Cynthia Gorman

Associate Professor of Geography and Women's and Gender Studies

Cynthia Gorman is an Associate Professor of Geography and Women’s and Gender Studies at West Virginia University. Dr. Gorman’s research examines the legal geographies of political asylum in the U.S. and advocacy to expand human rights protections outlined in UN Refugee Conventions and Protocols. Using feminist legal archeology, her work traces how gendered and racialized logics of border control shape legal recognition of immigrant and refugee status in the United States with a particular focus on those displaced from Central America. More recently she has explored how immigration raids shape the politics of community life for immigrants in rural towns dependent on meatpacking industries. Her work has been published in journals such as Political Geography, Geopolitics, Environment and Planning A, Environment and Planning C, Gender, Place and Culture, and the Geographical Review and she currently serves on the Editorial Board of the Annals of the American Association of Geographers. Support for her research has been provided by the WV Humanities Council, the WVU Humanities Center, the Appalachian Studies Association, the One Foundation and the National Geographic Society.