Sterling Quinn

Ph.D Penn State University
Interests and expertise: Critical cartography in the Internet era, crowdsourced mapping, free and open source GIS, Latin America.

Dr. Sterling Quinn studies the ways that digital maps are created and used by society. He teaches a variety of geography courses at CWU touching the themes of GIS, cartography, Latin America, and world issues.

Dr. Quinn’s research uses a lens of critical cartography and GIS to study emerging spatial technologies. He has analyzed the social forces behind crowdsourced projects like OpenStreetMap, investigated missing items in Google Maps and similar apps, scrutinized coverage patterns of street level imagery, and chronicled the building of communities around free and open source GIS software. Currently he is experimenting with feminist approaches in cartography and GIS to convey information from historical diaries, studying how maps of personal geographies could reveal aspects of identity formation and landscape perception.

Dr. Quinn is an active participant in the Latino and Latin American Studies program at CWU. His travels and research have taken him to Argentina, Brazil, and other countries, but have also touched local themes such as the inclusion of Latino-oriented businesses in online maps of the Northwestern US. In 2022 Dr. Quinn taught a course on “Digital Maps and Society” as a visiting instructor at the Universidad Nacional de Colombia.

Dr. Quinn serves on various thesis committees and is welcoming graduate students in the Cultural and Environmental Resource Management master’s program who would like to apply GIS methods toward addressing resource management issues.

Prior to coming to CWU, Dr. Quinn taught numerous courses in the Penn State University online geospatial programs. In 2015 he received the GeoForAll Global Educator of the Year Award for his work authoring the online course Open Web Mapping. He is also an alumnus of the Summer Doctoral Programme at the Oxford Internet Institute. Prior to his full-time academic career, Dr. Quinn worked as a GIS software product engineer at Esri, specializing in web mapping technologies.

Dr. Quinn holds a PhD in geography from Penn State University (2016), an MGIS from Penn State (2009), and a BS in GIS from Brigham Young University (2005). His full CV and list of publications are visible at www.sterlingquinn.net.

Selected courses taught:

GEOG 417: Workplace GIS

GEOG 411: GIS Programming

GEOG 404: GIS Analysis

GEOG 403: GIS and Data Management

GEOG 370: Geography of South America

GEOG 111: The Power of Maps

GEOG 101: World Regional Geography

Selected publications (with links to full articles):

Quinn, S., & Condon, D. (2022). Inclusion of Latino-oriented local businesses in popular online maps: An empirical study in the Inland Northwest of the United States. The Journal of Community Informatics, 18(2), 84-114.

Quinn, S. (2020). Geographies of Empty Spaces on Print and Digital Reference Maps: A Study of Washington State. Cartographic Perspectives, (95), 24-21.

Quinn, S. (2019). Free and open source GIS in South America: political inroads and local advocacy. International Journal of Geographical Information Science, 34(3), 464-483.

Quinn, S., & Bull, F. (2019). Understanding Threats to Crowdsourced Geographic Data Quality Through a Study of OpenStreetMap Contributor Bans. In N. Valcik (Ed.), Geospatial Information System Use in Public Organizations: How and Why GIS Should Be Used by the Public Sector. CRC Press, Boca Raton, FL

Quinn, S., & Alvarez León, L. (2019). Every single street? Rethinking full coverage across street‐level imagery platforms. Transactions in GIS, 23(6), 1251-1272.

Quinn, S. and Tucker, D. (2017). How geopolitical conflict shapes the mass-produced online map. First Monday, 22(11).

Quinn, S. (2017). Using small cities to understand the crowd behind OpenStreetMap, GeoJournal, 82(3), 455-473.