The Marston Lecture in Geography was established in 2015 by Geography alumnus Richard A. Marston (M.S. ‘76, Ph.D. ‘80). The Marston Lecture was created to bring national and international scholars who have made important contributions in the areas of geographic inquiry to OSU.
Fall 2024 Marston Lecture
Wednesday, November 20, 2024
Title: Geography, Intelligence, and Foreign Policy: A State Department Geographer’s Perspective
Speaker: Brooke Marston, M.S. '14
Talk summary: The Office of the Geographer and Global Issues is a little-known group with considerable influence on the American geographic community. Established over 100 years ago in the aftermath of WWI, the office conducts all-source research and analysis on current foreign policy issues, coordinates between policymakers and the Intelligence Community, and provides guidance to federal agencies on questions of international boundaries, sovereignty claims, and cartography. During this lecture, Brooke will speak about her career in the office and how geography and intelligence are key focal points for understanding complex, politically sensitive, and often fast-breaking multilateral challenges facing diplomats.
Speaker Bio: Brooke Marston is a cartographer and foreign names specialist in the U.S. Department of State’s Office of the Geographer and Global Issues in the Bureau of Intelligence and Research. She is the Department’s member to the U.S. Board on Geographic Names, serves as chair of the Board’s Foreign Names Committee, and represents the United States at the United Nations Group of Experts on Geographical Names. She is president of the North American Cartographic Information Society and an active member of the International Cartographic Association Commission on Mountain Cartography. Her work has taken her to the United Kingdom, Croatia, Austria, Poland, and New Zealand. Brooke holds an M.S. in geography from Oregon State University and a B.S. in geography and B.M. in oboe performance from the University of Colorado Boulder.
Past Marston Lectures
- 2023 (November) - Dawn Wright - The Dive of a Lifetime to the Deepest Place on Earth
- 2023 (May) - William Moseley - When agronomy flirts with markets, gender and nutrition: A political ecology of the new green revolution for Africa and women’s food security in Burkina Faso; Beth Tellman - Understanding flood risk from space: Opportunities to adapt to changing risk and catalyze climate justice; Cascade Tuholske - Linking food security, climate change, and urbanization across Africa
- 2022 - Julia Corbett - New directions for communicating the climate crisis, and Jenna Tilt - Resilience re-imagined: Why equity matters
- 2019 - Jane Lubchenco - Tackling wicked environmental problems with complex-adaptive-systems thinking
- 2018 - Simon Donner - Living islands: Coping with sea-level rise in Kiribati and the Pacific islands
- 2016 - Alexander B. Murphy - The integration struggle in Europe: Geographical considerations
- 2015 - Richard A. Marston - Physical geography and geographic information science in environmental management: Past lessons and prospects for the future
Richard A. Marston
Richard A. Marston is a University Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Geography at Kansas State University. He served as the 102nd President of the Association of American Geographers from 2005-06. He is an Emeritus Co-Editor-in-Chief of the journal, Geomorphology. The American Institute of Hydrology first certified Marston as Professional Hydrologist #488 in 1984. Marston is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, American Geographical Society, Explorers Club, Geological Society of America, and Royal Geographical Society. The American Association of Geographers awarded him with Distinguished Service Honors (2003), the Barry Bishop Distinguished Career Award in Mountain Geography (2007), and the Mel Marcus Distinguished Career Award in Geomorphology (2016).