Lydia Mihelic Pulsipher is a cultural-historical geographer who studies the landscapes of ordinary people through the lens of geography. She has contributed to several geography-related exhibits at the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C., including "Seeds of Change," which featured her research in the eastern Caribbean on human adaptation to the Neo-troics in the post-Columbian period, including the present. She and her graduate students have also looked at cultural geography and national/ethnic identity issues in the new Central European members of the European Union, and at the impact of tourism development on traditional landscapes in these countries. In January, 2009, Dr. Pulsipher was awarded the Preston E. James Eminent Latin Americanist Career Award, by the Conference of Latin Americanist Geographers, for work on the cultural and environmental geography of the Eastern Caribbean and Latin America, and public outreach through collaborations with the Smithsonian Institution and the Seeds of Change exhibit.