Among the many new faces at Trinity this year is Professor Gath Myers, the new Paul E. Raether Distinguished Professor of Urban International Studies. He comes to Trinity from the University of Kansas, where he worked for the last seventeen years, as a professor in the Departments of Geography and African/African American Studies. He holds a B.A. with honors in History from Bowdoin College and both his master’s degree in African Area Studies and his Ph.D. in geography from the University of California, Los Angeles.

“I am very excited for the Center of Urban and Global Studies, building the Urban Studies major, African Studies minor, and working with the City Program,” he said about Trinity.

Myers’ passion for urban and African studies dates back to his high school years.

“I, strangely enough, was interested in Africa, in maps, cities and sports,” he explained, “I remember in high school we had to write a paper about what we thought we would be at the age of 30 and I said that I would be a cartographer.” During his undergraduate years at Bowdoin, Myers studied abroad in Nairobi, Kenya. When he returned to the states and later went to graduate school, he definitely knew that he wanted to study Africa. It wasn’t until taking urban planning courses in graduate school though that he became formally interested in geography.

Injustice in this world is what drew Myers to studying Africa and Urban Geography.

“I had a concern about injustice. I couldn’t understand why the world was unequal. Within cities in Africa and the U.S, we had inequality. Between Africa and the U.S., there was inequality. I wanted to understand why there was inequality,” he said.

He thanks his former professors – Randolph Stakeman from Bowdoin, Gerry Hale and Edward Soja from UCLA – for inspiring him to become involved in African Studies and Urban Studies.

Outside of school, Myers enjoys spending time with his two daughters, watching soccer, riding his bicycle and music. He is looking forward to become acclimated to Trinity, and to Hartford.