NUI Maynooth Professor of Human Geography and Director of NIRSA wins prestigious American Association of Geographers Book Award

Professor Rob Kitchin receives the AAG Meridian Book Award for his outstanding contribution to geography

29 Feb 2012 The Association of American Geographers (AAG) has awarded Professor Rob Kitchin, Director of the National Institute of Regional and Spatial Analysis (NIRSA) and Professor of Human Geography at NUI Maynooth, the 2011 ‘AAG Meridian Book Award for Outstanding Scholarly Work in Geography’ for his book ‘Code/Space: Software and Everyday Life‘, co-authored with Martin Dodge, and published by MIT Press. 

This award is an exceptional achievement for Professor Kitchin, as it recognises his outstanding contribution to the scholarly field of geography by one of the world’s leading associations of geographers.  His work was selected from across the discipline for its “important contribution to advancing the science and art of geography”.  

According to the MIT press, In Code/Space, Rob Kitchin and Martin Dodge “examine software from a spatial perspective, analyzing the dyadic relationship of software and space. The production of space, they argue, is increasingly dependent on code, and code is written to produce space.”  Empirical examples of code/space include airport check-in areas, cafés and other public spaces that have the capacity to act as workspaces with wireless access and other amenities.  The review goes on to explain the important contribution of  Code/Space to our understanding of the relationship between technology and space, “Kitchin and Dodge argue that software, through its ability to do work in the world, transduces space.”

In selecting the book, the AAG committee wrote:  “We feel it pushed the envelope as it explained the linkages between software and human behavior in a spatial context.  This book articulates how space and software have become so intertwined that they constitute one another in our lives. It is one of the rare books that link critical social theories with technology and philosophy. Using everyday spaces, it demonstrates how such spaces are transformed by code and how new spaces of interactions are recreated. It is the type of book that can interface with many different disciplines. It is one of the few geography books taking the technology and the potential in reconstituting space seriously.”

The Meridian Award was presented to Prof Kitchin on February 28, 2012 in the Trianon Ballroom of the New York Hilton Hotel in Manhattan, during the AAG’s Annual Conference.  The week-long conference was attended by over 7,000 geographers from around the world.

 http://mitpress.mit.edu/catalog/item/default.asp?ttype=2&tid=12573

Ends. 29 Feb 2012

For more information contact:

Kate O’Regan   NUI Maynooth       +353 17086735