By Lisa Schamess (American Association of Geographers)

When I was in elementary school, the way we studied geography was...not fun. It involved a lot of memorizing: state capitals, rivers and mountains, maybe a famous place from history or two.

It wasn’t until many years later that I learned that places and names are just a fraction of what geography is all about. In fact, geography is a social science that explores much more than the points on a map. It is a discipline that asks how? and why? as much as it asks where?

Geography embraces many disciplines across the humanities and sciences: history, demography, anthropology, cartography, climate science, geology, technology, political science, and economics, to name just a few. You could say that the study of geography is about everything that relates to a place.

Geography is a highly interdisciplinary practice. That means it combines many ways of understanding what is happening in places all over the world. Some geographers study tree rings and local history to understand climate change; others work closely with communities to share knowledge about where they live or travel over time; some geographers study techniques and traditions in agriculture, or work to improve human health, or spot banking trends, or connect pop culture to social changes. Geographers work at all scales, whether studying world events and big trends (geopolitics) or focusing on a single block of a city street. There are even geographers whose work involves the social and technological geographies of the Internet and media.

Geographers are working on thorny problems all around us every day. Here are just a few examples:

Public Health. The COVID dashboard maps we followed during the pandemic were created and maintained by geographers using Geographical Information Systems (GIS). Geographers like Trang VoPham also work on the spatial links between environment and illness.
Climate and Environment. Dozens of geographers have been contributors to major climate science documents such as the IPCC reports, and geographers often led these efforts. On the ground, many environmental geographers like Victor Gregor Limon and Leslie-Ann Dupigny-Giroux work at the city or state level to address climate responses in communities.
Voting Rights. Geographers like Phoebe Lind and Ken Martis are involved in the effort to create and document fair voting maps.
City Management and Transportation. Geography and GIS training is necessary to managing cities and analyzing what makes them tick. Richard Quodomine is the senior lead GIS analyst for the City of Philadelphia Department of Public Property, for example. Julie Cidell has a transportation engineering background; she is now a specialist in urban infrastructure and transportation at the University of Illinois-Champaign.

In geography, you can choose any topic that interests you, find out what element of location and place it connects to, and seek knowledge in a wide variety of contexts. Politics? History? Health? Agriculture? Economics? Sociology? There’s something for everyone—and everywhere—in this discipline.

“Geographers are working on thorny problems all around us every day.”

Even if you don’t train in a geography program, you may find you’re drawn to combine the practice of geography with your own training—and we welcome you. If your work touches on any questions of space or place, then geography is here to help you find more answers. In fact, many scientists pursue other paths before becoming geographers, such as wildlife biologist Tim Fullman, who went back to get a degree in geography in order to track threatened caribou populations in Alaska.

It’s worth noting that geographical themes are often taken up in the worlds of our imagination: in games, literature, the arts, and popular culture. What would The Lord of the Rings or Star Wars be without their detailed geographies? Journalism and popular nonfiction are also driven by the questions of where things happen. Social sciences encourage this kind of cross-pollination of creativity, documentation, science, art, and humanities.

Every year, the third week of November is set aside to celebrate Geography Awareness Week (GeoWeek). This year, November 17-21, 2025 will be filled with activities and ideas that recognize how much geography is a part of everything. To find out how you can participate in your classroom or among friends, visit the GeoWeek website and sign up to share your event on our map or become a GeoAdvocate.

You can find out more about geography, and read profiles of working geographers, at the careers page at the American Association of Geographers.

Lisa Schamess is the director of communications at the American Association of Geographers. She has worked with geographers, urban designers, and environmental scientists for much of her career.

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