About Me

I am a social geographer in the School of Geographical Sciences interested in socio-spatial inequalities within society and their causes. Presently I am Director of the South West Doctoral Training Partnership and was founding director of the University of Bristol’s £1.3 million funded Q-Step Centre for undergraduate, quantitative social science.

My early research looked at the application of spatial statistics, geographic information science and geodemographics in marketing, public policy and urban geography – all examples of what are now described as geographic data science. More recent work has been in urban analytics and cartographic geovisualisation of administrative datasets, focusing on developing and applying innovative computational methods to analyse the geographies of Covid-19, to measure and to visualise spatial scales of social and ethnic segregation, and to study choice and markets in educational systems; also in the geographies of education, supporting quantitative and statistical literacy amongst geographers and undergraduate and postgraduate social scientists.

I am a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences and of the Royal Geographical Society (with IBG). I am also a licensed lay minister in the Church of England so have some theological interests too.

My CV, last updated October 4, 2023

@profrichharris on Twitter

Come Study With Me!

I have supervised PhD students from across the world, including Europe, Asia, Africa and the Middle East. Applicants are invited in topics aligned with my research interests. Please see the School of Geographical Sciences webpages for funding opportunities and how to apply.

Funders for my students have included the South West Doctoral Training Partnership and China Scholarship Council.

I also welcome visiting postgraduate researchers where I am able.

Key Research Interests

Social Geography. Quantitative Methods and Geographic Data Science. Socio-spatial inequality. Geographies of education.

Online courses

Mapping and Modelling Geographic Data in R

Publications

My University of Bristol Research Information pages

My ORCiD page (includes some papers I had forgotten about)

My RPubs page (occasional tutorials, working ideas, supplementary material and other ‘stuff’ in R)

Books

Ethnic Segregation Between Schools (with Ron Johnston)

Quantitative Geography: The Basics

Statistics for Geography and Environmental Science (with Claire Jarvis)

Geodemographics, GIS and Neighbourhood Targeting (with Peter Sleight and Richard Webber)

Listening choices

What I have been listening to on Tidal (September 2023). Excludes my vinyl choices!