Benjamin Forest
I study the geographical nature of identity and identifications, and I am especially concerned with the political representation and construction of race, ethnicity, and nationality. My current research examines the political representation of ethnic minority groups, the use of monuments and memorials for (re)constructing post-Soviet national identities, and various issues of electoral geography, political parties, and governance.
Topics of interest
- Shaping Democracy: Boundary Commissions, Parties, and Citizens
- The Politics of Complex Diversity in Contested Cities (Montreal)
- The Power of Symbolic Capital: Post-Communist Monuments Project
- PhD Geography, UCLA (1997)
- Associate Member, Department of Political Science, McGill University
- Member, Centre for the Study of Democratic Citizenship, McGill University
- Research Fellow, McGill Institute for the Study of Canada (2021-2025)
- Forest, Benjamin, Juliet Johnson and Zarlasht M. Razeq (forthcoming) “Territory, Place, Flow, and Scale: Spatial Analysis in the IPE of Trade” Geopolitics DOI: 10.1080/14650045.2024.2355208
- Erl, Chris, Benjamin Forest, and Mike Medeiros (2022) “ ‘Reckless, cavalier, dismissive, petty and vengeful’ ”?: The impact of municipal constituency change on candidate diversity” Political Geography 99 102788. DOI: 10.1016/j.polgeo.2022.102788
- Forest, Benjamin (2022) “As Maine Goes, No Goes the Nation: The 2020 Senate Election" in Atlas of the 2020 Elections, edited by Robert H. Watrel, et al. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield: 225-228.
- Forest, Benjamin and Mike Medeiros (2021) “Contiguity, Constituencies and the Political Representation of Minorities” EPC: Politics and Space 39 (5): 879-899. doi.org/10.1177/2399654420972401