Anne Kelly Knowles

Anne Kelly Knowles (born 1957) is an American geographer and a specialist in Historical GIS. After teaching for over ten years at Middlebury College in Vermont as a professor of geography, she is now a professor of history at University of Maine.

She received her MA and PhD from University of Wisconsin–Madison. Her first book, Calvinists Incorporated Welsh Immigrants on Ohio’s Industrial Frontier examined the influence of immigrants’ traditions and social values on their economic behavior during the industrialization of their new region as workers and investors in Welsh-owned charcoal iron companies.

In 2002 she edited the first book ever published with case studies of the use of Historical GIS in various disciplines. She was the guest editor of a special issue of the journal Social Science History about this field.

Her research has included spatial analysis of the role of skilled ironworkers in the transfer of technology in the U.S. iron industry 1800–1868, and the mapping of the Holocaust.

Awards

Guggenheim Fellowship (2015).

John Brinkerhoff Jackson Book Award, Association of American Geographers (2014).

American Ingenuity Award for Historical Scholarship, Smithsonian magazine (2012).

National Science Foundation Collaborative Research Grant, Holocaust Historical GIS, with Alberto Giordano as fellow PI (2008 – 2011).

National Endowment for the Humanities Research Fellowship (2005).

American Council of Learned Societies Research Fellowship (1999).