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Eric Sheppard | |
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![]() Eric Sheppard, 2025 | |
Born | |
Nationality | British, American |
Alma mater | |
Scientific career | |
Fields | Economic geography |
Institutions | University of California, Los Angeles |
Eric Sheppard (born 1 October 1950) is a British and American geographer, currently Distinguished Research Professor of Economic geography at UCLA. [1]
Sheppard grew up in Cambridge, England, the son of Norman Sheppard and Kay McClean/Sheppard. He studied geography at the University of Bristol under Andy Cliff and Peter Haggett, graduating in 1972. He moved to the University of Toronto, where he completed his MA in 1974 and Ph.D. in geography in 1976, advised by Leslie Curry, Ross MacKinnon and Allen Scott. He taught at the University of Minnesota from 1976 to 2012, where he was appointed Regents Professor, before being appointed to the Alexander von Humboldt Chair of Geography at UCLA, 2012-2022. He served as president of the Association of American Geographers (2012-2013).
Sheppard has made contributions to geographical political economy, uneven geographies of globalization, spatial capitalist economic dynamics, urban sustainability and environmental justice, and the use of critical geographic information technologies. He is identified with a group of radical economic geographers including Trevor J. Barnes and Jamie Peck, who are critical of the tendency of the modern capitalist economy to create great differences in wealth and poverty, and to create environmental problems and injustices.