Ken Foote

Director, Urban and Community Studies

Geography

Prof. Ken Foote was recruited to head the UConn Geography Department in 2013 and has served in many administrative and leadership roles throughout his career.  In 2019 he was appointed director of UConn’s dynamic Urban and Community Studies Program based at its Hartford campus.

His interests are geographic information science particularly Internet-based applications.  Much of his work has focus cultural and historical geography, particularly American and European landscape and urban history.  He has written extensively no how events of violence and tragedy are remembered and commemorated and his book Shadowed Ground was a major contribution to this research area.

He has been an advocate for the effective use of instructional technologies throughout his career and has been very active in promoting professional development for undergraduate and graduate students, early career faculty, and department leaders.  He has led a number projects in these areas including The Geographer’s Craft Project and the Virtual Geography Department Project, funded by the National Science Foundation.  He also established the Geography Faculty Development Alliance, also funded initially by the NSF, to provide professional development opportunities for early career geography faculty. Begun in 2002, the GFDA continues under the sponsorship of the American Association of Geographers (AAG). 

Ken has served as president of both the National Council for Geographic Education (2006) and the American Association of Geographers (2010-11). Among his awards are the AAG’s J.B. Jackson Prize (1998), the AAG’s Gilbert Grosvenor Honors in Geographic Education (2005), the Royal Geographical Society’s Taylor and Francis Award (2012), the Education Award of the University Consortium for GIScience (2013), the National Council for Geographic Education’s Distinguished Mentor Award (2013), the AAG’s Susan Hardwick Excellence in Mentoring Award (2016).  He was also among the first group of twenty scholars elected Fellows of the American Association of Geographers in 2018.