenth-century Kentucky beckoned to hunters, surveyors, and settlers from the mid-Atlantic coast colonies as a source of game, land, and new trade opportunities. Unfortunately, the Appalachian Mountains formed a daunting barrier that left only two primary roads to this fertile Eden. The steep grades and dense forests of the Cumberland Gap rendered the Wilderness Road impassable to wagons, and the northern route extending from southeastern Pennsylvania became the first main thoroughfare to the rugged West, winding along the Ohio River and linking Maysville to Lexington in the heart of the Bluegrass.
Kentucky's Frontier Highway reveals the astounding history of the Maysville Road, a route that served as a theater of local settlement, an engine of economic development, a symbol of the national political process, and an essential part of the Underground Railroad. Authors Karl Raitz and Nancy O'Malley chart its transformation from an ancient footpath used by Native Americans and early settlers to a central highway, examining the effect that its development had on the evolution of transportation technology as well as the usage and abandonment of other thoroughfares, and illustrating how this historic road shaped the wider American landscape.
Publication year:
2012
Publisher:
University Press of Kentucky
Bio:
Photo:
Short bio:
A long-time student of culture and its material artifacts, Karl has spent the past thirty-five years examining the manner in which people have created American landscapes. His field-based research interests blend rural and urban contexts, especially within America’s Middle West, Appalachia, and South. His past work included examinations of the relationships between European immigrants and occupational preadaptation, the social construction of sport and leisure places, and the creation of landscape symbol vocabularies. He is currently working on several projects relating to the spectacular role of the road—in its many guises and through its many commercial, political, and technical patrons—as a shaping influence on landscapes. Recent research projects include: The National Road and A Guide to the National Road, two edited books that were supported by funding from the Pioneer American Society and the National Endowment for the Humanities; The Great Valley Road: Shenandoah Landscapes from Prehistory to the Present, co-edited with Warren Hofstra, and a book co-authored with Nancy O’Malley, Kentucky’s Frontier Highway: Historic Landscapes along the Maysville Road.
A&S department affiliation: