Holly Barcus

Holly Barcus serves as the DeWitt Wallace Professor of Geography at Macalester College in Saint Paul, Minnesota, concurrently holding the administrative position of Chair of the History Department. She is also Vice President & Treasurer of the Executive Committee of the International Geographical Union (IGU).

Her educational qualifications include:

• BA from University of North Carolina, Charlotte
• MA from University of North Carolina, Charlotte
• MAPS from The Australian National University
• PhD from Kansas State University

Professor Barcus's research centers on migration and rural change, examining implications for communities and migrants through the lens of ethnicity, identity, and place-based imaginations. Her fieldwork spans western Mongolia (focusing on Kazakh populations' place identity, environmental interactions, and migration trajectories) and rural U.S. regions including Appalachia, the Great Plains, and the Great Lakes, with consistent emphasis on how rural peripheries navigate socioeconomic and cultural transformations.