Poverty Researcher Presents ‘Visual Poverty Politics’

WORCESTER, MA - From Clark University: Clark University’s Graduate School of Geography will host distinguished poverty researcher Sarah Elwood for “Visual Poverty Politics,” aWallace W. Atwood Lecture, at 7p.m. Thursday, Nov. 9, in Tilton Hall, 2nd floor of the Higgins University Center, 950 Main Street, Worcester.

Elwood is professor of geography at the University of Washington; she conducts collaborative research on middle class poverty politics in mixed-income neighborhoods in Buenos Aires and Seattle as well as research on visual politics in poverty activism. She is co-founder, along with fellow UW professor Victoria Larson, of the Relational Poverty Network (RPN). Funded by the National Science Foundation, the RPN convenes a community of scholars who work within and beyond academia to develop conceptual frameworks, research methodologies, and pedagogies for the study of relational poverty. Relational poverty shifts from thinking about ‘the poor and poor others’ to thinking about relationships of power and privilege.

During her talk, Professor Elwood will discuss her research, and analyze the creative visual practices used by Real Change, an economic and racial justice organization in Seattle that confronts the city’s ongoing shelter crisis.

Professor Elwood’s research contributes to relational poverty, urban geography, visual politics/methods, and critical digital geographies. Her work has appeared in publications including Progress in Human Geography, Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, Annals of the Association of American Geographers, and the International Journal of Geographical Information Science.

The annual Wallace W. Atwood Lecture, hosted by the Graduate School of Geography, honors the founder of the Graduate School and President of Clark University from 1921 to 1946. For more information, call 508-793-7434.

Founded in 1887 in Worcester, Massachusetts, Clark University is a liberal arts-based research university addressing natural, social and human imperatives from local to global scales. Nationally renowned as a college that changes lives, Clark is a transformative force in higher education today. LEEP (Liberal Education and Effective Practice) is Clark’s pioneering model of education that combines a robust liberal arts curriculum with life-changing world and workplace experiences. Clark’s faculty and students work across boundaries to develop solutions to complex challenges in the natural sciences, psychology, geography, management, urban education, Holocaust and genocide studies, environmental studies, and international development and social change. The Clark educational experience embodies the University’s motto: Challenge Convention. Change Our World.

Image via Clark University