Susan Christopherson papers

Susan Christopherson was an economic geographer and Professor and Chair in the Department of City and Regional Planning at Cornell University. Born in St. Paul, Minnesota in 1947, she earned a Bachelor's in Urban Studies and a Master's degree in Geography from the University of Minnesota in 1972 and 1975. After receiving a doctorate in 1983 from the University of California, Berkeley, she was a research associate at the University of California, Los Angeles Graduate School of Architecture and Urban Planning and the Center for U.S.-Mexican Studies at the University of California, San Diego; a visiting professor of geography at San Diego State University; and a visiting lecturer at the University of Texas, El Paso. In 1987, Christopherson joined Cornell's faculty, where she was the first woman promoted to full professor in the Department of City and Regional Planning and, in 2014, became the first woman appointed Chair. Her research and teaching focused on economic development, urban labor markets, and location patterns in media and other service industries. She completed studies on advanced manufacturing in New York's Southern Tier, the photonics industry in Rochester, the role of universities and colleges in revitalizing the upstate New York economy, and production trends affecting media industries in New York City. She also focused on human-environment relations and public policy related to unconventional energy extraction and nontraditional energy sources, analyzing the safety of crude oil transport by rail and the economic consequences of Marcellus shale natural gas drilling. Christopherson co-authored "Remaking Regional Economies: Power, Labor and Firm Strategies in the Knowledge Economy," winner of the 2009 Regional Studies Association Best Book Award, and she published more than 100 articles and policy reports, served on the editorial boards of several leading journals, and was editor-in-chief of a Regional Studies Association book series on cities and regions. At Cornell, she was a faculty fellow in the David R. Atkinson Center for a Sustainable Future. She also consulted with the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development and the United Nations, and she served on a National Research Council panel considering the implications of shale gas and oil development for communities in New York and Pennsylvania. In 2015, she was given a Lifetime Achievement Award by the American Association of Geographers. Christopherson died in 2016.