Robert Michael Kitchin [1] MRIA is an Irish geographer and academic. Since 2005, he has been Professor of Human Geography at the National University of Ireland, Maynooth.
Kitchin graduated from Lancaster University in 1991 with a geography BSc. The following year, he completed an MSc in geographical information systems at the University of Leicester and in 1995 was awarded a PhD by the University of Wales, Swansea, [2] for his thesis "Issues of validity and integrity in cognitive mapping research: investigating configurational knowledge". [3] From 1995 to 1996, he was a lecturer at Swansea, and was then a lecturer at Queen's University Belfast (1996 to 1998). In 1998, he was appointed a lecturer at the National University of Ireland, Maynooth, and was promoted to a senior lecturership in 2001. He was then appointed Professor of Human Geography in 2005. [2] Between 2002 and 2013, he was also Director of NUI Maynooth's National Institute of Regional and Spatial Analysis. [4] He is Co-Editor-in-Chief of the International Encyclopedia of Human Geography . [5]
In 2013, Kitchin received the Royal Irish Academy's Gold Medal. [4] In 2015, he was elected a Member of the Royal Irish Academy. [6]
A cognitive map is a type of mental representation which serves an individual to acquire, code, store, recall, and decode information about the relative locations and attributes of phenomena in their everyday or metaphorical spatial environment. The concept was introduced by Edward Tolman in 1948. He tried to explain the behavior of rats that appeared to learn the spatial layout of a maze, and subsequently the concept was applied to other animals, including humans. The term was later generalized by some researchers, especially in the field of operations research, to refer to a kind of semantic network representing an individual's personal knowledge or schemas.
Sir Nigel John Thrift is a British academic and geographer. In 2018 he was appointed as Chair of the Committee on Radioactive Waste Management, a committee that gives independent scientific and technical advice on radioactive waste to the UK government and the devolved administrations. He is a Visiting Professor at the University of Oxford and Tsinghua University and an Emeritus Professor at the University of Bristol. In 2016 and 2017 he was the executive director of the Schwarzman Scholars, an international leadership program at Tsinghua University in Beijing. He was the Vice-Chancellor of the University of Warwick from 2006 to 2016. He is a leading academic in the fields of human geography and the social sciences.
Torsten Hägerstrand was a Swedish geographer. He is known for his work on migration, cultural diffusion and time geography.
Critical geography is theoretically informed geographical scholarship that promotes social justice, liberation, and leftist politics. Critical geography is also used as an umbrella term for Marxist, feminist, postmodern, poststructural, queer, left-wing, and activist geography.
Gerard Toal is Professor of Government and International Affairs at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University.
Dynamic Diagrams is an information design consultancy based in Providence, Rhode Island, United States. Its services include information architecture and design for web sites and applications, as well as diagramming complex processes, systems, and data to help clients explain and sell their ideas. The company provides visual design capabilities supported by research and analysis to understand user and business needs.
Peter Haggett is a British geographer and academic, Professor Emeritus and Senior Research Fellow in Urban and Regional Geography at the School of Geographical Sciences, University of Bristol.
Geography is a field of science devoted to the study of the lands, features, inhabitants, and phenomena of Earth. The first recorded use of the word γεωγραφία was as a title of a book by Greek scholar Eratosthenes. Geography is an all-encompassing discipline that seeks an understanding of Earth and its human and natural complexities—not merely where objects are, but also how they have changed and come to be. Geology is a related discipline concerned with the composition, structure, and history of Earth; geosciences further broadens the scope. While geography is specific to Earth, many concepts can be applied more broadly to other celestial bodies in the field of planetary science. One such concept, the first law of geography, proposed by Waldo Tobler, is "everything is related to everything else, but near things are more related than distant things." Geography has been called "the world discipline" and "the bridge between the human and the physical sciences."
Reginald George Golledge was an Australian-born American Professor of Geography at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He was named Faculty Research Lecturer for 2009. During his career he wrote or edited 16 books and 100 chapters for other books, and wrote more than 150 academic papers.
Trevor John Barnes, FBA is a British geographer and Professor of Economic geography at the University of British Columbia.
David Mark was a SUNY Distinguished Professor in the Department of Geography at the University at Buffalo, USA. He made several contributions to research and education in Geographic Information Science (GIScience), most recently in human spatial cognition and language.
Jacques Lévy is a professor of geography and urbanism at the School of Architecture, Civil and Environmental Engineering of the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL). He is the director of Chôros Laboratory and of the Doctoral Program in Architecture and Science of the City. He is the cofounder of the scientific journal EspacesTemps.net. He published in French, along with Michel Lussault, the dictionary of geography and space of societies, Dictionnaire de la géographie et de l’espace des sociétés.He has contributed to in the epistemological and theoretical reform of geography as a science of the spatial dimension of the social, open to the social sciences and philosophy. Starting from political geography, he has most notably explored the city, urbanity, Europe and globalization. He works also for the introduction of non-verbal languages, especially audio-visual languages, at all levels of research. In 2013 he made a feature film, Urbanity/ies, which is intended as a manifesto for scientific film.
Internet metaphors provide users and researchers of the Internet a structure for understanding and communicating its various functions, uses, and experiences. An advantage of employing metaphors is that they permit individuals to visualize an abstract concept or phenomenon with which they have limited experience by comparing it with a concrete, well-understood concept such as physical movement through space. Metaphors to describe the Internet have been utilized since its creation and developed out of the need for the Internet to be understood by everyone when the goals and parameters of the Internet were still unclear. Metaphors helped to overcome the problems of the invisibility and intangibility of the Internet's infrastructure and to fill linguistic gaps where no literal expressions existed.
Cyber geography is mapping the physical network of broadband cables.
Cognitive geography is an interdisciplinary study of cognitive science and geography. It aims to understand how humans view space, place, and environment. It involves formalizing factors that influence our spatial cognition to create a more effective representation of space. These improved models assist in a variety of issues, for example, developing maps that communicate better, providing navigation instructions that are easier to follow, utilizing space more practically, accounting for the cultural differences on spatial thinking for more effective cross-cultural information exchange, and an overall increased understanding of our environment.
Urban informatics refers to the study of people creating, applying and using information and communication technology and data in the context of cities and urban environments. It sits at the conjunction of urban science, geomatics, and informatics, with an ultimate goal of creating more smart and sustainable cities. Various definitions are available, some provided in the Definitions section.
Peter Jackson, FBA, FAcSS is a British human geographer. Since 1993, he has been professor of human geography at the University of Sheffield.
Benno Werlen is a Swiss geographer who is known for his action-centered approach to human geography and his concept of a Geography of Everyday Regionalizations.
Dr. John J. Foxe is an Irish neuroscientist, who is the Kilian J. and Caroline F. Schmitt Chair in Neuroscience at the University of Rochester in New York, where he is Professor and Chair of the Department of Neuroscience. He is a visiting professor at The Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York, Trinity College Dublin, City University of New York, and the National University of Ireland at Maynooth. He is the editor-in-chief of the European Journal of Neuroscience.
William George Victor Balchin was a British geographer. He was noted for original research in geology and significant contributions to geography, and for establishing the academic concept of graphicacy.