My research concerns the political and cultural dimensions of development in Eastern and Central Africa, with a primary but not exclusive emphasis on urban development. My research interests can be divided into projects that are related to: 1) the cultural-historical geography of development and chiefly focus on the legacy of British colonialism; or 2) the current development dynamics from more of a political-economic approach. Concerns for the language of development geography and for environmental planning carry over into both of these categories.

Within the first category, the historical geography of British colonialism in Africa remains one of my major areas of interest, as evidenced by my 2006 piece in Singapore Journal of Tropical Geography, a forthcoming (in 2007) co-authored article with Richard Harris in the Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, and a chapter in a book on The Maritime Heritage of the Indian Ocean. The NSF grant that I began work on in 2006 also has an historical dimension (see below). Within the second category, I address contemporary urban and environmental planning issues as they intersect with development in the region. In 2005, I published my second book, entitled Disposable Cities: Garbage, Governance and Sustainable Development in Urban Africa, with Ashgate Press. In 2006, I published an edited volume on Cities in Contemporary Africa, together with sociologist Martin Murray of Binghamton University. Martin and I co-authored the introduction as well.

GEOG 557: Cities and Development

GEOG 351: Africa’s Human Geographies

GEOG 102: Principles of Human Geography

GEOG 553: Geography of African Development

GEOG 970: Cultural Geography Graduate Seminar in Social Theory

GEOG 550: Environmental Issues in Africa

GEOG 350: Physical Geography of Africa

GEOG 399: Topics in Regional Studies: Southern Africa

Awards:

James Seaver Lecture, Humanities and Western Civilization Program, University of Kansas, February, 2006.

Distinguished Visitor Program, University College London Department of Geography, March 9-23, 2005

University of Kansas, Provost’s Award for Leadership in International Education, 2003 ($1000)

University of Kansas, Kemper Foundation Fellowship for Teaching Excellence, 2000 ($5000)

Myers, G. (2003) Verandahs of Power: Colonialism and Space in Urban Africa (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, Space, Place and Society series).

Myers, G. (2005) DisposableCities: Garbage, Governance, and Sustainable Development in Urban Africa(Aldershot, UK: Ashgate Press, Rematerializing Cultural Geography series).

Murray, M. and G. Myers, eds. (2006) Cities in Contemporary Africa (New York: Palgrave Macmillan Press).

Major Refereed Articles

Myers, G. (2006) “The Unauthorized City: Late Colonial Lusaka and Post-Colonial Geography,” Singapore Journal of Tropical Geography, 27 (3): 289-308.

Nchito, W., and G. Myers. (2004) “Four Caveats for Participatory Solid Waste Management in Lusaka, Zambia,” Urban Forum 15(2): 109-133.

Myers, G. (2003) “Colonial and Postcolonial Modernities in Two African Cities,” Canadian Journal of African Studies 37(2/3): 328-357.

Myers, G. (2003) “Designing Power: Forms and Purposes of Colonial Model Neighborhoods in British Africa,” Habitat International 27(2): 193-204.

Myers, G. (2002) “Local Communities and the New Environmental Planning: A Case Study from Zanzibar,” Area 34(2): 149-159.

Myers, G. (2002) “Colonial Geography and Masculinity in Eric Dutton's Kenya Mountain,” Gender, Place and Culture 9(1): 23-38.

Herbert, S., J. Gallagher, and G. Myers. (2005) “Fieldwork and Ethnography,” in Questioning Geography: Essays on a Contested Discipline, edited by Noel Castree, Alistair Rogers and Douglas Sherman (London: Routledge), pp. 226-240.

Myers, G. (2004) “African Studies and African Development in the 21st Century,” in African Studies in the 21st Century, edited by Jacob Gordon (New York: Nova Science Publishers), pp. 245-64.

Myers, G., P. McGreevy, G. Carney, and J. Kenny. (2004) “Cultural Geography,” in Geography in America at the Dawn of the 21st Century, edited by G. Gaile and C. Willmott (Oxford: Oxford University Press), pp. 234-281.

Myers, G. (2002) “Planning the Sustainable City: A Political Ecology of Urban Growth in Zanzibar,” in Human Resource System Challenge VII: Human Settlement Development,
edited by Saskia Sassen, in Encyclopedia of Life Support Systems (EOLSS), developed under the Auspices of the UNESCO, Eolss Publishers, Oxford ,UK, available at http://www.eolss.net.

Dosi, M., Rushubirwa, L., and G. Myers. “Tanzanians in the Land of Oz: Diaspora and Transnationality in Wichita, Kansas,” forthcoming in Social and Cultural Geography 8(5) 2007.

Myers, G. “Representing the Other, Negotiating the Personal and the Political,” forthcoming in Handbook of Qualitative Research in Human Geography, edited by M. Crang, L. McDowell, S. Herbert, and D. DeLyser (London: Sage, 2007).

Harris, R. and G. Myers. “Hybrid Housing: Improvement and Control in Late Colonial Zanzibar,” submitted to Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, accepted with revisions, November 2006, resubmitted January 2007.

Myers, G. “Representations of Mogadishu: The US Army, Black Hawk Down and Nuruddin Farah’s Links,” paper submitted to Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, January 2007.

Myers, G. “Peri-Urban Land Reform, Neoliberalism, and Urban Political Ecology in Zanzibar,” paper submitted to Urban Geography, January 2007.

Myers, G. “Africa,” invited chapter in the International Encyclopedia of Human Geography, edited by R. Kitchin and N. Thrift (London: Elsevier, 2008).

Myers, G. (2001) “Introductory Human Geography Textbook Representations of Africa,” The Professional Geographer 53(4): 522-32.

Myers, G. (2000) “Narrative Representations of Revolutionary Zanzibar,” Journal of Historical Geography 26(3): 429-448.

Myers, G. (1998) “Intellectual of Empire: Eric Dutton and Hegemony in British Africa,” Annals of the Association of American Geographers 88(1): 1-27.

Myers, G. (1997) “Sticks and Stones: Colonialism and Zanzibari Housing,” Africa 67(2): 252-272.

Myers, G. (1996) “Naming and Placing the Other: Power and the Urban Landscape in Zanzibar,” Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geographie 87(3): 237-246.

Myers, G., T. Klak, and T. Koehl. (1996) “The Inscription of Difference: News Coverage of the Conflicts in Rwanda and Bosnia,” Political Geography 15(1): 21-46.

Myers, G. (1995) “A Stupendous Hammer: Colonial and Post-Colonial Reconstructions of Zanzibar's Other Side,” Urban Studies 32(8): 1436-1449.

Myers, G. (1995) “The Early History of the Other Side of Zanzibar Town,” in History and Conservation of Zanzibar Stone Town, edited by A. Sheriff (Athens, OH: Ohio University Press), pp. 30-45.

Myers, G. (1994) “From ‘Stinkibar’ to ‘The Island Metropolis’: The Geography of British Hegemony in Zanzibar,” in Geography and Empire, edited by A. Godlewska and N. Smith (Oxford: Blackwell), pp. 212-227.

Myers, G. (1994) “Eurocentrism and African Urbanization: the Case of Zanzibar's Other Side,” Antipode 26(3): 195-215.