Hanson, Susan (1943-)

Susan Hanson is one of the most accomplished academics in U.S. geography today. During her long and productive career, she became a major researcher of urban labor markets and urban transportation and a founder of American feminist geography. Her accomplishments are also widely recognized. A past Guggenheim Fellow, she is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Hanson is the first female geographer elected to both academies in 2000.

Hanson's half-century-long career in geography began once she discovered the field as an undergraduate student in Middlebury College (1960–1964), thanks to an outstanding geography professor. After spending several years in Kenya as a Peace Corps volunteer, she earned a PhD in geography from Northwestern University (1967–1973). After earning tenure at the University at Buffalo, where her position was split between the departments of geography and sociology (1972–1980), she moved to Clark University (1981), where she spent the rest of her career. There she currently holds the title of research professor. She chaired Clark's School of Geography for long periods and held prominent national leadership positions, including that of president of the Association of American Geographers.

Susan Hanson has been exceptionally productive. To date, she has authored and edited 7 books, contributed more than 70 articles and commentaries to peer-reviewed journals, and written more than 30 book chapters and more [Page 1401]than a dozen other publications. This prolific work has focused on gender and work, travel activity patterns, feminist approaches to scholarship, and the importance of gender as a category of analysis. It has had a profound impact and has shaped today's geography in fundamental ways.

Hanson's edited volume on the geography of urban transportation is now a classic text in its third edition. Her numerous articles on gendered local labor markets as well as the related book Gender, Work, and Space (1995), coauthored with Geraldine Pratt, are central texts in feminist geography. Contrary to traditional geographic approaches to work that assumed the agency of an “economic man” and were gender blind, Hanson's research showed that people make decisions about work not in isolation from but in direct relation to their domestic responsibilities. Since women shoulder most domestic responsibilities, local labor markets also become segmented along gender lines, and women have shorter commuting times and lower-paid jobs.

Hanson's scholarship pioneered not only new research directions but also the ways geographers go about doing their research. Trained as a quantitative geographer, Hanson infused the prevailing quantitative geographic methodologies with feminist sensibility. On many occasions, she called for considering difference that not only includes gender but also extends to class, race, and sexuality. Her research began combining the traditional disciplinary focus on empirical work with the pathbreaking feminist theory of the time. Hanson also opened the door to mixed-methods research by using quantitative and qualitative methods together. And she advocated for bringing feminist reflexivity in all kinds of academic practice, including research, teaching, mentoring, and service.

Yet at the core of her university work is a commitment to her students, whom she views as both a major responsibility and a source of inspiration. Throughout the years, Hanson has advised dozens of undergraduate students and more than 20 PhD students and has served as a mentor to many more.

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