Taylor Shelton

Assistant Professor of Geography and GIS

About

My name is Taylor Shelton and I am an Assistant Professor in the Department of Geosciences at Mississippi State University. Prior to joining MSU in 2017, I held appointments as a visiting scholar in the Department of Geography at the University of Kentucky and as a postdoctoral fellow in the Center for Urban Innovation at the Georgia Institute of Technology. I earned my BA and MA degrees in geography from the University of Kentucky and my PhD from the Graduate School of Geography at Clark University.

I am a broadly-trained human geographer interested in how urban spaces and social inequalities are represented, reproduced and contested through data. In particular, my work focuses on using mapping and data visualization as a means to understanding (and challenging) urban socio-spatial inequalities, especially in relation to issues of housing and property ownership.

Interests

Urban geography
Digital geographies
Critical GIS
Socio-spatial inequality
Geographic thought and methodology

Education

Ph.D., Geography, 2015

Clark University
M.A., Geography, 2011

University of Kentucky
B.A., Geography and Political Science, 2008

University of Kentucky

Recent Publications

More Publications

Taylor Shelton, Ate Poorthuis (2019). The nature of neighborhoods: using big data to rethink the geographies of Atlanta’s Neighborhood Planning Unit system. Annals of the American Association of Geographers, forthcoming.

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Taylor Shelton, Thomas Lodato (2019). Actually existing smart citizens: expertise and (non) participation in the making of the smart city. City 23(1): 35-52.

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Taylor Shelton (2018). Mapping dispossession: eviction, foreclosure and the multiple geographies of housing instability in Lexington, Kentucky. Geoforum 97: 281-291.

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Taylor Shelton (2018). Rethinking the RECAP: mapping the relational geographies of concentrated poverty and affluence in Lexington, Kentucky. Urban Geography 39(7): 1070-1091.

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Taylor Shelton (2017). Spatialities of data: mapping social media 'beyond the geotag'. GeoJournal 82(4): 721-734.

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Teaching

I teach the following courses at Mississippi State University:

GR8313 Advanced Cultural Geography
GR4990 Digital Geographies
GR4203 Geography of North America
GR4123 Urban Geography
GR2013 Cultural Geography

Advising

I currently serve as advisor to a number of graduate and undergraduate students in the Department of Geosciences. My graduate students’ work generally focuses on combining human geography and GIS in order to understand (and challenge) social and spatial inequalities.

Current Students:

Mustafa Monk
M.S. student in Geoscience (Geography), 2018 - present
Topic: Critical GIS analysis of governmental flood risk mapping in Houston, Texas

Hannah Mizell
B.S. student in Geoscience (GIS and Environmental Geoscience), 2019 - present
Topic: Natural disasters and geographies of racial segregation in American cities

Asger Ali
Ph.D. student in Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, 2019 - present
Topic: TBD

Patricia Hernandez
Ph.D. student in Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, 2019 - present
Topic: TBD

Prospective Students:

I am always looking for bright, motivated students to work with me here at Mississippi State and help us to build our programs in human geography and GIS. If you’re interested in working with me on these (or related) topics, do send me an email with your CV/resume, a brief statement describing your interests, and a sample of your written/cartographic work.