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Professor Karen Barton, a Colorado Partner, has been named a Knight of the Order by the people of Casamance, Senegal, who bestowed the honor for bringing attention to a nearly forgotten shipwreck, which was the second-worst maritime disaster in history.
Karen’s book, Africa’s Joola Shipwreck: Causes and Consequences of a Humanitarian Disaster, describes what happened the night of September 2002 off the coast of Senegal when 1863 people died aboard the Joola; 64 survived. Karen is writing a second book with a Senegalese professor, Elie Bernard Diatta, about the orphans left behind.
A professor of geography and sustainability at the University of Northern Colorado (UNC) in Greeley, she lives in nearby Ft. Collins with her family; also, she “loves to run and swim."
Last summer, Karen worked in Oaxaca and Veracruz doing field research for her seventh Fulbright award. In January, she’ll be taking the helm as the president of the Society of Women Geographers, “following in the footsteps of many intrepid field scientists and explorers from the past one hundred years.”
Karen heard about Colorado Partners from Betty Brown, then secretary. “I joined because of the enormous enthusiasm Betty and Roger Brown have for intercultural exchanges in the Americas,” she said.
“Thanks to Partners, I am now friends with Binka Le Breton at the Iracambi Atlantic Rainforest Research Center in Brazil, where a few of my students have since completed internships at the field station.” [Binka is a former POA Int’l Board director.]
Karen’s next goals are to “create some synergies between Partners of the Americas, Society of Women Geographers, Fulbright, Explorers Club, and other groups in our network who are ‘out there’ doing the work.” She also is angling to write a Department of Education grant to "help broaden international opportunities for students and faculty at UNC, and for Colorado Partners’ contacts in Brazil like Iracambi. Don’t tell everyone this—but I like to write grants
Comments...
Cathy Healy
says... Posted Friday, November 12, 2021
Congratulations, Karen. Not only a knighthood -- Lady Karen?-- but seven Fulbrights?!!!! You'll get a kick out of this pic of Karen, who looks like Harrison Ford's younger sister in "Raiders of the Lost Ark."
Inspired by President Kennedy and founded in 1964 under the Alliance for Progress, Partners of the Americas is a 501(c)3 nonprofit, nonpartisan organization with international offices in Washington, D.C.
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