Where Oxford’s
geographersmeet

Best known for A Global Sense of Place (1991), arguing that places are dynamic and imbued with multiple meanings and identities. Drew attention to the differentiated effects of globalisation by gender, class and race.

Marxist economic geographer, prominent in the rise of radical geographies in the 1970s to 1990s. Explored the right to the city and how capitalism dictates the production of space.

Orientalism (1978), written at Oxford, triggered decades of postcolonial scholarship, arguing that the “East” was constructed as exotic and barbaric against a civilised “West”.

Cultural geographer, former Head of the School of Geography and the Environment at Oxford. Feminism and Geography (1993) was a seminal feminist text; now works on digital technologies and urban space.

Became the first Black woman appointed to a lectureship at Oxford in 1996. Her work focuses on migration, citizenship, feminist geopolitics, political ecology and racial violence.

Founding father of geopolitics and founder of the School of Geography at Oxford. Known for Heartland Theory. His 1899 Mount Kenya expedition, in which African porters died, remains a serious part of his record.

Human geographer and poet whose work centres on mobility, place and power, examining movement as physical, represented and practised. Geographic Thought (2013) traces the discipline’s history.

The most significant humanistic geographer, whose Space and Place (1977) considered the relationship between people and the world through the perspective of experience.

Psychiatrist born in Martinique who, after witnessing the Algerian war of independence, devised a theory about decolonisation in The Wretched of the Earth (1961).

Born in Jamaica, came to the UK as part of the Windrush generation as a Rhodes Scholar. Viewed culture as a place of interpretive struggle and embodied experience rather than abstract concept.

Best known for Can the Subaltern Speak? (1988), which argues that it is difficult for the marginalised to find their voices without adopting western ways of thinking.

Indian-British scholar, one of the most important figures in contemporary postcolonial studies. His theory of hybridity describes the mixing of cultures under colonial rule into a “thirdspace”.

French sociologist and anthropologist whose work on science and technology heavily influenced geography. Championed Actor Network Theory and asserted that nonhuman things have agency.

His work on the relationship between power and knowledge, and his theory of ‘biopower’, has been applied to concepts ranging from migration to reproductive justice by geographers.

American gender theorist and philosopher whose ideas about gender as a social construct heavily influenced early feminist geographies and queer theory.

Largely self-educated through her family library. Her textbook Physical Geography (1848) was the first of its kind in English, though she is often ignored in favour of her contemporaries.

First female president of the Association of American Geographers. Strongly influenced by Ratzel; her environmental determinism replicated racial determination through ‘nature’.

A complex figure: a single, childless woman in patriarchal Victorian Britain whose Travels in West Africa (1897) was courageous, yet who held racist views and opposed women being admitted to the Royal Geographical Society.

Described by The Guardian as one of Britain’s most influential thinkers. The Black Atlantic (1993) argued for a long, complex, specifically transnational history of African-diasporic intellectual culture.

Canadian activist and author. No Logo (1999) brought her international acclaim; This Changes Everything (2014) argued that capitalist emphasis on economic growth prevents climate mitigation.

Colombian-American anthropologist whose Encountering Development (1995) criticised development programmes as neo-colonial and analysed how ‘hunger’ dehumanises African subjects.

Welsh socialist writer who disrupted his Cambridge studies to enlist in the British Army. His concept of ‘structures of feeling’ has been significant in reconceptualising modernity and landscape.

Zambian-born economist whose Dead Aid (2009) argued that government-to-government foreign aid has done more harm than good to the people of Africa.

Rapper and poet who turned to issues of race and class in Britain in Natives (2018), weaving together biography with socialist and Pan-African thought.

Key proponent of French regional geography, arguing that France was divided into distinctive regions marked by differences in everything from climate to cuisine.

Senior lecturer in Human Geography at Birmingham, researching development geography and postcolonial theory. First Black editor of Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers.

Swedish academic whose bestseller Factfulness (2018) aimed to change pessimistic conceptions of the world by showing how life is getting better for the poorest.

British artist and photographer born in Guyana. Her 1988 series Pastoral Interludes conveyed how people of colour feel out of place in the British countryside.

Canadian professor who has championed intersectionality in feminist geographies, using poetry, music and other creative media to re-centre Blackness in academia.

Professor of Colonialism and Heritage at Leicester, best known for Green Unpleasant Land (2020), highlighting connections between colonialism and the English countryside.

American journalist and two-time Pulitzer winner. Half the Sky (2009), co-written with Sheryl WuDunn, documented sex trafficking, maternal mortality and gender-based violence.

Member of Kaska Dena (Wolf Clan), a First Nations people of British Columbia and the SE Yukon; also identifies as Tahltan. Focuses on how Indigenous communities view water as a living entity or relative.

Associate Professor of Critical Race and Indigenous Studies at OISE, Toronto. Unangax̂, and grew up outside her community. Co-author of “Decolonization Is Not a Metaphor” (2012).

Métis anthropologist and scholar who has studied human-animal relations in the context of the Canadian settler-colonial state.

Assistant Professor in Indigenous Studies and Geography at Toronto. Mushkegowuk (Cree), a member of Constance Lake First Nation in Treaty 9, and of French ancestry. Builds grounded theorisations of decolonial geographies.

Former DPhil student at Oxford’s School of Geography and the Environment. Bidayuh, one of several Indigenous groups in southern Sarawak, Malaysia and Borneo. Works on forest conservation and development.

Botswanan post-colonial scholar and full professor at the University of Botswana, of the Bantu people. Works on decolonising transdisciplinary research approaches.

Professor of Indigenous education at Waikato, New Zealand. Affiliates to Ngāti Awa, Ngāti Porou and Tuhourangi iwi. Author of Decolonizing Methodologies (1999) and a member of the Waitangi Tribunal.

Kati Mamoe, Ngati Kahungunu. Researches the intersection between political ecology, Indigenous rights and environmental justice, and contributes to policymaking in Aotearoa New Zealand.