Don Lafreniere

Contact

djlafren@mtu.edu
906-487-2189

Professor of Geography and GIS
Graduate Director
Director, Geospatial Research Facility

PhD, Geography, University of Western Ontario
BS, History, Eastern Michigan University
BS, Geography, Eastern Michigan University

Links of Interest

Research Interests

Environmental Change and Life Course Epidemiology
Urban Environments and Population Health
Public Participatory GIS
Historical GIS & Deep Mapping
Spatial Humanities
Deindustrialization and Shrinking Cities
Time-Space Integration and Modeling in GIS
Demography and Historical Record Linkage
Sense of Place and Neighborhood Construction

Peer-Reviewed Publications (Selected)

Stone, T., Trepal, D., Lafreniere, D., and Sadler, R. 2023. Built and Social Indicies for Hazards in Children's Environments. Health and Place, Vol. 83.
Stone, T., Lafreniere, D., and Hildebrandt, R. 2022. Deep Mapping the Daily Spaces of Children and Youth in the Industrial City. Historical Methods: A Journal of Quantitative and Interdisciplinary History, Vol. 55, no. 4: 209-227.
Lafreniere, D., Stone, T., Hildebrandt, R., Sadler, R., Madison, M., Trepal, D., Spikberg, G., and Juip, J. 2021. Schools as Vectors of Infectious Disease Transmission during the 1918 Influenza Pandemic. Cartographica: The International Journal for Geographic Information and Geovisualization, Vol. 56, no. 1: 51-63.
Walling, D., Sadler, R., and Lafreniere, D. 2021. Lessons from U.S. Rust Belt Cities for Equitable Low-Growth Futures. Urban Research & Practice, Vol. 14, no. 4: 471-482.
Trepal, D. Lafreniere, D., and Stone, T. 2021. Mapping Historical Archaeology and Industrial Heritage: The Historical Spatial Data Infrastructure. Journal of Computer Applications in Archaeology, Vol. 3, no. 1: 202-213.
Lafreniere, D., and Gilliland, J. 2020. "Revisiting the Walking City: A Geospatial Examination of the Journey to Work" in Charles Travis, Francis Ludlow, and Ferenc Gyuris eds., Historical Geography, GIScience and Textual Analysis. Cham, Switzerland: Springer Nature, 85-112.
Trepal, D., Lafreniere, D., and Gilliland, J. 2020. Historical Spatial-Data Infrastructures for Archaeology: Towards a Spatiotemporal Big-Data Approach to Studying the Postindustrial City. Historical Archaeology, Vol. 54, no. 2: 424-452.
Lafreniere. D., Weidner, L., Trepal, D., Scarlett, S., Arnold, J., Pastel, R., and Williams, R. 2019. Public Participatory Historical GIS. Historical Methods: Journal of Quantitative and Interdisciplinary History, Vol. 52, no. 3: 132-149.
Trepal, D., and Lafreniere, D. 2019. Understanding Cumulative Hazards in a Rustbelt City: Integrating GIS, Archaeology, and Spatial History. Urban Science, Vol. 3, no. 3: article 83.
Scarlett, S., Lafreniere, D., Trepal, D., Arnold, J., and Xie, Y. 2019. Out of the Classroom and Into History: Mobile Historical GIS and Community-Engaged Teaching. The History Teacher, Vol. 53, no. 1: 11-35.
Trepal, D., Scarlett, S., and Lafreniere, D. 2019. Heritage Making through Community Archaeology and the Spatial Humanities. Journal of Community Archaeology & Heritage, Vol. 6, no. 4: 238-256.
Southall, H., and Lafreniere, D. 2019. Working with the Public in Historical Data Creation. Historical Methods: Journal of Quantitative and Interdisciplinary History, Vol. 52, no. 3: 129-131.
Scarlett, S., Lafreniere, D., Trepal, D., Arnold, J., and Pastel, R. 2018. Engaging Community and Spatial Humanities for Postindustrial Heritage: The Keweenaw Time Traveler. American Quarterly, Vol. 70, no. 3: 619-623.
Gregory, I., Debats, D., and Lafreniere, D., eds. 2018. The Routledge Companion to Spatial History. London: Routledge, ISBN: 978-1138860148
Lafreniere, D., and Gilliland, J. 2018. Following Workers of the Industrial City across a Decade: Residential, Occupational, and Workplace Mobilities from 1881-1891 in Ian Gregory, Don Debats, and Don Lafreniere, eds., The Routledge Companion to Spatial History. London: Routledge, 299-319.
Arnold, J., and Lafreniere, D. 2018 Creating a Longitudinal, Data-Driven 3D Model of Change Over Time in a Postindustrial Landscape Using GIS and CityEngine. Journal of Cultural Heritage Management and Sustainable Development, Vol. 7, no. 4
Lutz, J., Lafreniere, D., Harvey, M., Dunae, P., Gilliland, J. 2018 "'A City of White Race Occupies its Place' Kanaka Row, Chinatown, and the Indian Quarter in Victorian Victoria" in Ian Gregory, Don Debats, and Don Lafreniere, eds., The Routledge Companion to Spatial History. London: Routledge, 320-348.
Baeten, J., Langston, N., and Lafreniere, D. 2018. A Spatial Evaluation of Historic Iron Mining Impacts on Current Impaired Waters in Lake Superior's Mesabi Range. AMBIO- Journal of the Human Environment, Vol. 47, no. 2: 231-244.
Arnold, J., and Lafreniere, D. 2018. The Persistence of Time: Vernacular Preservation of the Postindustrial Landscape. Change Over Time: An International Journal of Conservation and the Built Environment, Vol. 7, no. 2: 114-133.
Sadler. R, and Lafreniere D. 2017. You are where you live: Methodological Challenges to Measuring Children’s Exposure to Hazards. Journal of Children and Poverty, Vol. 23, no. 2: 189-198.
Sadler. R, and Lafreniere, D. 2017. Racist Housing Practices as a Precursor to Uneven Neighborhood Change in a Post-Industrial City. Housing Studies, Vol. 32, no. 2: 186-208
Baeten. J, Langston, N, and Lafreniere, D. 2016. A Geospatial Approach to Uncovering the Hidden Waste Footprint of Lake Superior's Mesabi Iron Range. The Extractive Industries and Society, Vol. 3, no. 4: 1031-1045
Van Allen, N. and Lafreniere, D. 2016 Rebuilding the Landscape of the Rural Post Office: A Geospatial Analysis of 19th Century Postal Space and Networks. Rural Landscapes: Society, Environment, History, Vol. 3, no. 1: 2, 1-19
Oiamo, T., Lafreniere, D., and Parr, J. 2016 “The Making of a Key North American Environment of Mobility: the Windsor-Detroit Borderland.” In Colin Coates, Jay Young, and Ben Bradley, eds., Moving Natures: Mobility and the Environment in Canadian History. Calgary: University of Calgary Press, 175-198
Lafreniere, D. and Gilliland, J. 2015. All the World's a Stage: A GIS Framework for Recreating Personal Time-Space from Qualitative and Quantitative Sources. Transactions in GIS, Vol. 19, no. 2: 225-246.
Dunae, P., Lafreniere, D., Gilliland, J., and Lutz, J. 2013. Dwelling Places, Social Spaces: Revealing the Environments of Urban Workers in Victoria using Historical GIS. Labour/Le Travail, Vol. 72: 37-73.
Ridge, M., Lafreniere, D., and Nesbit, S. 2013. Creating Deep Maps and Spatial Narratives through Design. International Journal of Humanities and Arts Computing, Vol. 7: 176-189.
Lutz, J., Dunae, P., Gilliland, J., Lafreniere, D., and Harvey, M. 2013. “Turning Space Inside Out: Spatial History and Race in Victorian Victoria.” In Jennifer Bonnell and Marcel Fortin, eds., Historical GIS Research in Canada. Calgary: University of Calgary Press, 1-26.
Dunae, P., Lutz, J., Lafreniere, D., and Gilliland, J. 2011. Making the Inscrutable, Scrutable: Race and Space in Victoria’s Chinatown, 1891. B.C. Studies, no. 169: 51-80.
Lafreniere, D., and Rivet, D. 2010. Rescaling the Past through Mosaic Historical Cartography. Journal of Maps, Vol. 6, no. 1: 417-422.

Recent Funding (Selected)

Deep Maps and Community Histories: Advancing Transdisciplinary and Public-Facing Scholarship in the Spatial Humanities, National Endowment for the Humanities, PI $249,993 2024-2025
Geoheritage and Two-Eyed Seeing: Advances in Interdisciplinary Earth Science Research, Learning, and Inclusion through Shared Ways of Knowing, National Science Foundation, Co-PI $296,686 2021-2023
Advancing Deep Mapping Infrastructure for Community-Driven Spatial Humanities: The Keweenaw Time Traveler, National Endowment for the Humanities, PI $324,985 2020-2023
Michigan Miners at Home and Work: Digitizing, Mapping and Sharing Employment Records, Council on Library and Information Resources, Co-PI $240,014 2020-2022
Trois siècles de migration francophones en Amérique du Nord 1840-1940 (Three Centuries of Francophone Migration in North America), Social Science and Humanities Research Council, Co-PI $2,495,100 2019-2026
Coastal Geophysical Properties and Resiliency Strategy, Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy, Co-PI $460,017 2017-2021
Copper Country Historical Spatial Data Infrastructure (aka- Keweenaw Time Traveler), National Endowment for the Humanities, $259,882 2016-2019
Archaeological and Historical Studies at Pullman National Monument, National Park Service, Co-PI $160,513 2016-2019
Nouveaux regards sur l'occupation du continent nord-américain par la population canadienne-française 1760-1914 (New Perspectives on the Occupation of the North American Continent by French-Canadians 1760-1914), Social Science and Humanities Research Council, Co-PI $197,500 2016-2018
Community Participatory Research in Children’s Geographies and Health: Informal STEM Research and Education using Geospatial Technologies, MTU REF Research Seed, $18,000 2017-2018
GRACE, GIS Resources and Applications for Career Education, NSF-ITEST, Sub. $1,568,276 2014-2018
Canadian Historical Geographic Information Systems Partnership, Social Science and Humanities Research Council, Co-PI $199,608 2015-2017

Research Projects

Teaching Experience

GIS for the Graduate Researcher
Fundamentals of GIS
Introduction to Human Geography
The Urban Experience
Building America
Global Issues
Advanced GIS Methods
Advanced GIS Visualization and Cartography
People, Places, Landscapes
Deindustrialization and Sustainability