Dr. Dillon Mahmoudi
Associate Professor · Tenure-Track
Department of Economics Department of Geography & Environmental Systems School of Public Policy
College of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences
He/Him/His/Himself
About
I’ve always been interested in technology and cities. I’ve lived in 8 cities across 3 continents. During high school, I got an opportunity to work on the software side of the Microsoft Keyboards and Mice team in Redmond, Washington. After high school, I earned a Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science from Georgia Tech in Atlanta, Georgia taking a brief break to work on Microsoft’s .NET Framework in Dublin, Ireland. I then moved to Austin, Texas and worked on the eCommerce Team at National Instruments. In 2009, began graduate school in Urban Studies at Portland State University where I was a Research Associate at City Observatory. I moved to Baltimore in 2017 when I joined the Department of Geography and Environmental Systems as Assistant Professor.
Research interests
My research follows the theme of mapping capital: economic geography, critical GIS and counter-mapping, urban studies, labor markets, digital geography, youth & carceral geographies
Teaching interests
I currently teach a number of courses related to GIS, mapping, and economic geography:
- GES 330: Economic Geography
- GES 383: Statistical and Thematic Cartography
- GES 386/686: Introduction to Geographic Information Systems
- GES 486/687: Advanced Applications in Geographic Information Systems
- GES 488/688: Spatial Data Analysis and GIS Applications
- GES 700: Seminar in Geography – Logics of Capital: Witchcraft, Slavery, and Waged-Work.
Education
-
Ph D, Urban Studies
— Portland State University (2017) Making Software, Making Regions: Networks, Segmentation, & Diversity
- Graduate Certificate, Geographic Information Science (GIS) — Portland State University (2016)
- BS, Computer Science — Georgia Institute of Technology (2006)
Publications
- The urban-tech feedback loop: A surveillance and development data-walk in South Lake Union 2024
- Witches as glitches: A response to Leszczynski and Elwood 2022
- Doing Critical GIS 2022
- Mapping for Whom? Communities of color and the citizen science gap 2022
- Political ecologies of platform urbanism 2020
- Urban real estate technologies: genealogies, frontiers, & critiques 2020
- Reproducing spatial inequality? The sustainability fix and barriers to urban mobility in Portland, Oregon 2020
- Critical Geographic Information System 2020
- Silicon Forest and Server Farms: The (Urban) Nature of Digital Capitalism in the Pacific Northwest. 2019
- White men may be biggest winners when a city snags Amazon’s HQ2 2018
- The Neoliberal Politics of “Smart”: Electricity Consumption, Household Monitoring, and the Enterprise Form 2015
Presentations
- Blue Techquity in Baltimore: Preparing a Climate Resilient and Digitally Literate Workforce 2024
- A Critical GIS Master’s Program – A New Direction in Geographic Education to Advance Human & Environmental Well-Being 2023
- Citizen Science Projects: Geographies of Knowledge Production 2023
- Re-projecting Geography onto the Digital 2022
Grants and Contracts
- Urban Geography Seminar Series Award 2021