Dr. Kenneth Foote is a professor of geography at the University of Connecticut where he also directs the Urban and Community Studies Program. His research focuses on historic preservation, heritage tourism, and the commemorative landscapes of the U.S. and Europe, especially the way events of violence and tragedy are interpreted and memorialized. His recent research has also focused on the spatial dimension of racialized and gendered violence in the U.S. In addition, Foote is also known for his work in geospatial technologies, especially geovisualization, as well as his efforts to improve professional development opportunities for early-career academics and department leaders.
Among his books in these and other areas are Shadowed Ground: America’s Landscapes of Violence and Tragedy (2003), the co-authored Narrating Space / Spatializing Narrative (2016), and the co-edited Re-Reading Cultural Geography (1994) and Teaching GIScience and Technology in Higher Education (2012), and Aspiring Academics: A Resource Book for Graduate Students and Early Career Faculty (2009). His current project is a co-authored book on Hungary’s contested sites of memory entitled Places of the Past in the Hungarian Landscape: Contests over Public Memory in the 20th and 21st Centuries.
Foote is a past president and fellow of the American Association of Geographers (2010-11) and a past president the U.S. National Council for Geographic Education (2006). He has received major national and international awards for his research, teaching, mentoring and service from the American Association of Geographers, National Council for Geographic Education, University Consortium for Geographic Information Science, and the Royal Geographical Society of the United Kingdom. Before moving to the University of Connecticut, Foote taught at the University of Texas at Austin and the University of Colorado Boulder. He holds degrees from the University of Wisconsin-Madison (BA Honors) and University of Chicago (MA and Ph.D.).
