Alexis E. Wood

Research Areas

Interests

fringe political movements; affect; digital geographies; critical cartography; politics of climate change; American landscapes; theory fiction

Contact Information

aew78@berkeley.edu

Links

Personal Website

Biography

Alexis researches the growing intersections among rural sociopolitical movements, climate change, and digital geographies. Her work focuses particularly on state-secession movements and how participants articulate intensifying climate anxieties through existing experiences of rural marginalization across physical and digital landscapes. Proudly both a theorist and a geospatial analyst, Alexis seeks to bring these often-separated fields into conversation through experimental cartographic and geospatial methods. With this, she is a Designated Emphasis (DE) student with the Berkeley Center for New Media and the Center for Interdisciplinary Critical Inquiry's Program in Critical Theory.

Alexis is currently co-chair of the New Media Working Group and a graduate student affiliate of the Institute for the Study of Societal Issues and the Berkeley Center for Right-Wing Studies. She also serves as a Graduate Peer Advisor with Berkeley Hope Scholars, advising undergraduates on graduate-school applications, research design, and fellowship and award applications. She can usually be found in studio.geo? in McCone 106, instigating some form of—sometimes productive—cartographic chaos.

Before beginning her PhD, Alexis worked as a Data Coordinator for the Redistricting Data Hub, where she collected and processed Community of Interest maps produced during the 2020 redistricting cycle. This experience informs her broader interest in mapping platforms: how they produce particular forms of representation, organize political knowledge, and shape American political life. Her interdisciplinary path has also included training in archaeology through the University of Cambridge Institute of Continuing Education, opera performance at the University of Miami, and biomedical sciences at Florida International University.

Education

Anthropology A.A. (with Highest Honors), Berkeley City College

Political Science B.A. (with High Honors in General Scholarship), University of California, Berkeley

Geography B.A. (with Highest Honors), University of California, Berkeley

Publications

Wilmott, C., & Wood, A. E. (2024). Terra infirma: On the base map in urban cartography and GIS. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 42(5-6) 734-757. https://doi.org/10.1177/02637758241263205.

Selected Presentations

2027 Wood, A.E. "Constellation Method(ologies) and Rural Spaces: constructing place across spacetime." Phi Beta Kappa, Asilomar Conference Keynote. Pacific Grove, CA.

2026 Wood, A.E. “Mapping an “Imaginary State”: Cartographic Fragments of the State of Jefferson. Maps and More with UC Berkeley’s Earth Science and Map Library. Berkeley, CA.

2025 Wilmott, C., Wood, A.E., & Callaway, C. “Travelling Plants: Decolonising Botanical Mobilities Beyond the Nation-State” at NACIS (North American Cartographic Information Society). Louisville, KY.

2025 Wood, A.E. “Affective States” at New Directions in Fringe Politics hosted by UC Berkeley Social Science Matrix. Berkeley, CA.

2024 Wood, A.E. “State of Mind(Mine): A Database Project” at NACIS (North American Cartographic Information Society). Tacoma, WA.

2023 Wood, A. E. "Erosion As Method(ology): Theorizing and Mapping Structures of Feeling" at NACIS (North American Cartographic Information Society), Pittsburgh, PA.

2023 Wood, A. E. “What is a Felt Distance? Structures of Feeling and Rurality” at the Digital Geographies Movements and Methods Workshop. Calgary, Canada.

2023 Thatcher, J., Retchless, D., Wood, A.E. “What Makes a Gerrymanderer? An Inductive Approach to Identifying Gerrymandered Districts” at AAG, (American Association of Geographers) Annual Meeting. Denver, CO.

2023 Wilmott, C. & Wood, A. E. “All your base [maps] are belong to us,” at AAG Annual Meeting. Denver, CO.

2022 Wilmott, C. & Wood, A. E. “Rematriating the Map: Indigenous Cartographies for Alternative Futures,” NACIS, Minneapolis, MN.

2022 Thatcher, J. & Wood, A. E. “Cartographic Limits and Interdisciplinary Science: Maps and Mathematics in Pursuit of Social Justice,” at NACIS, Minneapolis, MN.

2022 Wood, A. E. “State of Mind/State of Mine: California Secessionism, Facebook, and the Newsom Recall,” at AAG Annual Meeting. New York, NY.

Selected Grants, Awards & Fellowships

External Fellowships and Grants

2026 Phi Beta Kappa Dissertation Fellowship

2025 ACLS/Mellon Foundation Dissertation Innovation Fellowship

2024 Early Career Digital Publication Grant with the Leventhal Map & Education Center at the Boston Public Library

2024 National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship Program (NSF GRFP)

2021 National Science Foundation Undergraduate Research Fellowship, University of Washington, Seattle.

Competitive Internal Grants

2026 The Kenneth E. and Dorothy V. Hill Study Award, The Bancroft Library

2026 Dissertation Mini-Grant, Center for Right Wing Studies, UC Berkeley

2025 Tech-authoritarianism Working Group, Townsend Center (with J. Lee Crandall).

2024 Graduate Student Service Award, Department of Geography, UC Berkeley

2023 “Building Active Learning and Visual Computation into Geospatial Education,” Instructional Technology and Innovation Micro Grant Program (on behalf of the Department of Geography)

2023 Berkeley Center for New Media Summer Research Fellowship

2023 Center for Interdisciplinary Critical Inquiry (CICI) Summer Research Grant

2022 “Deorienting the Map: Alternative Cartographies for Alternative Futures,” Social Sciences Matrix Research Team (with Clancy Wilmott)

2022 UCEAP Academic Integration Grant (on behalf of Department of Geography)

2022 James J. Parsons Award for Field Research, Department of Geography

2021 URAP (Undergraduate Research Apprenticeship Program) Summer Research Fellowship

2020 David Barrows Scholarship, Department of Political Science, UC Berkeley

teaching experience

Graduate Student Instructor

Summer 2025 & 2026 | Film 85: Cinema After Digitization

Summer 2025 & 2026 | Interdisciplinary Studies 157: Experiential Learning: Context, Self-Reflection, and Professional Development

Fall 2023 & 2024 | Geography 10AC: Worldings: Regions, Peoples and States

Readerships

Fall 2025 & 2026 | Political Economy 85, What is Political Economy and How Should We Do It?

Spring 2025 & 2026 | Political Economy 160, Political Economy in Historical Context: Law, Nation and Empire in Britain and the United States

Fall 2024 | Film 45, American Television

Spring 2024 & 2025 | Media Studies 132, Researching Digital Media: Methods and Methodologies

Fall 2023 | GEOG 183, Cartographic Representation

Spring 2023 | GEOG 149B, Climate Impacts and Risk Analysis