With the 2026  American Association of Geographers Annual Meeting (AAG2026) just around the corner, here are some highlights from five contributions that our panel, Relational strategies in transformative digital practices, has brought together.

• Jola Ajibade and co-authors will share “Feeling the Heat, Seeing the Storm: Virtual reality (VR) and the Future of Adaptation Communication.” Their study reveals how VR elicits stronger emotional responses compared to more traditional disaster risk communication. This showcases the potential for VR to be used to prompt deeper reflection on public understanding and the roles played in climate change. 
• Ann Nguyen Gaither and her research team will present “Story-mapping as Indigital Practice: Teaching Treaty Rights in the Great Lakes Region.” Relying on Ojibwe treaty rights digital modules as a case study, their communication will focus on how Indigenous pedagogy and digital formats support learning about land-based rights and relationships for those without reservation access, particularly displaced Indigenous peoples. 
• Maliha Binte Mohiuddin and her team are presenting “Everywhere She Maps, She Changes the Discourse: A Topic Modelling of the Gender Discourse in YouthMappers Blogs.” The main argument here is how the campaign “Everywhere She Maps” is contributing to combat the persistent gender discrimination in cartographic science. 
• Akhil Sivadas and his colleagues from the Keystone Foundation will talk about “An Integrated Community-based Monitoring, Reporting, and Verification (CbMRV) framework towards inclusive environmental governance among Local Communities in the Nilgiris Biosphere Reserve.” Their presentation demonstrates how grounded in local, traditional and Indigenous ecological knowledge, the CbMRV framework serves as a bottom-up and technology-enabled approach to strengthen socio-ecological resilience, reinforcing community-based institutional decision making and sustainable natural resource management.
• On behalf of the DIVERSE team, our own Beatriz Rodríguez-Labajos will be discussing “Relational strategies in grassroots digital praxis - An international expert-based exploration.” The project aims to explore the extent to which and how grassroots groups around the world are engaging with digital elements, from simple messaging apps to complex mapping platforms and citizen science platforms, to advance their goals for environmental justice and biocultural diversity.

This session is sponsored by AAG’s Community Geographies Collaborative Specialty Group and by the Cultural and Political Ecology Specialty Group.

Join our panel session: 

Date:  March 18, 2026. 
Time: 10:10 AM - 11:30 AM 
Room: Nob Hill 1, 6th Floor, Hilton Union Square