World Regional Geography

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.

Alex A. Pulsipher is an independent scholar in Knoxville, TN, focusing on urban development, sustainability, and global environmental change.  In the early 1990s, Alex spent some time in South Asia working for a development research center and then went on to do an undergraduate thesis on the history of Hindu nationalism at Wesleyan University.  Beginning in 1995, Alex worked full time on the research and writing of the first edition of World Regional Geography.  In 1999 and 2000, he traveled to South America, Southeast Asia, and South Asia, where he collected information for the second edition of World Regional Geography and for the website.  In 2000 and 2001, he returned to writing material and designing maps for the second edition.  In 2010, he earned a masters degree in Geography from Clark University, where he studied the diffusion of green technologies in the context of environmental change.