Lydia Mihelic Pulsipher is a cultural-historical geographer who studies the landscapes and lifeways of ordinary people through the lenses of archaeology, geography, and ethnography. She has contributed to several geography-related exhibits at the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C., including Seeds of Change, which featured the research she and Conrad Goodwin did in the eastern Caribbean. Lydia Pulsipher has ongoing research projects in the eastern Caribbean (historical archaeology) and in central Europe, where she is interested in various aspects of the post-Communist transition and social inclusion policies in the European Union. Her graduate students have studied human ecology issues in the Caribbean and border issues and issues of national identity and exclusion in several central European countries. She has taught cultural, gender, European, North American, and Mesoamerican geography at the University of Tennessee at Knoxville since 1980; through her research, she has given many students their first experience in fieldwork abroad. Previously she taught at Hunter College and Dartmouth College. She received her B.A. from Macalester College, her M.A. from Tulane University, and her Ph.D. from Southern Illinois University. For personal enjoyment, she works in her gardens, cans the produce, bakes rhubarb pies, and encourages the musical talents of her grandchildren. Alex A. Pulsipher is an independent scholar in Knoxville, Tennessee, who has conducted research on vulnerability to climate change, sustainable communities, and the diffusion of green technologies in the United States. In the early 1990s, Alex spent time in South Asia working for a sustainable development research center. He then completed a B.A. at Wesleyan University in Connecticut, writing his undergraduate thesis on the history of Hindu nationalism. Beginning in 1995, Alex contributed to the research and writing of the first edition of World Regional Geography with Lydia Pulsipher. Since then he has continued to write and restructure content for subsequent editions, and has created innumerable maps and over 120 photo essays. He has also traveled to South America, Southeast Asia, South Asia, and Europe to collect information in support of the text and for the Web site. In addition to his work on World Regional Geography, Alex developed the first, second, and third editions of World Regional Geography Concepts. He has a master s degree in geography from Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts.
Ola Johansson is a cultural and urban geographer with a particular interest in music. As a cultural geographer, he has studied local music scenes and venues, touring patterns, national identity and cultural hybridity in music, and Swedish popular music. Ola is also co-author of the book Sound, Society, and the Geography of Popular Music. As an urban geographer, he is interested in urban policy and governance, the formation of entertainment districts, and place branding. He received both a bachelor s and a master s degree in social and economic geography from Lund University in Sweden. He then moved to the United States and graduated with a Ph.D. in geography from the University of Tennessee in 2004. In the past, Ola has been a researcher with the Tennessee Valley Authority in Knoxville and a guest scholar at Linnaeus University in Sweden. He is currently professor of geography at the University of Pittsburgh at Johnstown, Pennsylvania. Ola has been a behind-the-scenes contributor to World Regional Geography for several years and is now excited to be a co-author. In his spare time, Ola enjoys playing soccer, travelling, cooking, and going to concerts.
Conrad Mac Goodwin assists in the writing and production of World Regional Geography and the World Regional Geography Concepts version in a variety of ways. Mac, Lydia s husband, is an anthropologist and historical archaeologist with a B.A. in anthropology from the University of California, Santa Barbara; an M.A. in historical archaeology from the College of William and Mary; and a Ph.D. in archaeology from Boston University. He specializes in sites created during the European colonial era in North America, the Caribbean, and the Pacific. He has particular expertise in the archaeology of agricultural systems, gardens, domestic landscapes, and urban spaces including writing an archaeological management plan for Wilmington, Delaware. In addition to work in archaeology and on the textbook, for the past 10 years he has been conducting research on wines and winemaking in Slovenia, and delivering papers on these topics at professional geography meetings. In 2013, Knoxville Mayor Madeline Rogero appointed him to a four-year term on the Metropolitan Planning Commission as a result of his work with local neighborhood and environmental organizations. For relaxation, Mac works in his organic garden, builds stone walls (including a pizza oven), and is a slow-food chef.
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