Scholars Join Geography and the Environment Department

One of them, Chie Sakakibara, is a cluster hire for the Native American and Indigenous Studies program.

At the start of the spring 2022 semester, the Maxwell School’s Geography and the Environment Department welcomed two new faculty members, one of whom was hired as part of the University’s research clusters initiative.

Chie Sakakibara, associate professor of geography and the environment and Native American and Indigenous studies, is a scholar in global Indigenous environmental studies and one of two recent cluster hires for the Native American and Indigenous Studies (NAIS) program shared by Maxwell and the College of Arts and Sciences.

Sakakibara’s work explores the interplay of climate change and Indigenous resilience. She is of Ryūkyūan descent, an Indigenous group of southwestern Japan including the Okinawan archipelago and its diaspora within and beyond Japan. Her research focuses on the humanistic dimensions of global climate change in Native North America, specifically on Indigenous sovereignty, health and well-being and environmental justice in Arctic Alaska.

Sakakibara holds a Ph.D. in geography from the University of Oklahoma, with an undergraduate degree in Native American studies from the same institution. She previously served as an associate professor in the environmental studies program at Oberlin College and has published widely in academic journals. Her work in the Arctic has received three grants from the National Science Foundation’s (NSF’s) Arctic Social Sciences Program, and the Barrow Arctic Science Consortium, resulting in the publication of her recent book, Whale Snow: Iñupiat, Climate Change, and Multispecies Resilience in Arctic Alaska (University of Arizona Press, 2020), which was awarded the American Association of Geographers Meridian Book Award for Outstanding Scholarly Books in Geography.

Also joining the faculty is Karl Offen, professor of geography and the environment. His research focuses on historical geography, political ecology, Latin America and the Caribbean, as well as Atlantic world and map studies.

Before joining Maxwell, Offen served as a faculty member at Oberlin College for six years, two of which were as chair of the environmental studies program. He was a faculty member at the University of Oklahoma from 2000–2015.

Offen’s published works include two books, The Awakening Coast: An Anthology of Moravian Writings from Mosquitia and Eastern Nicaragua, 1849-1899 (University of Nebraska Press, 2014) and Mapping Latin America: A Cartographic Reader (University of Chicago Press, 2011). He serves on the editorial board for the Atlantic Crossings book series (University of Alabama Press, 2022-present), the Journal of Historical Geography and Mesoamérica. He formerly served as the chair of the Conference of Latin American Geography.

Offen earned a Ph.D. from the University of Texas at Austin in 1999.

—Jessica Youngman

Sociologist Named Co-Director of Lender Center

Gretchen W. Purser, associate professor of sociology, has been appointed co-director of the Lender Center for Social Justice. Her appointment begins on July 1. She will serve alongside co-director James Haywood Rolling Jr., professor of arts education in the College of Visual and Performing Arts and teaching and leadership in the School of Education, who was appointed co-director in September 2021.

Launched in September 2018, the Lender Center was funded by a $5 million gift by Syracuse University Life Trustee Marvin Lender ’63 B.A. (PSc)/’19 Hon. and his wife, Helene Lender ’65 to create a multidisciplinary center that would include research support, symposia, and faculty and student fellowships. The Lender Center at first was administered by the School of Education but has since moved into Academic Affairs.

Karl Offen

Purser’s research focuses on work and labor disparities, urban poverty, social theory, ethnography, community-based action, law and punishment, and housing and homelessness. Last fall she was part of a three-member team that received a $350,000 grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation to investigate how building local power among tenants can enhance community health and well-being.

Purser was the inaugural recipient of the Dr. Ralph E. Montonna Professorship in 2020, the same year she received the Excellence in Graduate Education Faculty Recognition Award. In 2013, she received the Meredith Teaching Recognition Award. She earned a Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley.