Dr. Ryan Burns
Positions
Associate Professor
AAAS Science & Technology Policy Fellow
~ Other ~
Associate Editor, GeoJournal
~ Other ~
Editorial Board Member, Digital Geography & Society
~ Other ~
Editorial Collective Member, ACME: International Journal of Critical Geographies
~ Other ~
Editorial Board Member, Frontiers in Big Data
~ Other ~
Co-Chair, Digital Geographies Specialty Group of the American Association of Geographers
~ Other ~
Co-Chair, Science, Technology, and Society Affinity Group of the American Association for the Advancement of Science
~ Other ~
Affiliations
Visiting Professor, George Washington University
~ Other ~
Visiting Professor, University of Erlangen-Nuremberg
~ Other ~
Contact information
Background
Credentials
Fellow, Royal Canadian Geographical Society, 2022
Educational Background
Doctor of Philosophy Geography, University of Washington, 2015
Master of Science Geographic Information Science, San Diego State University, 2009
Bachelor of Arts (Honors) Geography (Magna Cum Laude), Eastern Kentucky University, 2006
Biography
I am an interdisciplinary-minded scholar and AAAS Science & Technology Policy Fellow working at the intersections of GIScience, digital human geographies, urban studies, political economy, and Science & Technology Studies. Much of my research questions how people, places, and knowledge come to be encoded as data, and then analyzed and acted upon through other digital objects, practices, and spatialities. I am currently a Visiting Professor at University of Erlangen-Nuremberg, and have held past visiting positions with UC, Berkeley; Katholische Universität Eichstätt-Ingolstadt; University of British Columbia; and University of Antwerp.
I have two ongoing research projects. In the first I explore digital humanitarianism, an emerging set of technologies and digital labor relations that allow large numbers of geographically-dispersed lay people to contribute to post-disaster urban redevelopment and humanitarian crisis management. I have illuminated the spatialities, modalities, and socio-political inequalities that emerge from digital humanitarianism, as well as the mutual-imbrication of digital humantarianism and broader political-economic reforms.
In other more nascent research I have been looking at the ways these processes manifest in urban open data platforms and 'smart cities' agenda. I am drawn to the politics underwriting the reasons places and phenomena are represented the way they are in open data platforms, and the implications of open data platforms on community organizations' strategies in city politics. For this, with Mellon Foundation and SSHRC sub-grants, I have started the YYC Data Collective, a platform for community associations and non-profits to share their data -- a complement to Open Calgary. I also helped launch Smart Cities Partnership YYC, a collaboration with the City of Calgary on their smart city strategy; and an Urban Alliance project reviewing municipal data sharing agreements across North America.
These activities build upon my prior work in spatial data analytics and web mapping. In research conducted 2008-2009, I used the high-dimensional visualization technique the Self-organizing Map (SOM) to explore people’s (digitally) written descriptions of San Diego neighborhoods. The SOM is a quantitative data science technique useful for teasing out themes and structures from large volumes of unstructured semantic data. I used this technique to arrange neighborhoods on a map based on similarities in people’s descriptions of them, allowing me to identify similarities between neighborhoods’ attributes, as condensed from a very large dataset. In another project on youth mapping co-PI'd by Sarah Elwood and Katharyne Mitchell, I built an interactive web mapping interface for use in Seattle after-school programs. Youth mapped their everyday geographies and the spatial histories of racial and ethnic minorities in Seattle, illustrating the ways in which geoweb technologies may be used to impact youth civic engagement.
I have served my home discipline and my universities in numerous capacities. I am currently Associate Editor for GeoJournal. I sit on the Editorial Board of Digital Geography & Society, ACME, and Frontiers in Big Data. I'm currently the secretary/treasurer of the Digital Geography Specialty Group of the AAG.
Research
Areas of Research
Participation in university strategic initiatives
Courses
| Course number | Course title | Semester |
|---|---|---|
| GEOG 598 TUT 01 T01 | Honours Thesis | 2020 |
| GEOG 391 | Geographic Field Study | 2022 |
| GEOG 391 | Geographic Field Study | 2017 |
| GEOG 280 | Thinking Spatially in a Digital World | 2022 |
| GEOG 280 | Thinking Spatially in a Digital World | 2021 |
| GEOG 586 | Web Mapping and Internet GIS | 2020 |
| GEOG 565 | Spaces of Urban Politics | 2020 |
Awards
- Early Career Award, International Geographical Union. 2024
- Professional Achievement Award, Eastern Kentucky University International Alumni Association. 2024
- Fellow, Royal Canadian Geographic Society. 2022
- Excellence Award in Graduate Supervision, Graduate Students’ Association, University of Calgary. 2019
- Graduate Student Association Award for Outstanding Contributions to Graduate Student Life, University of Calgary Department of Geography Graduate Student Association. 2017
- Future Leaders Council, O'Brien Institute for Public Health. 2019
- Geography Top Scholar Award (funds in USD), University of Washington. 2010
- Master’s Award (funds in USD), Cartography and Geographic Information Society (CaGIS). 2009
- Map Design Competition Winner (funds in USD), San Diego State University. 2007
- McFarland Award (funds in USD), San Diego State University. 2007
- “Culture, Language, and Development in Vietnam” research scholarship (funds in USD), School for International Training. 2005
- 2021
Publications
- Synergizing Geoweb and Digital Humanitarian Research. Josef Eckert; Ryan Burns; Andrew Shears; Jim Thatcher. University of Nebraska Press. 214-229. (2018)
- "Let the Private Sector Take Care of This": The Philanthro-capitalism of Digital Humanitarianism. Ryan Burns; M Graham. MIT Press. 129-152. (2017)
- "Let the Private Sector Take Care of This": The Philanthro-capitalism of Digital Humanitarianism. Ryan Burns; M Graham. MIT Press. 129-152. (2019)
- Datafying Disaster: Institutional Framings of Data Production following Superstorm Sandy. Ryan L. Burns; Nik Heynen. Routledge. 261-276. (2017)
- Datafying Disaster: Institutional Framings of Data Production following Superstorm Sandy. Ryan L. Burns; Nik Heynen. Routledge. 261-276. (2018)
- Synergizing Geoweb and Digital Humanitarian Research. Ryan Burns; Jim Thatcher; Josef Eckert; Andrew Shears. University of Nebraska Press. 214-229. (2017)
In the News
- Data accessibility for everyday Calgarians. (2019)
- Podcast interview on cities and technology. Urban Affairs Review . (2023)
- Interview on higher education impacts of recent provincial decision to relax Covid-19 public health measures. CityNews Calgary . (2021)
- Interview on GIS modeling and mapping. Undark (MIT magazine) . (2021)
- Interview on smart cities . MaRS Magazine . (2020)
- Interview on open data . Calgary Star Metro . (2019)
- Interview on open restaurant inspection data platforms. CBC Calgary . (2019)
- “Citizens Can Use Data to Improve Their Cities”. Coverage of research in UToday (U of Calgary campus newsletter). (2019)
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