Michael Brown, Professor of Geography, and Adjunct Associate Professor in Women’s Studies, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington, USA. Michael’s health-related research focuses on questions of public health and disease ecology, particularly on problems that affect the gay community, such as AIDS and home-hospice care.
Michael Brown was born and raised in Worcester, Massachusetts, USA. He earned his B.A. at Clark University (1988), his M.A. at the University of British Columbia in 1990, and his Ph.D. at the same institution in 1994. He has a longstanding interest in political geography at the local and micro-scales. Given this interest, it seemed natural to him that he would become interested in questions of health and the body, since public health is a major part of local government in the United States, and questions of the body are inevitably those of health. His current research is a collaboration with Professor Larry Knopp (University of Minnesota at Duluth) on governmentality and the biopolitical geographies of the homsexual body in post-war/pre-AIDS Seattle. This research is part of a larger volunteer work with the Northwest Lesbian and Gay History Museum Project. He teaches classes in geographic thought and research design, political geography, and sexuality and the body. He was a 2006 recipient of the Glenda Laws Award that recognizes outstanding contributions to geographic research on social issues. Michael is also an editor for Social and Cultural Geography and he is currently managing editor of that journal.
Michael may be contacted at michaelb@u.washington.edu.
Updated: January 2009
Health and Medical Geography 