Dr. Jon Lepofsky
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Dr. Jon Lepofsky is a Teaching Assistant Professor at the University of North Carolina-
Chapel Hill. His first SEDAAG conference was in 2000 as a graduate student, and he has deeply valued the role of SEDAAG throughout his career, which has included time within and beyond higher education. He earned his PhD at UNC-Chapel Hill in geography with an emphasis on urban economic geography and community development (where he also received a Graduate Certificate in Cultural Studies). Much of his research has examined urban redevelopment and diverse economies in the southeastern USA. He has taught a variety of geography courses at UNC-Chapel Hill (from introductory courses on human and regional geography, to advanced courses on urban geography and environmental justice). He has also taught at Duke University, as well as taught geography to high school students in Durham, NC, where he helped design and implement an integrated environmental studies curriculum that combined human and environmental geography with literary study and biology (he was also the high school principal there for several years). He has published his work on community-based economic development and other research in various peer-reviewed journals, including ACME, Community Development Journal, disClosure, Ethics, Place & Environment, Health & Place, International Journal of Community Currency Research, Urban Affairs Review, and Urban Studies, and has authored pieces for the Encyclopedia of Human Geography and the Encyclopedia of Geography. He has recently returned to UNC-Chapel Hill, and is excited to engage more deeply with SEDAAG, especially as a State Representative for North Carolina. In this role,
he hopes to support more interactions between geographers in North Carolina, as well as bolster geographic education.