I was born and grew up in China. I received my B.A. in geography from Peking University, China, a master in GIS and remote sensing application from the Institute of Remote Sensing Application, Chinese Academic of Science. I got my Ph.D. in Geography from the joint doctoral program of San Diego State University and University of California at Santa Barbara in 2001. I had worked in ESRI as a GIS product specialist for one year before I came to Queen's University in 2002.

Links:

• LaGISA

Research Interests

My research areas focus on the understanding and modeling of interactions between human activities and the physical environment by using GIS and remote sensing techniques and spatial modeling approaches from local to regional scales. My current research interests include:

• Land use/cover change detection and modeling from time series remotely sensed images
• Machine learning and AI-based methods in GIS and remote sensing
• Spatial data privacy, error and accuracy
• Spatial-temporal disease risk analysis and modeling
• Analyzing environmental, ecological and health impact of urbanization and climate change
• Air pollution monitoring

Curriculum Vitae (PDF 494 kB)

Henry Castner arrived in Kingston in 1964 with a new bride, Claire, and a doctoral degree from the University of Wisconsin under the late Arthur Robinson. Previously he had served at the University of Pittsburg as Teaching Assistant with Richard Edes Harrison of Fortune Magazine fame. At Queen’s, Castner was to teach subjects related to cartography as then known, but also classes in the Geography of the USSR and Physical Geography.  

Twenty-five years later he retired and moved back to the United States having been a part of establishing the Canadian Cartographic Association, a professional society for all with interests in maps and mapping.  At various points he served as President and as Chair of the Interest Group on Map Design.  His teaching included courses on basic cartography, map design, map perception, the history of cartography, and maps in geographic education. The last was supported by a pair of books and a children’s atlas: Seeking New Horizons: A Perceptual Approach to Geography and its sequel Discerning New Horizons, and the atlas Thinking About Ontario. The interest in the USSR was supported by two edited and published volumes by The Wolfe Island Press of Leo Bagrow: The Cartography of Russia up to 1600, and Russian Cartography up to 1800.  

There were other publications in refereed journals on a variety of topics including cartographic communication, tactual mapping, tourist mapping, terrain representation, colour charts, 20th century children’s atlases, electrooculography in cartographic research, and maps in television news as well as, with Gerald McGrath, on the role of the Canadian 1,000,000 topographic map series and an examination of Canadian nautical charts. He was also invited to be their General Consultant to the Reader’s Digest Association (Canada) for their 1981 Atlas of Canada. As part of all this, was his fortune to work with various graduate students, twelve of whom obtained Master’s Degrees and wrote theses; many of them are still active in various careers in cartography and mapping in Canada (6), United States (3) and the United Kingdom (2).

On the international scene, Castner has represented Canada on several committees of the International Cartographic Association, e.g., the Working Group on the History of Cartography, Cartographic Communication, and Children and Cartography. After leaving Canada, Castner served a term as President of the American Cartographic Information Society.

Philosophically, Castner notes that developing activities for school rooms is based simplistically on the old Chinese proverb: I hear and I forget, I see and I remember, I do and I understand. More specifically, he has been trying to develop graphic and visual parallels in learning auditory improvisation, a feature of the music education pedagogy of Orff Schulwerk. There, improvisation helps students improve their discrimination skills in listening — an outcome that is obviously beneficial to musicians but to many others as well. Considering that mapping, in its broadest sense, is an improvisational activity, teachers can utilize various activities with graphic images to improve their students’ discrimination skills in looking. An important component of this approach is addressing questions with more than one answer. In such a situation, teachers no longer must be the exclusive masters of lesson content, but become co-investigators and co-discoverers with their students helping them articulate their findings, interpret their analyses, and defend their interpretations. Teachers also play an important role in helping students bridge the gap between empirical or tacit or crystal derived from their observations with the formalized or crystalized knowledge found in their text books, atlases, and from the world-wide web.

Dr. Castleden holds the Canada Research Chair in Reconciling Relations for Health, Environments, and Communities and is an Associate Professor in the Department of Geography at Queen’s University.

As a broadly trained health geographer, Dr. Castleden mainly undertakes community-based participatory research in partnership with Indigenous peoples in Canada on issues that are important to them and fall within her programmatic areas of expertise: the nexus of culture, place, and power; and health equity through social and environmental justice lenses. Since 2009, she has been the Director of the Health, Environment, and Communities Research Lab (www.heclab.com), a vibrant community of research associates, trainees, and staff.

After obtaining a Bachelor of Arts Degree (Anthropology and Native Studies) from the University of Manitoba (1996), Dr. Castleden went on to obtain a Master of Education Degree in Adult and Higher Education (2002), and a PhD (Human Geography) at the University of Alberta (2007). From there, she held NEARBC and SSHRC Postdoctoral Fellowships at the University of Victoria before taking up a tenure-track appointment in the School for Resource and Environmental Studies at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia (2009-2014). She began her appointment at Queen’s University in 2014.

To learn more about Dr. Castleden’s program of research, current projects, recent publications, and opportunities to study with her, please visit her Research Lab’s website, the A SHARED Future website, or follow her on Twitter: @H_Castleden and @fortheHECofit.

Links:

Health, Environment, Communities (HEC) Research Lab

Connect with Heather on Twitter

Research Interests:

Dr. Castleden’s research interests include community-based participatory research, Indigenous research, Indigenous-settler relations, environment and health interconnections, research ethics, and arts-based methodologies. Her research is interdisciplinary and collaborative, and strives to address environmental and social injustices and health inequities. Specifically, her research is primarily unified through: participatory research with Indigenous partners concerning issues that are important to them; shared development and testing of innovative qualitative research tools that adhere to Indigenous principles for decolonizing methodologies; and engagement in studies concerning the ethical tensions and institutional barriers associated with community-based participatory research processes and outcomes.

Her work strives to build a program of integrated, methodologically- and ethically-sound community-based participatory research in the context of Canada. Her research is geared towards developing a response to these and other issues in a way that maintains her record of engaging in innovative scholarship that plans for and creates social and environmental change. She describes her work as the product of a balancing act between academic engagement and advocacy.

Remembering Jim Cannon - A Man of the University and the Community

Born in Toronto 1941 and died on August 20, 2014 in Amherstburg, Ontario

Jim was an outstanding colleague and friend to many within the University and the local community. He was also a great athlete, who, as an outstanding goalie, led the McMaster Marlins hockey team to their first and only CIS University Cup in 1962-3. He had the opportunity to continue towards the NHL or to enroll for a PhD at the University of Washington in Economic Geography. His choice of Washington was made easier, perhaps, because he played before the NHL expansion and that was a time when goalies were long standing fixtures in the league. He graduated from Washington in 1969, a top prospect in a growing field. Queen’s Geography immediately recruited him where he remained, aside from one year visiting positions with McGill and Dalhousie, until his retirement in 1997.

Tenured in 1971, Jim became an established expert in Canadian Economic Geography.  He was “Mr. Canada” to his students and colleagues and was known for his careful, detailed research and information packed lectures. He brought those strengths to administration serving as a long standing member and Chair of the Department’s undergraduate committee. He was the major resource for students and colleagues in all matters dealing with curriculum and degree programs. He firmly believed that rules, while useful, were only guidelines that should not stand in the way of good education. His graduate students certainly appreciated the patient,  conscientious mentor that would accept long distance phone calls late at night and who gently and steadily set so many of them on their career paths. His formula, “…. read, read and read some more…. develop and defend your own perspectives” served his students very well and defined how he approached his own career and his life.

While the university was very important to Jim it was not his whole life. First and foremost he was a family man dedicated to his wife and to the ongoing education of their two children. He became a coach and manager in the Church Athletic League and Kingston Minor Hockey Association. The great success of the Kingston Old Timers’ Hockey Team over many years owed a lot to the former Marlins’ goalie upon whom few could score.  It was only at the memorial service for Jim that one of his former Old Timers’ teammates revealed the secret of scoring on Jim. Few knew that Jim’s eyesight was deteriorating (a reason for his early retirement) and that the only way to score was to shoot from a distance. Jim was a long standing member of the Kingston Yacht Club and the owner of his own 30 foot sailboat.  He was also an active member of the Marine Museum of the Great Lakes. When he moved a few years ago to Amherstburg he sold his boat and he and his wife became active kayakers. Jim was also the go-to research person for the Portsmouth Villagers Association and his careful work became the backstop for many of their concerns and projects and the basis of many conversations with those interested in making Kingston a better place to live. Jim’s involvement with the community, coupled with his caring and kindness, made him friends throughout Kingston in many walks of life.

Jim is survived by his wife Linda and his two children, Todd and Tanya, who all live in Amherstburg.

- Rowland (Roly) Tinline (Professor Emeritus, Geography Department)

Canada Research Chair in Historical Geographies of Nature (2003-2012)

I grew up in Stó:lō Territory and my degrees in history (BA - 1989; MA - 1994) are from the University of British Columbia where I became fascinated with the relations between stories and places. A Commonwealth Scholarship allowed me to follow my interests in environmental history over to historical geography at the University of Cambridge in England. I received my Ph.D. from the Cambridge Department of Geography in 2001. I was Junior Research Fellow in Historical Geography at Churchill College, Cambridge (1999-2002) and arrived in Kingston with my partner and son to experience my first Ontario winter, January 2003. Since then, we have enjoyed the lakes in every season and the creative communities which enliven the University and our neck of the woods near Skeleton Park.

Links

• Sonic Arts of Place Laboratory
• Publications
• Students

Research Interests

Where is 'nature' and for whom?

This question is key in my current work on historical geographies of nature which involves the study of cultural encounters between people and places in several interrelated projects, some SSHRC-funded:

SSHRC Insight Grant (2014-2020) Recording Nature: The Life Geography of William W.H. Gunn. 

SSHRC NFRF (2019-2022) Rekindle the Past to Spark the Future: New Frontiers in Glacier Research. Collaborator with Laura Thomson (PI), Department of Geography and Planning, Queen’s University

SSHRC Insight Grant (2020-2024) A Totem Pole on a Pile of Garbage: Contending with Colonial and Environmental Violence in Kingston, Ontario. Collaborator with Dorit Naaman (PI), Laura Murray and Erin Sutherland, et al. 

 

Bray Heritage (Carl Bray & Associates Ltd.) is a heritage consulting firm specializing in the assessment, planning and development of cultural heritage resources. Carl Bray, Principal, is a heritage planner and landscape architect with graduate degrees in urban design and cultural geography. He has over 30 years of professional experience in both the public and private sectors and has successfully completed projects across Canada and in the United States, the Caribbean and Great Britain.

Dr. Bray teaches courses in heritage planning and community design.

Credentials:

• BLA (Guelph)
• MAUD (Oxford Brookes)
• DPhil (University College London)
• OALA, CSLA, CAHP, RPP, MCIP

Links:

• Bray Heritage

George Bevan is an Associate Professor in the Department of Geography and Planning, and holds cross-appointments in the Departments of Classics, Geological Science and Engineering, and Art History/Art Conservation. After earning a PhD in 2005 from the University of Toronto, he came to Queen’s University in 2007, where he was first appointed to the Department of Classics, before joining Geography and Planning in 2016. George’s undergraduate teaching covers the History of Cartography, Energy Geography, as well as Photogrammetry, Remote Sensing, and Geographical Information Science.

Research Interests

George’s lab focuses on the application of Geomatics to the documentation of cultural heritage. Informed by Critical Heritage Studies, the lab uses various measurement technologies to provide accurate and practical solutions to documentation challenges. Current areas of active research include the use of Remotely Piloted Autonomous Systems (RPAS) to record active archaeological excavations at the site of Stobi (Republic of North Macedonia), the application of photogrammetric monoplotting to combine aerial and terrestrial photos to document heritage landscapes, the stereo analysis of declassified CORONA and HEXAGON satellite imagery, the historical geography of the Balkans, and the application of the Cultural Stone Stability Index (CSSI) in stone conservation. New areas of interest in his lab include aerial LiDAR, Synthetic Aperture Radar, and the Photogrammetric processing of scanned aerial photography. Student applications to work in any of these areas, and in tangential areas, are welcome at the MA, MSc and PhD levels. Undergraduate theses are also welcome from qualified students. 

Links

Balkan Heritage Field School

Sukriti Agarwal is a Senior Planner at the City of Kingston. She was previously an environmental planner for the Cataraqui Region Conservation Authority and an urban planner/designer for a Los Angeles consulting firm.

Sukriti teaches GIS in Planning and Land Development and Planning Using CAD Software.

Credentials:

• B.Arch. (Punjab)
• MPL (U. Southern California)
• MCIP, RPP, AICP

Ajay Agarwal teaches Physical Planning, Community Design, Healthy Communities, and Employment Analysis at Queen’s University. Ajay earned his Ph.D. from University of Southern California (USC), Los Angeles where he also taught Urban and Regional Economics, and The Urban Context of Planning. Ajay was born and raised in India where he practiced as a consulting architect for several years before commencing his graduate studies in the United States.

Credentials:

• B.Arch. (Lucknow University, India)
• M.Tech. (CEPT University, India)
• M.Pl., Ph.D. (USC, Los Angeles)
• MCIP, RPP

Research Interests:

Ajay's research interests are in exploring the determinants of Urban spatial structure, and examining the emerging travel behaviour of Generation Y. Presently, he is investigating mobility patterns of Generation Y using household travel survey data from the Greater Toronto Area.

Curriculum Vitae (PDF 49 kB)