Associate Professor, Geography

In addition to his teaching in the Geography department, Stuart Sweeney also serves as Director of the Institute for Social, Behavioral, and Economic Research at UC Santa Barbara.  After earning a BA from UC San Diego, he completed his Ph.D. (1999) in City and Regional Planning, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.  His diverse academic research interests span topics from applied statistics, spatial analysis, economic geography, demography, and development.  In addition to academic research, he consults for government agencies; most recently developing small area population and enrollment projections for the Southern California Association of Governments.  Stuart won the 1999 Springer-Verlag Award for the Best Paper at the Western Regional Science Association’s Annual Meeting, he was nominated for the UCSB Plous Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching in 2005, and his innovative course, “The Geography of Surfing,” has attracted national media coverage.

Personal homepage: geog.ucsb.edu/~sweeney

Select EH Courses: People, Place, Environment; Urban Geography; Population, Development, and the Environment; and Geography of Surfing