Meet the Team

Owen Dwyer

Owen Dwyer, Ph.D., investigates American cultural landscapes. In 2009, his study of racialized collective memory and public space – Civil Rights Memorials and the Geography of Memory (co-authored with Derek Alderman) – earned the American Association of Geographers “Globe Medal” for advancing public understanding of key social issues. His most recent work focuses on bicycle-related urban redevelopment; specifically, the role played by cultural landscapes in recasting marginalized public spaces as popular sites for urbane consumption and residential living. His research draws on interviews, archival records, photography and geographic information systems. He is a professor in the Department of Geography, Indiana University School of Liberal Arts at IUPUI. He has served as the department’s Director of Graduate Studies, a Faculty Fellow at the Center for Teaching and Learning, and associate editor for the Journal of Geography. The Rockefeller Foundation as well as grants from the National Science Foundation, the Graham Foundation for the Fine Arts and Indiana University has supported his fieldwork and publications. Before arriving in Indianapolis, he was a postdoctoral fellow at Emory University’s Institute for the Liberal Arts and the University of British Columbia’s Peter Wall Instituted for Advanced Studies. His dissertation was selected for inclusion in Columbia University’s Buell Center for the Study of American Architecture’s bi-annual dissertation colloquium.