cv

education

Geography Ph.D. Candidate
University of California, Berkeley

B.A. University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, May 2018
American Studies and Communication Studies (Media Studies focus)
Minor in Creative Writing (Non-Fiction focus)

research interests

drowned towns | dams | displacement | rural Black communities | Black ecologies | Black geographies | New Deal infrastructure | Southern studies | memory studies | rural studies | Reconstruction | oral history | public history | historic preservation | environmental history

publications

Vickers, M. P. (2023). On Swampification: Black Ecologies, Moral Geographies, and Racialized Swampland Destruction. The Annals of the American Association of Geographers, special issue edited by K. Meehan.

grants, fellowships, and honors

Black Studies Collaboratory Small Grants Program | Spring 2022
This Will Take Time Artist’s Residency | Summer 2021
Membership Nomination, Sigma Xi, 2021
National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship Program | 2021-2024
Ford Foundation Predoctoral Fellowship (Honorable Mention) | 2021
Graduate Student Affinity Group Research and Support Award, American Association of Geographers | April 2021
Cartography Specialty Group Travel Grant for Underrepresented Groups, American Association of Geographers | April 2021
Afrotectopia Imagineer Fellow | Summer 2020
The Wilson Special Collections Library Summer Visiting Research Fellowship | Summer 2020 (delayed due to Covid-19)
Ellison Durant Smith Research Award | Summer 2020 (delayed due to Covid-19)
Berkeley Chancellor’s Fellowship for Graduate Study | 2019-2024 (estimated)
Mildred Colodny Diversity Scholarship for Graduate Study in Historic Preservation | Academic Years 2019-2020, 2020-2021
The New Hope Fellowship for Digital Historical Research | Summer 2018
Gilder Lehrman History Scholar Award | June 2018
VIMY Global Team Award (Declined) | May 2018
Best Poster Certificate at the 19th Annual Celebration of Undergraduate Research | April 2018
Peter C. Baxter Memorial Prize Award | 2018 Chancellor’s Awards
William Stevens Powell Award | 2018 Chancellor’s Awards
William W. and Ida W. Taylor and James S. Gold Faculty-Mentored Research Fellowship | Summer 2017
Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) | Summer 2017
Hayden B. Renwick Academic Achievement Award | 2014 – 2018
Carolina Honors Program Scholar | 2014 – 2018
University of North Carolina Dean’s List | 2014  – 2018

lectures & presentations

Invited Talks:

Presenter, “Submerged Black Ecologies,” The Ways of Water: Art, Activism, and Ecologies Symposium, University of Michigan Museum of Art, Ann Arbor, October 2022.

Presenter and Panelist, “Aquatic Space: Water in the Afrofuturist Imagination,” The Smithsonian Claiming Space Afrofuturism Symposium, Virtual, January 2022.

Conference Presentations:

Presenter, “Archives, Graves and Geographies of Retreat in Black Towns,” 19th Berkshire Conference of Women Historians, Santa Clara University, Santa Clara, California, June 2023.

Presenter, “‘Pushing Back the Darkness:’ Dispossessing Black Lives and Inundating Black Ecologies in New Deal South Carolina,” (Re)thinking Landscape: Ways of Knowing / Ways of Being Conference, Yale University, New Haven, September 2022.

Panelist, “Black Space,” Black Studies Collaboratory Small Grants Program Small Grantee Symposium, UC Berkeley, Berkeley, California, September 2022.

Presenter, “On South Carolina and the Capacious Caribbean,” Caribbean Studies Association Annual Conference, Kingston, Jamaica, May 2022.

Presenter, “Drowned Towns, Submerged Archives, and the Myth of Universal Progress,” Geographies of the Missing and Disappeared, The American Association of Geographers Annual Meeting, New York, February 2022.

Presenter, “Reservoir Noir: On Swampification, Black Placemaking, & New Deal Infrastructure,” 2021-2022 Berkeley African and African-American History Writers Workshop, AY 2021-2022.

Presenter, “Unsettling Heritage Preservation and Environmental Transformation: A Case Study of the Submerged,” Dismantle Preservation, Virtual, July 2021.

Panelist, “Reservoir Noir: Black Placemaking, New Deal Infrastructure, and Social Swampification,” Fugitivity as Method, The American Association of Geographers, Seattle, April 2021.

Presenter, “Locating Lockville: Culturally and Geographically Remapping a Town Lost,” Placing: New Engagements with the ‘Environment’, University of Pennsylvania EnviroLab, Philadelphia, March 2021.

Presenter, “On Imagining: Ancestral tools, travel guides, and community building for the end of the world,” Designing Prismatic Black Radical Futures, Afrotectopia, September 2020.

Presenter, “The Legacy of a Lynching: Community and Familial Adaptation in the Wake of Racial Trauma,” American Studies Honors Thesis Summit, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, May 2018.

Poster Presenter, “The Legacy of a Lynching: Community and Familial Adaptation in the Wake of Racial Trauma,” 19th Annual Celebration of Undergraduate Research, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, April 2018.

Presenter, “The Lockville Project: Culturally and Geographically Remapping a Town Lost,” 13th Annual State of North Carolina Undergraduate Research & Creativity Symposium, Campbell University, November 2017. 

Presenter, “The Lockville Project: Culturally and Geographically Remapping a Town Lost,” William W. and Ida W. Taylor and James S. Gold Faculty-Mentored Research Fellowship Celebration, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, November 2017.

Participant & Researcher, “2017 Lynching in the American South Digital Conference,” A Red Record Conference, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, June 2018.

Chair, Discussant, Organizer:

Organizer and Discussant, “The Map, The Story, and the Photograph,” The Virtual Otherwise, Society for Cultural Anthropology – Society for Visual Anthropology Biennial Conference, University of Pennsylvania, Virtual, June 2022.

Organizer, “Caribbean as Method: Resistance, Worldbuilding, and Geographies of Liberation in the Broad Caribbean,” Caribbean Studies Association Annual Conference, Kingston, Jamaica, May 2022.

Conference Organizer, Black Geographies Graduate Student Summit, University of California, Berkeley and Stanford University, May 2022.

Panelist, “Crafting Black Ecologies – Virtual Panel & Studio,” The American Association of Geographers Annual Meeting, New York, February 2022.

Panelist, “Non-Academic Career Paths for Geography PhDs,” The American Association of Geographers Early Career Webinar Series, Virtual, September 2021.

Moderator, “Radical Homemaking,” The Berkeley Black Geographies Symposium, The University of California, Berkeley, March 2020.

Panelist, “Historians and Developers, Pitfalls and Potential,” National Humanities Conference, New Orleans, November 2018.

Panelist, “The Legacy of a Lynching: Community and Familial Adaptation in the Wake of Racial Trauma,” Kenan Institute for Ethics Scholar Symposium in Human Rights, Ethics, and International Politics, Duke University, April 2018.

Panelist, “North Carolina Attorney General Josh Stein’s Substance Misuse Panel,” Attorney General College Tour, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, January 2018.

teaching experience & guest lectures

Graduate Student Reader at The University of California, Berkeley — Spring 2020
Course: Race, Space, and Inequality (Dr. Jovan Scott Lewis) 

Guest Critic at Southern California Institute of Architecture (SCI-Arc) — April 2021
Course: Bl.A.ck Arcadia (Kahlil Joseph & Madebo Fatunde)

Graduate Student Reader at The University of California, Berkeley — Fall 2021
Course: Defiant Women: Gender, Power and Violence in American History (Dr. Stephanie E. Jones-Rogers)

research assistantships

Future Histories Lab (Susan Moffat, Global Urban Humanities)
Graduate Student Researcher at The University of California, Berkeley — June 2020 – September 2020

Community Histories Workshop (Dr. Robert Allen)
Undergraduate Student Researcher at The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, NC — 2016 – 2018

A Red Record: Revealing Lynching Sites in North Carolina and South Carolina (Dr. Seth Kotch)
Undergraduate Student Researcher at The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, NC — 2016 – 2018

professional experience

Preservation of Sacred Spaces Intern, The National Trust for Historic Preservation | Washington, DC | June 2021 – August 2021
Managing Editor, Roadtrippers Magazine | Cincinnati, OH | March 2019 – August 2019
African American Cultural Heritage Action Fund Intern, The National Trust for Historic Preservation | Denver, CO | September 2018 – December 2018
Route 66 Road Trip Campaign Intern, The National Trust for Historic Preservation | Denver, CO | May 2018 – September 2018
Communications and Social Media Intern, The Association of Recovery in Higher Education | Washington, D.C. | August 2017 – July 2018
Assistant Arts & Culture Desk Editor, The Daily Tar Heel | Chapel Hill, NC | May 2016 – October 2016
Senior Writer and Investigative Reporter, The Daily Tar Heel | Chapel Hill, NC | September 2014 – May 2016

professional service

Service to Profession

Graduate Student Representative, Landscape Specialty Group, The American Association of Geographers (2021 – 2023)
Board Member, Negro Motorist Green Book Task Force, The Route 66 Road Ahead Partnership (2018 – 2020)
Reviewer for Refereed Journals: Annals of the American Association of Geographers

Service to Community

Graduate Mentor, Berkeley Geography Undergraduate Mentorship Program (2022 – Present)
Co-President, Carolina Recovery Group, Student Wellness (2016 – 2018)
Co-Director & Communications Co-Chair, Carolina Kickoff (2014 – 2017)
Member, The Association of LGBTQ Journalists (2016 – 2017)
Student Ambassador, The Association of Recovery in Higher Education (2016 – 2017