A geographer in Lima

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From left to right: Kelsey Emard, Lorena Cardenas, Kenna Bernardin, Cramer, and Carlos Rodarte

By Colin Bowyer, Communications Manager - August 13, 2025

In order to complete his Spanish degree, Nicholas Cramer, ‘25, needed one more credit during spring term 2025. Already succeeding in taking every Spanish offering that fit his packed geospatial science class schedule, Cramer considered an independent study project that would combine his interests in geography, Spanish, and linguistics. 

Coincidentally, Cramer’s long-standing mentor Kelsey Emard, assistant professor of geography, was leading a group of students from the College of Earth, Ocean, and Atmospheric Sciences to Lima, Peru, for a student-organized international geography colloquium at Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú. Cramer seized the opportunity and worked with Associate Professor Adam Schwartz in the School of Language, Culture, and Society, to find a way to develop an independent study project.

“In my pitch to Adam, I wanted to look at how culture and language interacts with geography in Lima,” explained Cramer. “I came to the conclusion that creating a story map was the best way to convey a linguistic, geographic, and socio-political narrative.”

“In my experience, it’s rare that students seek the opportunity to bridge two fields of study in an independent project,” said Schwartz. “Nick didn’t want to silo his academic pursuits and what he created was an accessible, highly original inquiry into linguistic landscape.” 

While the focus was attending the colloquium, in which Cramer presented his own research entirely in Spanish, the trip quickly expanded into something much deeper: an immersive crash course in culture, language, infrastructure, history, food, and environmental justice. The result of Cramer’s independent study: an interactive map hosted by ArcsGIS software that detailed the week-long journey in Lima, where Cramer chronologically shares how and where geography, gastronomy, language, socioeconomics, and infrastructure collide. 

“As a geographer,” Cramer said, “I learned to see Lima as a layered, complex landscape, and witness firsthand how urban infrastructure, environmental risk, and food systems reflect broader questions about equity, planning, and resilience. As a Spanish student, I was able to engage with people as collaborators, friends, and fellow learners. Together, through these two lenses, it helped me understand Lima as a living, breathing place full of contradictions, history, and potential.”

At the Coloquio Internacional de Estudiantes de Geografía y Medio Ambiente (International Colloquium of Students of Geography and Environment), research was presented on everything from Indigenous land rights to AI and satellite remote sensing. Cramer gave his own presentation, entirely in Spanish, summarizing his Honors College thesis published this spring term. Using Oregon state highway maps, Cramer created a storyboard analysis of how cartography has changed over time and how artificial intelligence will impact future mapmaking.

“AI is transforming the way we do almost everything, including cartography,” said Emard. “What was most valuable about Nick's thesis was how he contextualized historical shifts in mapmaking, and the technical and ethical questions mapmakers have faced during each historical moment, placing this historical perspective into conversation with questions of accountability and ethics that are emerging as we use AI in mapmaking.”

Cramer said he felt prepared and confident for his Spanish-only presentation and Q&A session at the conference. Having taken four years of continuous Spanish classes, as well as studying abroad in Spain during his junior year, the biggest challenge was learning and incorporating the niche vocabulary of cartography and geography into his presentation. 

“Ultimately, throughout my years at OSU majoring in both fields, I found more and more ways where both Spanish and geography connected with each other,” Cramer explained. “Traveling to Lima and documenting my interdisciplinary trip was a great conclusion to my time at OSU.”

As for his final project, Schwartz and Cramer hope that it inspires more students to look closer at the relationship between geography and language and that idea that our lived worlds are means by which we live language.

“This Story Map,” Cramer writes on his webpage, “is more than a travelogue. It’s an invitation: to study abroad, to take intellectual risks, and to embrace an education that crosses borders. For me, that meant stepping into a Peruvian university auditorium to present in Spanish about GIS ethics. For someone else, it might mean following a curiosity in environmental science, policy, art, or history. The key is to let your disciplines speak to each other, and to let yourself grow in the space between them.”