This will be the 7th annual Graduate Appalachian Research Symposium and Arts Showcase! This event brings students from across UK's Campus and from throughout the Appalachian Region together to present their work and research, and the theme is Difference and Affinity: Representing Appalachia. This year's keynote speaker is Tom Hansell, Co-Director of University Documentary Film Services and Assistant Professor at the Center for Appalachian Studies at Appalachian State University in Boone, North Carolina and Director of After Coal. The Symposium will span two days this year: Saturday, March 5, 2016 and Sunday, March 6, 2016 from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. on both days. Poster submissions are due online by midnight on Sunday, January 31, 2016. Registration for presenters and non-presenting attendees is due online by Monday, February 15, 2016. Please, see the GARC page on our website for more information and for submission and registration instructions!  This year's Symposium and Art Showcase is generously co-sponsored by the UK Student Government Association. 

Join us for our first SWAP (Sharing Work on Appalachia in Progress) Event of the spring 2016 semester!  Thursday, February 18, 2016 from 12 p.m. to 1:30 p.m., the UK Appalachian Center welcomes Lauren Renee Moore, a Graduate Student in the Department of Anthropology and Lindsay Shade, a Graduate Student from the Department of Geography.  These students were the recipients of the 2015 James S. Brown Award and will present talks related to their research.  Lauren Renee Moore presents Growing Food for Near of Far? Beginning Farmers and Agricultural Decision Making in the Blue Ridge.  Lindsay Shade presents The Historical and Legal Geography of Subsoil Land in the West Virginia Shale Boom.  This event is free and open to all UK Students, Faculty, and Staff; lunch will be provided.

Please, join us in welcoming two of our 2015 Eller Billings Summer Mini Research Grant Recipients as they present their work at our SWAP (Sharing Work on Appalachia in Progress) Event!  Tammy Clemmons, a Graduate Student in Anthropology will give at talk entitled Youth Media Education and Activism in Central Appalachia and Chelsea Adams, a Graduate Students in Educational Psychology will give a talk entitled Stigma Conciousness in Appalachian Students at the UK Appalachian Center from 12 p.m. to 1:30 p.m. on Wednesday, April 13, 2016.  This is a free event for UK faculty, students, and staff, and lunch will be provided.

Please, join us for a SWAP (Sharing Work on Appalachia in Progress) Event on Wednesday, December 9, 2015 from 12 p.m. to 1:30 p.m. at the UK Appalachian Center!  This SWAP features talks from three of our 2015 Eller Billings Summer Research Mini-Grant Recipients: Lesly-Marie Buer, a graduate student in Anthropology, Henry Bundy, a graduate student in Anthropology, and Dr. Robin Vanderpool, a faculty member in the Department of Health Behavior in the College of Public Health.  This is a free event for UK Students, Faculty, and Staff, and lunch will be provided.

Please join us for the 2015 Sustainability Forum on Tuesday, December 1, 2015 from 4:30 p.m. to 6:30 p.m. at the Hilary J. Boone Center on UK's Campus! This event is sponsored by the Tracy Farmer Institute for Sustainability and the Environment and the UK Appalachian Center.  Students are encouraged to submit their posters for consideration, and the top posters will be given prizes.  The deadline for submissions is Friday, November 20, 2015. Please contact Suzette Walling for submission instructions and more information: tfise@uky.edu.  Also see the Call for posters below our flyer and the Tracy Farmer Institute's website: http://www.tfise.uky.edu/showcase.

UK Appalachian Studies Director and Professor of Sociology, Dr. Shaunna Scott will present her work as a recipient of a UK Appalachian Center 2015 Eller Billings Mini Grant on Wednesday, November 18, 2015 from 12 p.m. to 1:30 p.m.  This SWAP (Sharing Work on Appalachia in Progress) Event is free, and students, faculty, and staff are welcome and encouraged to attend!  Dr. Scott's talk is entitled From Collaboration to Network Analysis: A Viable Option to Assist a Community in its Post-Coal Development.  The event will be held at the UK Appalachian Center, 624 Maxwelton Court, and lunch will be provided.

Please, join us for this free event!  Two of our 2015 Eller Billings Mini Grant recipients will share their work on Thursday, November 5, 2015 from 12 p.m. to 1:30 p.m. at the UK Appalachian Center, 624 Maxwelton Court.  Sara Beth Freytag is a student in the Master's Program in the Department of Forestry; her talk title is Effects of Mountaintop Removal Mining on Population Dynamics of Stream Salamanders.  Jasper Waugh Quasebarth is a Ph.D. student in the Department of Anthropology; his talk title is Finding the Singing Spruce: Locating Material in West Virginian Musical Instrument Craft.  Lunch will be provided, and students, faculty and staff are welcome!

Please, join us in welcoming Panagioti Tsolkas as part of our UK Appalachian Center Speaker Series!  This talk is entitled Just Transition not Toxic Prisons: the Fight Against Prison Building in Coal Country.  Mr. Tsolkas will present his talk in Room 208 of the White Hall Classroom Building on Wednesday, October 7, 2015 from 3:30 to 5 p.m.  He is the current Special Projects Coordinator at the Human Rights Defense Center in Lake Worth, FL, the Prison Ecology Project, has been the editor for the Earth First! Journal, and has worked on many other projects and as an activist. This is a free event and has been co-sponsored by the Departments of Sociology and Political Science.  

UK Faculty, Staff, and Students, please join us for our first SWAP (Sharing Work on Appalachia in Progress) Event of the 2015-2015 academic year!  Mary Beth Schmid, a Ph.D. Candidate at the University of Kentucky will present her research with a talk entitled Linking Places, People, and Processes: Conventional Tomato Farming in the Southeastern US.  Mary Beth is an awardee of the UK Appalachian Center's 2015 Eller/Billing Summer Research Mini-Grant.  This talk will be at the UK Appalachian Center from 12:30 - 1:30 on Friday, September 11, 2015.  Lunch will be provided.

The UK Appalachian Center is happy to welcome Dr.Bill Turner for an Appalachian Forum as part of our speaker series on Civil Rights, Labor and Environmental Social Movements in Appalachia.  Dr. Turner's talk is entitled: Been to the Mountain: Origins of the Civil Rights Movement and will be held in the Whitehall Classroom Building, Room 110 from 4:30 p.m. to 5:45 p.m. on Friday, April 24, 2015.  This is a free event, and all are welcome to meet with our guest from 6 p.m. to 7 p.m. at the UK Appalachian Center after the talk.