Navigator Nainoa Thompson to be honored at international meeting of geographers

HS teachers, students encouraged to sign up for special conference rates

Storied Native Hawaiian navigator and explorer Nainoa Thompson will be recognized as Honorary Geographer of the Year when the American Association of Geographers (AAG) holds its 2024 annual meeting April 16–20, at the Hawaiʻi Convention Center. The Department of Geography and Environment (GEO) in the College of Social Sciences at UH Mānoa is the lead organizer in Hawaiʻi.

AAG, headquartered in Washington, D.C., has 10,000 members worldwide and was founded in 1904. 

Hawaiʻi high school teachers, students can attend

AAG is encouraging high school teachers and students to contact the organization directly for special conference rates. Educators, and high school students over the age of 18, may also be eligible to serve as paid conference assistants to defray the costs of their registration. Contact meeting@aag.org for both opportunities.

More than 100 sessions will be scheduled per day with formats either in-person or streaming on a wide range of geography topics, including community and political geographies, economic geographies, climate and environment, medical geography and technical topics. Themes in 2024 are Reciprocal Scholarship, Colonialism and Resources, and Recovery and Restoration.

On the AAG Presidential Plenary panel is Aurora Kagawa-Viviani, assistant professor of GEO and the UH Mānoa Water Resources Research Center, and a member of the Hawaiʻi Commission on Water Resource Management. See more about the session here.

“We are so honored that AAG has selected Honolulu to host its annual conference, which regularly draws thousands of international attendees,” said Reece Jones, an AAG Fellow and professor/chair of GEO. “Since geographers explore both the Earth’s surface and the human societies spread across the planet, Hawaiʻi and its multicultural persona is the perfect place for geographers to gather, and to recognize Nainoa Thompson as AAG Honorary Geographer.”

For a glimpse of AAG’s sessions related to education and career opportunities in geography and the environment, see this website.

For more info on the AAG conference, see this website.