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Professor Nigel John Thrift is the current Vice Chancellor of the University of Warwick and a leading academic in the field of human geography.
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Biography
Born in 1949, and educated at Nailsea School, Thrift has held posts at numerous universities including University of Wales, Aberystwyth, University of Wales, Lampeter, the University of Bristol and the University of Oxford. At Oxford, Thrift served as Head of the Life and Environmental Sciences Division before becoming Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Research. In 2003, he became a fellow of the British Academy. [1] In 2005 he was appointed Vice Chancellor of the University of Warwick, taking up the position in July 2006.
Contribution to Geography
Professor Thrift is one of the world's leading human geographers and social scientists, and is credited with coining the phrase soft modernity as well as originating 'Non-Representational Theory'. Awarded many prizes and commendations recognising his research, he was elected Fellow of the British Academy in 2003. Prof. Thrift sits on a number of advisory committees for the UK Government, and was a member of the ESRC Research Priorities Board. In 1982 Prof. Thrift co-founded the journal Environment and Planning D: Society and Space whilst serving as managing editor, since 1979, of Environment and Planning A.
It has been suggested that Thrift's career reflects and in some cases spurred the substantial intellectual changes in Human Geography in the 1980s and '90s. Thrift can most readily be associated with poststructuralism through his attention to subjectivity, representation identity and practice. Most recently he has written on what he terms 'non-representational theory', which stresses performative and embodied knowledges and is a radical attempt to wrench the social sciences and humanities out of an emphasis on representation and interpretation by moving away from contemplative models of thought and action to those based on practice. Thrift has claimed that non-representational theory addresses the 'unprocessual' nature of much of social and cultural theory. Major themes within non-representational theory include subjectification; space as a verb; technologies of being; embodiment; and play & excess. Non-representational theory has provoked substantial debate within the field of Human Geography around our mediation of our world through language and how we might see, sense and communicate beyond it.
It has been argued that Thrift's work has prompted a variety of engagements across Human Geography. His work on time, language, power, representations and the body have been influential in a movement towards a more dynamic approach to theoretical and empirical issues of the naturalisation of socially constructed phenomena. For some Thrift has helped the field of Human Geography move beyond a reliance on Marxism and opened up an engagement with and development of new perspectives.
Partial bibliography
Selected Books
Professor Thrift has written three monographs and co-authored more than twenty other books, a full list of all of the books he has co-authored is available from Professor Thrift's website1.
- Peet R & Thrift N (Eds.) (1989) New Models in Geography: The Political-Economy Perspective, Boston: Unwin-Hyman
- Pile S & Thrift N (Eds.) (1995) Mapping the Subject: Geographies of Cultural Transformation, New York, NY: Routledge
- Thrift N (1996) Spatial Formations, Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage
- Corbridge S, Martin R & Thrift N (Eds.) (1997) Money, Power and Space, Oxford: Blackwell
- Leyshon A & Thrift N (Eds.) (1997) Money/Space: Geographies of Monetary Transformation, London: Routledge
- Miller D, Jackson P, Holbrook B, Thrift N and Rowlands, M (1998) Shopping, Place and Identity, London: Routledge
- Pile S and Thrift N (Eds.) (2000)City A-Z: Urban Fragments. London: Routledge
- Crang M and Thrift N (eds.) (2000) Thinking Space (Critical Geographies) London: Routledge
- Amin A Massey D and Thrift N (2000) Cities for All the People Not the Few. Bristol: Policy Press.
- Thrift N and May J (eds.) (2001) Timespace: Geographies of Temporality. London: Routledge.
- Amin A and Thrift N (2002) Cities: Reimagining the Urban. Cambridge: Polity Press.
- Amin A Massey D and Thrift N (2003) Decentring the Nation. A Radical Approach to the Regions. London: Catalyst.
- Harrison S Pile S and Thrift N (eds.) (2004) Patterned Ground: Entanglements of Nature and Culture. London: Reaktion.
- Thrift N (2005) Knowing Capitalism (Theory, Culture and Society). London: Sage.
- Thrift N (2007) Non-Representational Theory. London: Routledge.
Journal articles
- Thrift (1981) "Owners time and own time: The making of capitalist time consciousness, 1300-1880" in Pred A (Ed.) Space and Time in Geography: Essays dedicated to Torston Hagerstrand, Lund: Lund Studies in Geography Series B, No. 48
- Thrift N (1983) "On the determination of social action in space and time", Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 1: pp. 23-57
- Thrift N (1999) “Steps to an Ecology of Place” in Massey D, Allen J & Sarre P (Eds.) Human Geography Today, Cambridge: Polity Press: pp. 295–323
- Thrift N (2000a) "Performing cultures in the new economy", Annals of the Association of American Geographers 4: pp. 674-692
- Thrift N (2000b) "Afterwords", Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 18 (3): pp. 213-255
- Thrift N & Olds K (1996) "Refiguring the economic in economic geography", Progress in Human Geography 20: pp. 311-337
See also
References
Hubbard P, Kitchin R & Valentine G (Eds.) (2004) Key Thinkers on Space and Place, London: Sage
Warf B (2004) "Nigel Thrift" in Hubbard P, Kitchin R & Valentine G (Eds.) Key Thinkers on Space and Place, London: Sage
| Academic offices | ||
|---|---|---|
| Preceded by David VandeLinde |
Vice-Chancellor of the University of Warwick 2006–present |
Succeeded by Incumbent |
|
|||||
| Persondata | |
|---|---|
| NAME | Thrift, Nigel |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Thrift, Nigel John (full name) |
| SHORT DESCRIPTION | British human geographer |
| DATE OF BIRTH | 1949 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | |
| DATE OF DEATH | |
| PLACE OF DEATH | |
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- This page was last modified on 9 November 2008, at 03:23.
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