This year’s NESTVAL meeting will be held online 14-16 October.
We welcome your support to make a success of our annual conference. Participation also helps support geography in the New England/St. Lawrence Valley, including our many student awards, our journal The Northeastern Geographer, our Geography Bowl competition, as well as providing a forum for geography students, faculty, and professionals all across our region. Our conference will use a slightly different format this year. We will be coordinating our meeting with five other AAG regional divisions, as well as the Applied Geography Conference. NESTVAL sessions will be online. This innovative new effort is called the Regions Connect/Climate Forward Initiative. The aim is both to reduce the carbon footprint of our meetings and to address quarantine issues that might disrupt in-person meetings this fall. One of the great advantages of this plan is that we will be able to organize sessions featuring NESTVAL students, faculty, programs, and topics, but can also attend sessions offered by all the other regions.Registration for NESTVAL will allow you to attend any session across all 7 meetings.
Additionally, registration fees are being kept very low: $20 for undergrads, $30 for grads, $50 for faculty/professionals.
Ken Foote (ken.foote@uconn.edu), of UConn’s Geography Department and Urban and Community Studies Program is coordinating our NESTVAL sessions. Registration and submission of abstracts has just begun and will run through the end of September using the AAG’s conference registration system:http://www.aag.org/cs/calendar_of_events/aag_regions_connect_2021
Please consider submitting a paper or poster; organizing a paper or panel session; participating in the Geography Bowl; or organizing a bowl team for your department. There will be awards for student papers and posters, both undergrad and graduate, as well as the traditional Geography Bowl competition. Through the summer, Ken has been working with colleagues all across the U.S. to organize sessions that will focus jobs and careers for undergrads and grads, early career faculty, department leaders, and standalone geographers. Many of these will be organized for Thursday and Friday, 10/14 and 10/15, so that students can attend. The final schedule will be available here in early October, but the preliminary plan is: Thursday, 10/14 Noon-4:30 ET, Jobs and Careers and Professional Development Sessions shared across all regions. 5-7:30 ET, NESTVAL Annual Business Meeting Friday, 10/15 10-4:30 ET, NESTVAL Paper and Poster Sessions (student papers and posters in first two sessions), plus Jobs and Careers and Professional Development Sessions shared across all regions. 5-8pm ET NESTVAL Geography Bowl Saturday, 10/16 10-1:30pm ET, NESTVAL Paper and Poster Sessions 1:30-3:30pm ET, Virtual screening and meeting with the director of a new independent film “A Reckoning in Boston “ a powerful documentary about systemic racism and racial justice in the Dorchester section of Boston.