Dr. Kara Dempsey

Kara E. Dempsey is associate professor of political geography at Appalachian State University. She currently serves on the national honors board for the American Association of Geographers (AAG) and is president-emeritus of the AAG’s Political Geography Organization (2021-2023) and president-emeritus of the AAG’s European Specialty Group (2018-2020).

Dempsey currently studies ethnonational conflicts, consolidation of state and regional power, international forced migration and peace-building processes. She is the author of “The Geopolitics of Nationalism, Conflict and Reconciliation in Ireland” (2022, Routledge), co-editor of “Making and unmaking refugees: Geopolitics of social ordering and struggle with the global refugee regime” (2023, Routledge) and co-editor of “Making Geographies of Peace and Conflict” (2023, Routledge). 

In 2023 she received the American Conference Irish Studies (ACIS) Donnelly Prize for History and Social Science Book, Honorable Mention, for “The Geopolitics of Nationalism, Conflict and Reconciliation in Ireland” (2022); the AAG’s Political Geography Organization’s Virginie Mamadouh Outstanding Research Award; and UNC Board of Governors’ Appalachian State University School Award for Excellence in Teaching Award. In 2021, she received the Journal of Political Geography’s Early Career Researcher Paper Award for her article, “Spaces of Violence: A Typology of Violence Against Migrants Seeking Asylum in the EU.” She was inducted into her college’s Appalachian State University’s Academy of Outstanding Teachers in 2021; received the College of Arts & Sciences’ Outstanding Junior Faculty Research Award from Appalachian State University in 2020; and the Wayne D. Duncan Teaching Fellowship for Outstanding Teaching in General Education in 2018.

Areas of expertise

• Nationalism and geopolitics
• Peacebuilding and social justice
• International forced migration
• Conflict and reconciliation in Ireland
• Geopolitics of religion
• European environmental politics
• Politics of place and political landscapes
• Human geography (cultural, political, historical and urban)