USC Geography : People : Graduate Students

Graduate Students

Alejandro Alonso

Dissertation Working Title: A Political Geography of Gang Injunctions Strategies in Los Angeles County

Alejandro Alonso was born in the Bronx and lived in New York during the early part of his life. He earned an AA from Santa Monica College in 1993, his BA in Environmental Studies in 1995, and his MA in Geography in 1999; both from USC. He worked as a GIS Analyst for ISLA Digital Map Library project from 1995-97 until he entered graduate school to work on his MA. His MA thesis was entitled "Territoriality Among African-American Street Gangs in Los Angeles." He is currently a doctoral student pursuing a PhD in Geography and his dissertation will examine the spatial and political connections in the gang injunction and civil abatement practices in Los Angeles County. His previous and ongoing research can be viewed at www.streetgangs.com.

Michael Antos

Mike is one of the many East coast transplants here in Los Angeles. After earning a BA in Art History from Ithaca College in 1994, Mike worked in public safety as a firefighter and police dispatcher. In 2002, with the help of his wife Cheryl, he returned to school seeking a new path, where he quite accidentally discovered Geography. The subject was a natural fit for his life and interests, and since that first day in Professor Gauthier’s class he has not looked back. After three semesters at Los Angeles Valley College (taking every class in the earth science department) Mike entered the Geography department at Cal State Northridge to achieve a Master’s degree. Graduating in May 2006, his research involves the problems associated with stormwater runoff in urban areas, focusing on Los Angeles. Mike plans to continue his research related to groundwater, fresh water supplies, stormwater runoff, impervious surfaces, urban sprawl and how they all affect each other. Los Angeles is in many ways still the frontier, socially, culturally, environmentally, and Mike is very excited to be right here, right now.

Claudia Avendano

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Andrew Burridge

Andrew arrived in Los Angeles in 2004, having completed a Bachelors degree in Urban Planning and Development at the University of Melbourne, Australia. He is currently researching anarchist and autonomous social movements concerned with the removal of immigration controls and nation-state imposed boundaries, calling for global freedom of movement. This is set specifically within the context of the Mexico-U.S. border and the expanding practices of internal bordering currently witnessed within the U.S. and across the globe.

Outside of an academic setting, Andrew is involved with various grassroots groups such as Food Not Bombs, the Los Angeles Bicycle Kitchen and the No Border Network.

Jason Byrne

Dissertation Title: A Political Ecology of Latino Utilization of the Urban-Wildlands Interface: The Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area

Jason was born and raised in Perth, Western Australia. Prior to deciding to return to academic life, he pursued a career as an environmental planner, working with the State Government on water resource management issues. He holds a BA (Hons.) in Anthropology from the University of Western Australia and a BA (Hons.) in Urban and Regional Planning from Curtin University of Technology. Jason spent a year at the Johns Hopkins University’s Institute for Policy Studies as a Senior Research Fellow, where he studied issues of environmental injustice related to inner city brownfield redevelopment projects. More recently, as an Associate Fellow with the Center for Sustainable Cities at USC, Jason has been exploring the potential to apply a political ecology perspective to understanding the utilization of urban green-space. Specifically Jason has been investigating how particular green-spaces have become racialized landscapes. His research focuses upon Latino access to the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area.

Hong Chen

Hi, greetings to y’all. Hong Chen was born in Chengdu, China, a beautiful city renowned for being one of the capital cities dating back to Three Kingdom era (Sanguo in Chinese) in 220 AD. Hong received his B.S. in Civil Engineering and later worked as engineering consultant responsible for environmental design and construction management. As a “full-time” hobby and a “part-time” work, Hong hooked up with two of his buddies and assembled computers at his home. They luckily sold a dozen! Since 1998, Hong has lived in Akron, Ohio and then College Station, Texas and obtained two of his M.S. degrees in Environmental Engineering and Management Information Systems. Seeing geography as a bridge connecting his interest in understanding environment and human society to his background, he joined the department of geography at USC and is now pursuing a PhD in GIS. Hong is interested in environmental modeling and the application of GIS in environmental protection. Hong loves travel and he is a real fan of “The Lord of The Rings”.

Ning Chen

Ning Chen came from Lanzhou City, which is located in the northwest of China. Having received her Master's degree in GIS/Remote Sensing/Cartography, Ning is currently working in her dissertation research in GIS. Ever since as a little child, Ning dreams about traveling all over the world someday. Maybe this is one of her reasons to pursue a Ph.D degree in the United States. Ning deeply loves Chinese traditional culture, especially literature. With a Chinese book in her hand, Ning can sit reading happily for a whole day.

Nicholas Dahmann

Since becoming passionate about SimCity and maps as a child, Nicholas Dahmann has been enamored with cities. Born and raised by a geographer in the wilds of Washington D.C. and the surrounding metropolitan area, Nicholas is on a gradual trip west. Moving from Washington to Chicago, he received a liberal education and a degree in Geography from the University of Chicago. Studies in Chicago focused on historical and cultural geography as well as downtown housing and the formation of new residential spaces. From Chicago to Los Angeles, Nicholas is interested in making some sense of Southern California while enjoying the sunshine. Academic interests concern urban geography, contemporary urbanism, and comparative research.

Julienne Gard

Julienne Gard is a native Southern Californian in her second year of doctoral study at USC. With direction from Dr. John Wilson, research will likely blend critical cartography and GIS with theory and methods central to health geography. Working through a critique of Public Participatory Geographic Information Systems, she hopes to explore the ways in which counter mappings and everyday mappings produce and consume healthscapes. Social network analyses rendered in a GIS, for example, might identify community connectedness, perceptions of (un)healthy landscape, vulnerability, and related sociospatial processes. Comparative analysis of these mappings then helps to explain the variations between local and institutional health discourse. Julienne’s other passions include reading, traveling, sewing, ballet, all things related to music, and spending time with family.

Laura Harjo

Laura Harjo’s research interests are centered on participatory mapping methods, social justice, international law, indigenous epistemologies, power structures/relations, social movements and the art of war. Her work involves a qualitative study of counter mapping and its emancipatory power at a community scale within a national and global context. She has published and given lectures on participatory and tribally based mapping and is one of the founding members of the Indigenous Mapping Network and is a regional representative for the Indigenous Planning Division of the American Planning Association. She is also an undercover poet. Most recently, Laura directed the GeoData Center for the Cherokee Nation prior to joining us to study under the advisement of Dr. Laura Pulido.

April Hoffmann-Peck

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Jacqueline Holzer

Born and raised in the Austrian Alps, I have always been in love with nature and mountains in particular and try to spend as much time as possible hiking, cross-country skiing or biking. In the course of my lifelong education I earned a degree in History from the University of Innsbruck where I researched the implications of U.S. foreign politics on Cambodia in the 1960s and 1970s. A few years ago, I ventured out to Southern California to pursue my PhD in Geography * my secret passion. Currently, I'm exploring the U.S. * Mexico borderlands with a special interest in infringements of human rights.

Donna Houston

Dissertation Title: Topographies of Memory and Power: A Case Study of Environmental Injury, Justice and Citizenship in the Nuclear Great Basin

Donna is a PhD Candidate and currently working on her dissertation titled “Topographies of Memory and Power: Environmental Justice and the Cultural Politics of Nuclear Waste at Yucca Mountain, Nevada.” Her research interests include working with radical perspectives on landscape, culture and nature, and particularly how cultural landscapes in a variety of urban and non-urban contexts shape and are shaped by struggles for social and ecological justice.

Chris Kahle

Chris researches the Los Angeles urban landscape, parks, and open space. He's worked in GIS before and now is moving into the realm of cultural geography. He has conducted qualitative research in Paris studying citizen participation in urban land transformation efforts to create parks. Now he is developing a dissertation proposal to compare these processes in Paris parks and Los Angeles parks along the LA River. On the side, he is curating a show at LA's Municipal Art Gallery, "Genius Loci," showcasing art works about LA that incorporate cartographic methods/modes/designs as well as historic pictorial maps of the city - the show opens in Feb 2002 at SciArc in downtown LA. He has held an NSF Sustainable Cities Program Fellowship, a USC Tyler Environmental Scholarship, and was a USC Presidential Fellow.

Christine Lam

Christine Lam This Texan ventured out to Los Angeles for excitement and education, and she can't seem to get enough of them. She has a BS in Environmental Studies and a MS in Geography, all of which were obtained at USC. Christine is currently a Ph.D. student and her research interest is using terrain analysis and GIS to identify habitats that could potentially be occupied by invasive species. Her two main hobbies are running and people-watching with friends at the local Coffee Bean while drinking a cafe mocha and eating a raspberry scone. Click here to read more about Christine.

Mark Lange

Mark Lange Dissertation Working Title: Suspended Sediment Transport At A Tidal River Divergence

Mark is originally from the Pacific Northwest where he received his bachelor's in Geography with an Environmental Studies emphasis (1993). He worked various geo-related jobs in the San Francisco area until a stint at the US Geological Survey reminded him how great physical geography is. He decided to check out the east coast beaches and received his Masters in coastal geomorphology (2000) in North Carolina. He is pursuing a Ph.D in tidal river sediment dynamics under the direction of Dr. Bernard Bauer. He's a former Merit Fellow (01-03) and has taught labs for GEOG 260 - Natural Hazards and GEOG 265 - The Water Planet.

Su Jin Lee

Su Jin Lee Su Jin is from Korea and was born in Busan which is secondary big city in Korea, but has grown up mostly in Seoul. He has a masters degree from Korea. He served as a visiting researcher at the department of Geography, at University of California, Santa Barbara from 2004-2006. While he was there, he had been studying impact of scale and algorithm on computing down-slope and flow from digital elevation model with Prof. Keith Clarke. Currently Su Jin is doing his Ph.D at University of Southern California at the department of Geography under the guidance of Prof. John Wilson. His interests are in terrain analysis, remote sensing, spatial analysis, and GIS modeling. His life in L.A is adventurous and exciting and he hopes to have great success from his works.

Christina Li

Christina was born in Hongzhou, a heavenly beautiful city in Southeast China. Christina has a BA degree in Journalism, an MA degree in Environmental Studies. She worked for an L.A. based environmental consulting firm after her master's. Now, she is pursuing a PhD degree on the GIS applications in environmental conservation. Christina loves outdoors and movies, her dream job is working for National Geography magazine. Her favorite movies include "Out of Africa", "Shawshank Redemption" and "Amelie"... Click here to learn more.

Jennifer Mapes

Jennifer Mapes comes to Southern California from a small town in New York State's upper Hudson Valley. She has studied in western New York (SUNY Geneseo), Durban, South Africa (University of Natal's Winter School), and central Pennsylvania (Penn State). During a three-year break from academia, she lived in Washington, D.C., where she was a writer for National Geographic News, and in Saratoga Springs, New York, where she worked at The Saratogian as a reporter, copy editor, and cartographer. She was an environmental journalism fellow at the National Tropical Botanical Gardens on Kauai, and was honored for her environmental coverage by Surburban Newspapers of America.

Jen plans to integrate aspects of urban, cultural, and political geography in her research under the advisement of Michael Dear. Following her master's thesis, "Hating to love the big-box: The impact of consumer choice on the small-town retail landscape," and her experiences reporting on planning issues, she began to consider recent growth in ecological consciousness and its manifestation in resistance to development projects and suburban sprawl. She is also interested in observing and documenting American vernacular landscapes. In her spare time, Jen hopes to take advantage of her new locale: exploring the West, shopping at farmers' markets, and taking naps in the sun with her cat, Rosco. For more info, please click here.

Peter Marolt

Dissertation Working Title: Blogging in Beijing: Thriving Cultural Production and Political Change in China

Born into a twentieth century Munich, Peter always loved exploring faraway lands. His latest home was China where he lived for four years and completed a graduate program at the Hopkins-Nanjing Center during 2001-2002. In order to follow his quest for knowledge, Peter cheerfully accepted the most generous funding he was offered by the University of Southern California and moved on to Los Angeles in 2003. Although L.A. is a fascinating place for anyone interested in the complex struggles within which material cultures are produced, Peter decided to delve deeper into issues around the development of an Internet culture and civil sphere in China. He is dying to know more about 'shared meanings' and how these continue to thrive in our increasingly fragmented world, influence our capacity to think freely and encourage political interest and intentional action. In his explorations, Peter constantly looks for new ways of seeing that enable him to unearth stuff that gets lost in the dominant production of knowledge. Peter's interests include social theory, cultural and experimental geographies, the intersection between social science and artistic expression, and related interdisciplinary studies pertaining to globalization, information and communication technologies, and China.

In 2006, Peter returned to China where he is currently conducting field research and writing his dissertation. His favorite pastime activities are exploratory trips into the world outside his little “writer’s retreat” and daydreaming about what the future might hold. For further information, please check out Peter's Website at http://www.marolt.net

Lorena Munoz

Dissertation Working Title: Tamales...Elotes...Champurrado: Transforming Latino Vending 'Street-Scapes' in Los Angeles

Street vending is an economic practice exercised by millions of people around the world. Although often attributed to third world economies, it is a phenomenon that it is visible in many cities in the United States. This paper examines the landscapes in which Latino street vendors exercise their daily informal economic practices in Los Angeles - a city where many residents (especially Latino residents) favor vendors who recreate the cultural and informal economic spaces of their countries of origin. Immigrant vending practices commonly transform street corners, yards, and parking lots into informal commercial profit-making sites. This reconfiguration of urban space not only shapes immigrants' and immigrant vendors' experience of everyday life, but shapes the urban landscape around them as well. Through the use of various qualitative methods, specifically, field observation, semi-structured interviews, photo-elicitation and photo documentation this paper explores how notions of 'place' shape urban cultural landscapes of Latino street vendors in Los Angeles and how state enforcements, regulations and notions of 'illegalities' imposed on 'brown bodies' in relation to street vendor's daily life, contribute to the production of cultural landscapes. The dialectic process of vendors creating urban cultural landscapes is important for understanding how the state at various scales, intersect in the local, where tensions are created between the local-state and the vendors through the enforcement of code regulations and the surveillance of bodies. These tensions between vendors and the local-state inform the production of vendor landscapes. This dialectical process shapes the collective or individual agency of the vendors. In other words, by analyzing the actors such as vendors, local business owners, street vendors associations involved in shaping these landscapes, in relation to the local-state (city council, code enforcers and police department), one begins to understand how street vendors exercise agency. By privileging voices of vendors, in particular women, whose daily lives shape and inform the urban landscape, this study links the street corner to interrelated global processes. Additionally, by focusing this research on human and economic rights for street vendors and their families, this study intends to facilitate the development of policy and programs that serve and affect this population.

Thao Nguyen

Thao was born in Hanoi, the capital of Vietnam. She earned her BCs degree in Geographic Information Sciences at Curtin University of Technology Western Australia. She is now working with Dr. John P. Wilson. Her research interests are: space-time dynamic in geosciences, transportation planning and design, and intelligent transport system (ITS).
Thao is a troublemaker. Checkout Thao's webpage at http://www-scf.usc.edu/~thaotngu.

Jacob (Jake) Peters

Jake hails from the middle of nowhere (northern Minnesota) and his lifelong fascination with cities eventually brought him to Los Angeles. He made up his own degree (BA) at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, and called it "Theories of Space, Gender and Politics." After spending an extra year struggling through researching and writing his honors thesis about coffee shops and politics in the Inland Empire (Claremont, CA), Jake took some time away from academia working in movie theaters and libraries in San Diego while learning to surf. He likes to ride his bike and skateboard around the city, is a big geek who enjoys building computers and furniture and feels more comfortable on skis than on foot. Academic-ish interest include theories of social space, politics of consumption, science fiction, urban planning histories, critical gender theory, and marxist thought.

Rigoberto Rodriguez

Dissertation Working Title: Facilitating Active Citizenship: Mexican Immigrant Mobilization and Local Governance in Santa Ana, CA

Rigo Rodriguez has close to fifteen years of experience working with nonprofit organizations that provide health and human services to Mexican immigrants and people of color, largely in Orange County and Los Angeles County. Over the past fifteen years, Rigo has served in almost every capacity in a nonprofit organization, as a volunteer, frontline staff, program coordinator, executive director, Board member, and external consultant. During this time, Rigo has observed how local state agencies have increased their presence in the everyday life of nonprofit organizations, particularly through private-public partnerships and other forms of urban governance. His dissertation explores the ways in which these new forms of urban governance have reshaped Mexican immigrant empowerment in Santa Ana, CA. He will complete his dissertation in spring/summer 2006, and will be a faculty member in the Chicano and Latino Studies Department at California State University, Long Beach, beginning in the fall 2006.

Rigo attributes his effort to complete his dissertation sooner rather than later to a strong desire to spend more time with his two kids, Katya and Emilio, pictured below...

Click here for more.

Rachel Russell

Rachel received her B.A. in International Relations from The George Washington University (2005). In 2007, she received her M.A. from the School of Geographical Sciences at Arizona State University. This fall, Rachel made it to the West Coast to begin her Ph.D. under Dr. Jennifer Wolch. Her research interests include sustainable energy and water solutions for the urban poor in Latin America. Rachel enjoys running, traveling, pop culture, and exploring her new city.

Elisabeth (Lisa) Sedano

Lisa Sedano's geographical interest was sparked as the child of an Air Force officer. She was born in Los Angeles and moved with her family to Washington, D.C., Aviano, Italy, and Oklahoma City before settling in Manhattan Beach. She took a semester off law school to travel in New Zealand, Southeast Asia, Nepal and Southern Europe and she has traveled all over California. Lisa concentrated in Social Anthropology as an undergraduate at Harvard College and wrote her senior project on the courtroom environment. She received a J.D. from Berkeley's Boalt Hall School of Law and has worked as a litigator, editor and law clerk at the Federal District Court and 9^th Circuit Court of Appeals. Lisa will be focusing on legal geography. That's her baby, Abel, in the picture, born April 2004.

Nate Sessoms

Mona Seymour

Mona was born and raised in San Diego, CA, and moved up to Los Angeles for college (Go Bruins!), receiving a B.A. in Environmental Studies/Geography. The following year she moved crosstown to begin her Ph.D. under Dr. Jennifer Wolch. Her interests include human-animal relations, urban nature and greenspaces, and sustainable, ethical economies. Mona is formulating a dissertation about the role of place in human attitudes toward urban wildlife, with special attention to naturalized urban parrots. In her spare time she enjoys jogging, hiking, cooking, reading, traveling (pictured here, outside of Volcano, Hawaii), and spending quality time with family and friends.

Jingfen Sheng

Jingfen Sheng research has focused on modeling hydrologic systems in the urban environment using geographic information system and remote sensing technology. Her work is to understand urban hydrologic processes, simulate modified hydrologic functions and explore ideal ways to promote healthy streams and provide an acceptable level of flood control in urban environment, e.g. the Los Angeles Metropolitan Area.

Maria Chona Sister

Dissertation Working Title: Park Supply and Demand in Southern California

Chona Sister is a Marine Biologist who migrated upstream to become a Geographer. She is currently working on the analysis of park supply and demand in the Southern California region. Working with Prof. John Wilson and Prof. Jennifer Wolch (with the former as her thesis advisor), she utilizes tools within Geographic Information Systems (GIS) to elucidate equity in the distribution of and access to parks resources in Southern California.

Chona grew up in the Philippines where she earned her degree in Marine Biology. She came to the U.S. in 1997 and earned a Masters Degree in Biology (Marine Biology Track) from USC in 2000. In the same year, she joined Prof. Wilson’s GIS Lab to become one of his graduate students. Her research interest includes Geographic Information Systems, Spatial Analysis, Parks and Open Space, and Marine Protected Areas. Read more about Chona.

Zaria Tatalovich

Dissertation Working Title: Spatial Temporal Modeling of Risks

Zaria was born in Zadar, a city in Croatia, located in the middle of the Adriatic Coast. Los Angeles has been her home for the past ten years. She has a BA and MA degree in Psychology, and MA degree in Geography. Currently, she is pursuing a PhD with an emphasis on the GIS applications in medical geography. She is interested in spatial patterns of diseases, and the use of GIS to analyze and present health data. She has some fun on a side too. She enjoys the weekends with her family, and the after-school plays with her daughter Talia. Read more.

Daniel Warshawsky

He likes studying and experiencing urban life, so LA has been an especially interesting place for him to live in. His interests in cities developed during his childhood years in Cincinnati, a city struggling to cope with its festering social, economic, and racial inequalities and have continued to grow during his undergrad study at Illinois (with David Wilson), master’s study at Wisconsin (with Jamie Peck and Kris Olds), and PhD study at USC (with Jennifer Wolch and other USC faculty). He had many interesting experiences outside academia. These include two work experiences abroad (Hanoi, Vietnam Community Development and Poverty Reduction Non-Profit Organization and Ecuador Rainforest Preserve Non-Profit Organization), three city planning related internships (General Services Administration Good Neighbor Program, Hamilton County (Cincinnati) Planning Commission, and Middletown, Ohio Planning Department), and employment at two other non-profit organizations (Eastern Illinois Foodbank and the National Geographic.com Newsroom). He enjoys all sports (either watching or playing) and traveling anywhere new. He feels non-academic travel or working/volunteering abroad are as important as anything learned in a university and hopes to travel and volunteer abroad in as many new places as possible.

Geography