The department has an international reputation for the study of social theory and critical geography, including political ecology.

Located in Lexington, Kentucky, the department is consistently ranked among leading geography graduate programs in the United States.

Past Bluegrass Day Speakers have included David Harvey, Anne Buttimer, Peirce F. Lewis, Harm de Blij, Eric Sheppard, Jamie Peck, Lynn Staeheli, Trevor J. Barnes, Sarah Whatmore and Katherine McKittrick.

In 1952, James Shear (Clark) and Daniel Jacobson (LSU) joined the department to teach climatology and cultural geography.

The first course examined the Eskimo, the Navajo, and Buganda in East Africa; the second analyzed three other areas: China, the Cotton South (in the U.S.), and the British Midlands.

With the support of the Sears Roebuck Foundation, the department also maintained a summer field studies program at this time in Monterrey, Mexico.

There have been ten chairs of the department since Schwendeman's term as Head (a designation no longer used at the university), The first doctorates were awarded in 1972 to Thomas P. Grimes and Robert Daniel Joseph.

In subsequent years, some of the departing faculty were replaced by new appointments, including Richard Towber (Washington) and Allan Fitzsimmons (UCLA).

The faculty conducted research in the Philippines, Indonesia, Sumatra, Western Australia, and the Himalaya and Japan with support from various funding agencies.

This period also marked increased interest in the department's immediate surroundings with the publication of the first comprehensive Atlas of Kentucky (1976), an effort that involved the entire faculty.

To improve its standing on campus and in the state, the department received permission to hire two mid-level faculty members with established research records.

At the same time, several recent PhDs were added to the program; they included Robert Cromley (Ohio State), Justin Friberg (Syracuse), Hank Bullamore (Iowa), and Jim Hufferd (Minnesota).

Rowles, Ulack, Watkins, Raitz, and Brunn at the same time worked with the director and others in the Appalachian Studies Center on various research projects and outreach programs.

Under the auspices of the Committee on Social Theory, geographers worked closely with colleagues in Philosophy, English, History, Sociology, and Political Science.

Heidi Nast's (McGill) addition as a visiting assistant professor in 1994 was instrumental in the department's development of coursework and seminars on geography and gender.

Haripriya Rangan (UCLA) took up a visiting assistant professor position in the department in 1995 and taught courses on resource use, non-Western environmental movements, and regional development.

When John Pickles departed to take up an endowed chair at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and John Paul Jones III became Dean of the College of Social and Behavioral Sciences at the University of Arizona in 2003, the chair, Karl Raitz, convinced the administration to authorize a mid-rank faculty hire.

Patricia Ehrkamp (Minnesota) and Morgan Robertson (UW-Madison) joined as assistant professors from Miami University and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, respectively.

Marshall Wilkinson (Macquarie) also joined as visiting faculty in physical geography and geomorphology in 2006 and promoted to tenure-track in 2007 (he left the department in 2010).

Jeff Levy (BA Kentucky) was also hired as department GIS analyst in 2006, joining Gilbreath in the cartography lab.

During the late 1990s, Linda Roth (Clark) offered courses in physical geography and biogeography a few years before her untimely death.

In the spring of 2011, the graduate students hosted the first Dimensions of Political Ecology (DOPE) conference, which has since grown to become an internationally recognized event.

In 2013, Lynn Phillips moved to the tenure track, following several years of service as a lecturer in the department, after receiving a PhD in city planning at the University of Louisville.

Betsy Beymer-Farris (Illinois) joined the faculty from Furman University in 2014 to further expand offerings in political ecology, with research concentrations in Africa.

In addition to teaching introductory and advanced cartography courses, he operated the laboratory, initially in a small room in Patterson Office Tower before it moved to the nearby and renovated Miller Hall basement in 1987.

When Julius Pauer retired in 1997, the department received permission to hire a permanent staff line a director of the Cartographic Laboratory: Richard (Dick) Gilbreath (MA Kentucky).

With support to establish online certificate and degree programs in digital mapping, the department hired Rich Donohue (Wisconsin) as a postdoctoral researcher in 2014.

Nari Senanayake's (Penn State) research and teaching in health geographies and Priscilla McCutcheon's (Georgia) work in food justice represent new offerings for the department.

The interdisciplinary major of environmental and sustainability studies moved under the department's administration, led by efforts of Betsy Beymer-Farris.

A new online graduate program in applied environmental and sustainability studies (AENS) was also launched, with support from a postdoctoral hire: Kathryn Gillespie (Washington).