Western Michigan University
1903 W Michigan Ave
Kalamazoo MI 49008-5424 USA
- Ph.D., Geography, Indiana University, 2008
- M.A., History, University of California at Berkeley, 1998
- B.A., Classics, Loyola Marymount University, 1994
- Urban and cultural geography
- Landscape
- Tourism
Dr. Michelle Metro-Roland is an affiliate professor in the Department of Geography, Environment, and Tourism at Western Michigan University. Metro-Roland is also director of Faculty and Global Program Development at the Haenicke Institute for Global Education, and serves as the Fulbright program advisor and the Fulbright foreign student advisor at WMU.
Metro-Roland’s research interests are situated at the interstices of cultural and urban geography. Her research explores landscape, place and material culture and is concerned with questions of interpretation and embodied experience. Her recent work has investigated the ways in which various scales of local, national and global culture interact in the built environment.
Along with articles, Metro-Roland is author of a monograph, Tourists, Signs and the City: The Semiotics of Culture in an Urban Landscape, co-author of Tourism, Performance, and Place: A Geographic Perspective, and co-editor of Landscape, Tourism, and Meaning. She is a founding member of the Landscape Specialty Group of the Association of American Geographers.