Our Department's 50th-Anniversary celebrations in the Fall were recently featured by the university: Click here to go to the page.
In addition, SMU Geography Alumna ,Dr. Amber Silver was also featured in the Alumni News - Maroon & White Newsletter.
Saint Mary's hosted the 2025 Atlantic Division of Canadian Association of Geographers Annual Meeting.
Part of the Arts with Impact Lecture series and keynote speaker was Dr. Amber Silver (BSc '10) a former Honours Geography student who went on to earn MES and PhD degrees after graduating from Saint Mary's University. She is now an Associate Professor with the Department of Emergency Management and Homeland Security at the University at Albany, New York.
Dr. Silver addressed how Atlantic Canadians perceive and respond to hazardous weather and the role of social media in information searching. And the impact on the future of emergency management in an increasingly online world.
There was a reception that followed at the Gorsebrook Lounge were alumni, former instructors, current students, staff and faculty could socialize and celebrate the 50th Anniversary of the establishment of the Department of Geography at Saint Mary’s University.
Love remote sensing and working with GIS apps? In celebration of GIS Day, Canadian Space Agency had been invited to give an update on their projects. Also present were representatives from Geomatics Association of Nova Scotia. Dr. Jean Bergeron, Mission scientist, Sun-Earth System Science, Canadian Space Agency (CSA) gave a talk on “An overview of the Canadian Space Agency’s ongoing and planned space missions”. And Dirk Werle, Senior Expert on Earth Observation, Earth Observation Utilization and Services, Canadian Space Agency gave a talk on “Developing applications and supporting communities for satellite-based Earth Observation at CSA”.
The 2025 Korean Diaspora Studies Conference: Borders, Boundaries, and Displacement was a unique opportunity for the Atlantic community and scholars of the Korean diaspora to gather, share knowledge and plan for the future. Speakers included international experts, scholars from universities across Canada, and graduate students and post-doctoral fellows.
The conference was co-organized with KORE (Korean Office for Research and Education) at York University and presented by the Department of Geography at Saint Mary's University in Halifax, NS. This marks the first-ever Korean Studies conference in the history of higher education in Nova Scotia.
The one-day conference included keynotes, panel discussions with global leaders in Korean Studies, and a public screening and discussion of the 2023 film Past Lives.
As part of Homecoming 2025, the Patrick Power Library and SMU Alumni presented a special public talk in the Library’s Faculty Author Series, celebrating the 50th anniversary of both the Library and the Geography Department.
Presentation was done by Dr. Cathy Conrad, a researcher of migration whose work is deeply informed by lived experience. Dr. Conrad is not only a scholar of migration—she is also the mother, wife, and daughter of migrants. Her autoethnography talk explores these lived experiences and offers a deeply human perspective on migration.
Contemporary migration research is awash in understanding what motivates a person to embark on a migration journey. The media oversimplifies the narratives as being either related to fleeing conflict or wanting the spoils of the west. Dr. Conrad's stories and understandings dig into the human desires of mobility, of aspirations of living a life fulfilled, of adventure and curiosity. She does this through the lens of her personal family stories from The Gambia, West Africa and from the port of Bremerhaven, Germany.
Dr. Conrad is currently a Professor of Geography and Environmental Studies at Saint Mary's University. She is also a SMU alum (BA ’93) herself, a professor for 26 years, and the mother of both a current SMU student and a SMU graduate.
Grace Robertson has been selected as the Canadian Association of Geographers (CAG) Undergraduate Award winner from Saint Mary's for 2025.
Based on performance in GEOG 2386 Introduction to Mapping and GIS, Liam McLaughlin has been selected as the winner of the prize for 2024-25, and Rian Murphy has been selected as the runner-up.
Megan O’Brien (MA Geography) won the award at the 2024 conference of the Atlantic Division of the Canadian Association of Geographers (ACAG) hosted by Mount Allison University. Her presentation was titled: “A New Old-Growth Potential Index for Nova Scotia.” Megan is in her first year of the MA Geography program and is supervised by Peter Bush.
Olivia Kokkinen has been selected as the Canadian Association of Geographers (CAG) Undergraduate Award winner from Saint Mary's for 2024.
Based on performance in GEOG 2386 Introduction to Mapping and GIS, Sophie Kent-Purcell has been selected as the winner of the prize for 2023-24, and Daniel Wilson has been selected as the runner-up.
Jacob Wisbey has been selected for the annual Environmental Studies Prize given by the School of the Environment.
Carmen Rojas-Fischer has been selected as the Canadian Association of Geographers (CAG) Undergraduate Award winner from Saint Mary's for 2023.
Based on performance in GEOG 2386 Introduction to Mapping and GIS, Alexis Brewer has been selected as the winner of the prize for 2022-23, and Grace Robertson has been selected as the runner-up.
See the university press release with details of this announcement.
Scale - Understanding the Environment
Available for downloading to members of the Saint Mary's University community through the library via this link:link-springer-com.library.smu.ca/book/10.1007/978-3-031-15733-2