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. I have particular professional interest in supporting postgraduate study and students.

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, applications of machine learning and AI, and cartographic geovisualisation of administrative datasets, with topics such as the geographies of Covid-19, the spatial scales of social and ethnic segregation, and choice and markets in educational systems, as well as in the geographies of education, supporting quantitative and statistical literacy among 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.

A slightly CV, last updated October 4, 2023. See links below for an updated publication list.

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. I particularly invite applications in:

• Social Geography
• Place-based classifications
• Advanced Quantitative Methods including machine learning and (Geo)AI
• Geographical analysis of administrative, Census and other data
• Socio-spatial inequalities

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

Books

Geography and a Geographer: Reimagining the Discipline After Ron Johnston (with Levi Wolf and Alison Heppenstall)(ed., with David Manley and Robert Mayhew)

A Research Agenda for Spatial Analysis (ed., with Levi Wolf and Alison Heppenstall)

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)