My research interests congregate around several related themes: the histories of geographical knowledge, the spatiality of scientific culture, and the historical geographies of science and religion. I am currently involved in two writing projects. The first focuses on the geographies of Darwinism. Here I am attempting to elucidate the role of space and place in the circulation of Darwinism and the construction of Darwinian meaning. The second, under the working title ‘The Empire of Climate’, is a social history of environmental determinism from Herodotus to Global Warming.  

 Major Awards

• Fellow of the British Academy, elected 1995
• Back Award, Royal Geographical Society, 1997
• Member of the Royal Irish Academy, elected 1998
• Centenary Medal, Royal Scottish Geographical Society, 1998
• British Academy Research Reader, 1999-2001
• Templeton Foundation Lecture Prize, 1999
• Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, elected 2001
• OBE, for services to Geography and History, 2002
• Member of the Academia Europaea, elected 2002
• Member of the Academy of the Social Sciences, elected 2002
• Royal Irish Academy Gold Medal in the Social Sciences, 2008
• Leverhulme Major Research Fellowship, 2011-2014
• Corresponding Member, International Academy of the History of Science, elected 2011
• Founder’s Medal, Royal Geographical Society, 2011
• Hon D. Litt, University of Aberdeen, 2013
• CBE, for services to scholarship in Geography, History of Science and Intellectual History, 2019

Named Lectures / Lecture Series

• Charles Lyell Lecture, British Association for the Advancement of Science, 1994
• Templeton Lecture, Oregon State University, 1999
• Weston Lecture, Augustine College, Ottawa, 2000
• Hettner Lectures, University of Heidelberg, 2001
• Murrin Lectures, University of British Columbia, 2002
• Progress in Human Geography Lecture, Royal Geographical Society, 2005
• Appleton Lecture, University of Hull, 2007
• Von Humboldt Lecture, U.C.L.A., 2007
• Gordon Manley Lecture, Royal Holloway, University of London, 2007
• Gunning Lecture, University of Edinburgh, 2009
• Gregory Lecture, University of Southampton, 2010
• Gifford Lectures, University of Aberdeen, 2014
• Walton Lecture, National University of Ireland, Maynooth, 2015
• Dudleian Lecture, Harvard University, 2015