Anne E. Mosher | Source | Associate Professor, Geography and the Environment Department at Syracuse Uni...

Dr. Anne E. Mosher is associate professor of geography and the environment at Syracuse University. A senior research fellow in the Maxwell School’s Moynihan Institute of Global Affairs, she is also a member of the inaugural class of New York Public Scholars for the New York Council for the Humanities (2015-17), a past board member to the Alden Street Foundation—a local 504(c)(3) non-profit organization that provides seed money for community-based projects in low-income neighborhoods—and volunteers at St. Lucy’s Food Pantry on Syracuse’s Near Westside.

Mosher’s teaching and research interests focus on the history of urban planning and infrastructure (including the Erie Canal), engaged placemaking, crisis and disaster management, public memory as expressed via social media, and interdisciplinary theories of space and place. Having published in her discipline’s leading journals, Mosher’s 2004 book—"Capital’s Utopia" (Johns Hopkins University Press), is based on work that won the Association of American Geographers’ Nystrom Award for Best Ph.D. Dissertation research and chronicles the creation of Vandergrift, Pennsylvania, the first model industrial town planned by Frederick Law Olmsted’s landscape architectural firm. Currently, she is writing a book that sits at the intersection of mixed methods social science research and the digital humanities. It explores user-generated content about New York State found on three Web 2.0 internet platforms: Trip Advisor, Ancestry, and Facebook. With a working title of "Low Bridge, Everybody Down: Social Media Geographies and the Reinvention of New York State and the Erie Canal," Mosher’s book suggests relevant “talking points” for fostering local civic engagement, possible sites for grassroots-driven economic and social development, and calls for geographers and historians to pay greater attention to the work of “citizen” and “DIY” lay scholars who are publishing their work for online audiences.

Dr. Mosher is past editor of the journal Historical Geography, the founder of Histgeog: The Historical Geography Internet Discussion Group (now H-Histgeog on H-Net), and past book review editor for the Americas for Journal of Historical Geography. A holder of Ph.D. and Master of Science degrees in geography from the Pennsylvania State University, Mosher attended Lancaster University (U.K.) where she studied social (public) administration, comparative foreign policy, and urban political geography. She graduated magna cum laude from Macalester College with double majors in geography and international studies.