I am an urban/social geographer, and I am fortunate enough to live and work in Chicago, an exciting city to study. Since 1999, I have been on the faculty of the Department of Geography and Environmental Studies, at Northeastern Illinois University. This is an excellent opportunity to work at a university that serves primarily a working-class student body that is remarkably ethnically diverse. In fact, NEIU is ranked as the most diverse masters-degree-granting university in the Midwest, according to the U.S. News and World Report rankings. It is an excellent approximation of the composition that one finds in the Chicago metropolitan area itself.

 Dennis Grammenos, Ph.D.

Chair & Associate Professor
Department of Economics &
Department of Geography & Environmental Studies
Northeastern Illinois University
5500 N. Saint Louis Ave., Chicago IL 60625
Phone: (773) 442-5641

Email: D-Grammenos@neiu.edu
I am currently the Chair of the Department of Economics and the Department of Geography & Environmental Studies at Northeastern Illinois University. NEIU is located in the northwest side of Chicago where, within a mile radius from campus one can encounter almost the full spectrum of socioeconomic conditions and an astonishing mosaic of ethnicities. My family lives just a mile from campus in a working-class, immigrant neighborhood, where --in just our block-- at least twenty-nine ethnic groups are represented, many of them recent immigrants to the U.S. My five daughters --themselves happily trilingual and counting-- attend local schools along with children from at least fifty-one ethnic backgrounds, according to their school records. This sort of diversity has long been the hallmark of Chicago, and one of the reasons why it is such a great place to study.

My educational background reflects, in part, my varied interests. I received a Ph.D. in Geography (2000) from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where I studied with David Wilson. My dissertation focused on the role of ideology in shaping and normalizing sociospatial perceptions of the process of urban redevelopment in Chicago's Near West Side. As a result, much of my work has been on questions of gentrification and urban redevelopment.

Additionally, I studied international relations as my doctoral minor, where I focused on issues of international security, admittedly a seemingly odd choice for an urban/social geographer, but not really once you figure out my abiding interest in political geography. One of my professors was Roger Kanet, an old-school Cold-War sovietologist (remember those?) with a focus on ethnicities and nationalism, who has long since moved on to Miami. Exploring nationalities and nationalism from Mongolia to the Balkans remains a keen interest of mine.

Ph.D. Geography
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (2000)

M.A. Russian & East European Studies
University of Illinois at Urban-Champaign (1997)

M.A. Geography & Environmental Studies
Northeastern Illinois University (1992)

A.B. Classics, Hon. History & Philosophy
Loyola University of Chicago (1985)
 

Also, while I was at Illinois, I picked up a M.A. in Russian and East European Studies (1997), under the supervision of Diane Koenker. My thesis concentrated on Krasnodarskii krai and Stavropolskii krai in the south of the Russian Federation. There, I focused on aspects of the persecution and displacement of the local Soviet Greek minority during Stalin's regime. This region of the Fore-Caucasus has long had a Greek presence and is characterized by the large number of ethnic groups that live there. Its position as the Russian littoral on the Black Sea and its proximity to the troubled Caucasus make the region of strategic importance. Anyone with an interest in ethnogeography would find much to study in this region. To this day, it has remained relatively untouched by the violence. During my studies, besides all the language, economics and politics courses, I loaded up in courses on Russian and Soviet history with Dr. Koenker, as well as Balkan history courses with Dr. Keith Hitchins. I still try to keep up with the literature to this day. Indeed, I strive to stay involved in the field as an associate at the University of Chicago Center of East European and Russian/Eurasian Studies.


Before moving to Urbana, I studied right here at Northeastern Illinois University, where I received a M.A. in Geography and Environmental Studies (1992). My advisor back then was Karl Kriesel (who has since retired and whose position I now fill). My work was on Balkan political geography and my thesis focused on the geopolitical implications of the so-called Macedonian conflict in the Balkan Peninsula. Those were the early years of the breakup of Yugoslavia and the emergence of new states, much of it amid violent ethnic conflict. I suppose that it was during this period that I was introduced in any real way to the virulence of extremist nationalist ideologies and the effects on peoples' lives. The Balkans are a fascinating field to study the multiplicity of ways in which geography and ethnicity have historically been imbricated. In fact, just as interesting is the struggle to define ethnic identity among members of the various Balkan ethnic groups that have migrated abroad to far away places like Australia, Canada, and the United States.

My undergraduate degree was at Loyola University of Chicago, where I received an A.B. Classics, Honors in History and Philosophy (1985). My minor concentration was in classical philology, although I dabbled in anthropology as well. As a double major in the honors program I was a very busy student, loading up on courses every semester. In history, I gravitated mostly to Byzantium while in philosophy I really got into social thought.

Today, I teach urban geography/urban planning in the Department of Geography and Environmental Studies and I am a member of the Association of American Geographers (AAG). At the same time, I am an active member the Latino and Latin American Studies program. In the spring of 2008 I was the acting chair of that program, my first ever administrative post (and hopefully the last!) My Latin American interest developed steadily over the years, mostly through experience working on human rights and labor rights issues in that region. Eventually, after many years of immersion and study of Latin American issues, I discovered that I had evolved into a Latin Americanist. Who'da thunk? These days I do research and I teach courses in Latino and Latin American geographies. Lamentably, I am now closer to being a detached academic than a dedicated labor rights campaigner. Although I continue to be somewhat active in Colombian labor issues, it is not as intensely as I once was. On the other hand, I am a proud member of the NEIU University Professionals of Illinois (UPI) chapter.

I still maintain close links to Colombian unions, while the Colombian Labor Monitor that I founded many years ago is still alive and kicking although chronically underfunded. I got into Latin America as an undergraduate at Loyola during the early 1980s, the period of solidarity with Central American movements against dictatorship. After getting my college diploma I ended up in a number of wrong turns and dead ends until I started working with human rights groups in El Salvador, Nicaragua and Guatemala. This is when I started getting involved in Colombia and Mexico as well. By the time I was at Urbana, I had joined the fledgling Graduate Employees Organization (G.E.O.) and helped to organize my fellow graduate students/employees. My personal participation in organizing propelled me to really get into Colombia and start to campaign for labor rights there.


That's me in the picture (many years ago when I still had hair) with the leadership of FECODE, Colombia's teachers' union. The man in the middle, next to me, is Tarsicio Mora who is now the president of CUT, the largest labor confederation in Colombia. Unions are the favorite target of right-wing death squads in Colombia, and none are so endangered as the members of the teachers' union. In all the propaganda about the "war on drugs" it is the lives of Colombian unionists that are forgotten by international public opinion and policy makers. It is, for the most part, the plight of the teachers' union that validated my increased involvement in labor rights there.

During my time at Urbana I also helped to organize the Student Labor Support Network and I was one of a dozen or so founding members of the United Students Against Sweatshops. We worked to get sweatshop products out of universities, in effect pressuring offending corporations like NIKE to clean up their acts. The struggle is still going on after all those years.

For many years now, because of my extensive family ties, I have been thoroughly immersed in Mongolian language and culture. It has been an arduous process and I always bring levity to any Mongolian conversation with my occasional grammatical faux pas and Zorba-like accent. But my valiant efforts are heartily applauded by my Mongolian relatives and friends. I am a dedicated member of The Mongolia Society, the main body of Mongolist scholars.

Most people assume that Mongolia is a part of China and that Mongolian language has something to do with Chinese. Wrong on both accounts. Although a big chunk of Mongolia continues to be under Chinese occupation, Mongolia is an independent country that for a century has been oriented more toward Russia than China. In these disorienting times, Mongolia is trying to figure out a different path that would guarantee its independence, especially from the ever so covetous giant to the south. Let's face it: Mongolia is just 3 million people, while China is closer to 1.3 billion people! There is a lot of political geography here and I am steadily getting into it.

Our place in the well-regarded Bayangol district of Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia's capital, is within walking distance of this shantytown. This is at the very edge of UB where the city meets its margins. Over the past decade or so, the urban landscape of Ulaanbaatar has been undergoing dramatic change. Thousands of nomads have rushed to cluster in the periurban areas in their traditional felt tents, the gers, and pitiful shacks trying to eeke out a living that the harsh Mongolian countryside and the government's increasingly neoliberal policies no longer allow them to do. Additionally, a crush of undocumented Chinese workers from the even more impoverished Chinese interior has inundated the labor market causing great friction with and deep concern among Mongolians. Other foreigners, many of them Christian missionaries from Korea and the U.S. have moved in as well using the lure of foreign currency to harvest souls, in keeping with the beatific vision of the 10/40 window's faith-based imperialism.

I am a member of the Modern Greek Studies Association and I have a keen interest in Greek studies. In summer of 2009, I spent time working on a research project in the old town of Corfu, Greece that has been designated as a "world heritage" site. It's part of a bigger project that I hope to continue to pursue. Over the past four decades, "cultural heritage" has been transformed into a universalist notion of a shared "world heritage," with UNESCO leading the effort to preserve particular physical sites of culture and nature in the name of global cultural diversity. This is done by listing and promoting "World Heritage Sites" and offering technical and financial assistance to state authorities for the preservation of these sites. This list has become a powerful symbolic marker of international cultural politics, especially at a time of neoliberal ascendancy and of the intensification of tourism as a tool for economic development in many parts of the world. Moreover, this trend toward the "heritagization" of landscape and the globalization of distinctive "properties" is a direct challenge to the traditional role of landscapes as crucibles of national identity. It is a fascinating question to explore and Corfu offers me a great opportunity to do this because of all my extensive family connections there.


I have found it useful to share aspects of my biography with prospective graduate students. It serves to highlight the often circuitous route that one might take and still end up a geographer. After all, geography is a very welcoming field that encourages the sort of complexity and breadth that a more fully experienced life might add to one's perspective. When I was born in public housing in the Redfern area of south Sydney, at a time when it was in the vortex of a precipitous downward spiral, one would have never guessed that I could be doing what I do today. Australians will immediately recognize the address and the negative implications attached to it. Growing up the child of Greek immigrants only added to the marginalization. I suppose it is an explanation of sorts of how come I have gravitated toward issues of social justice and the city in my own work. I expect that in the near future I will return to Sydney to take a closer look at the dramatic transformations that have been taking place in my old neighborhood. Gentrification has wrought many changes there as it is now an "up-and-coming" neighborhood that attracts young urban professionals and bohemians alike.