Post Graduate Coordinator

7 Rhetoric House
Tel: 353 1 708 6153
Email: gerry.kearns@nuim.ie

Tuesday	12.00 - 13.00
Wednesday	15.00 - 16.00
Friday	11.00 - 12.00

Biography

BA Geography, University of Cambridge, 1975-8

PhD Geography, University of Cambridge, 'Aspects of cholera, society, and space in nineteenth-century England and Wales,' awarded December 1985

Lecturer/Senior Lecturer, Geography, University of Liverpool, 1980-92

Assistant-/Associate-Professor, Geography, University of Wisconsin-Madison, 1992-4

Lecturer/Senior Lecturer, Geography, Cambridge University, 1995-2008

Professor, Government and International Affairs; Director, School of Public and International Affairs, Virginia Tech, Blacksburg VA, 2008-10

Professor of Human Geography, National University of Ireland-Maynooth, 2011

Teaching

During Semester 1, 2012-13, I am teaching GY238: Historical Geography and GY337: Geopolitics. In Semester 2 I am teaching GY202: Berlin Field Trip; GY310B Geography Research Workshop and the graduate seminar, NIR616: Population and Health: AIDS and Society.

Research interests

In general terms, I am interested in geographical systems of thought, or public geographies. Geographical ideas organise much about the way we apprehend the world and in turn they rest upon often-unexamined claims about space, place, and environment, the fundamental geographical dimensions of our world. I wish to explicate and evaluate these public geographies. I am currently working on four elements of public geographies:

Empire

In my view, Geopolitics developed as the geographical theory of empire. I have described these links in Geopolitics and Empire: the legacy of Halford Mackinder (Oxford UK: Oxford University Press, 2009). I am also trying to understand what might be the geographical theory of a world characterised by less asymetric international relations and a global culture of rights and justice, rather than one of force and exploitation. Is there any space for a Progressive Geopolitics and within that what might be the distinctive perspective of an Irish way of being a responsible global citizen?

AIDS/HIV

The emergence of AIDS shattered Western epidemiological self-confidence. Geographical ideas of contagion were at the heart of ways of understanding the new disease complex. All too often, they fed a fantasy that space could be effectively segregated and that stigma would serve to protect the good people from the consequences of the sins of the bad people. It is one thing to highlight these toxic geographies but can we go further, can we build alternative geographical imaginaries that allow us to care for sick people and increase social resilience in the face of the epidemiological risk? I argue that cultural activism has done just this and that from the music, theatre, painting, and literature of AIDS cultural activists, we can learn new and better ways of taking care.

Irish identity

People are very used to the idea that identities have narrative and historical dimensions but they are likewise geographical in ways that have received less attention. Identity is about where you belong. Who you are involves attending to the places and routes that have shaped you. I suggest that there are at least three distinctive geographical frames of Irishness: nation, diaspora, and cosmopolis. The nation as a geographical and not just a historical concept includes the terrritorial claims that underpin assertions of national independence. The diaspora is the geographical framework within which many people find their Irishness in stories of migration, arrival and exile. Finally, cosmopolis frames the question: is there a distinctively Irish way of being a citizen of the world?

Race

Racist ideologies seem in the surface to be primarily biological or cultural, yet, in fact, the practice of racism involves the most profound partition of space. Having spent the last three years living in the American South, I have been thinking quite a lot about this imaginary geography of race. Geography organizes the way people think and thought about race. Alongside claims about the special culture of certain regions, such as the South (which then justify exemption from abstract notions of equality), there were fears of contagion which were used to justify legal geographies of urban segregation. Although these segregations were ultimately declared illegal, their consequences still structure urban lives and city space in many parts of the United States. I am also interested in the contradictory phenomenon of passing, where people known well as having one identity in one place, can pass as having a different identity if they relocate. For some this is a subversion of segregation and for others it is a betrayal of the group solidarity needed to raise up the race as a whole.

Publications

Books

Geopolitics and Empire: the legacy of Halford Mackinder (London and New York: Oxford University Press, 2009).

With Chris Philo (eds), Selling places: the city as cultural capital, past and present (London: Pergamon, 1993).

With Charles Withers (eds), Urbanising Britain: essays on class and community in the nineteenth century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991).

Urban epidemics and historical geography: cholera in London 1848-9 (Norwich: Geobooks, 1985).

Articles

'Looking into the dark,' Dublin Review of Books 21 (March 2012); http://www.drb.ie/mor_details/12-03-12/Looking_Into_The_Dark.aspx

'Guest editoria: Colonialism and the Irish Famine,' Dialogues in Human Geography 2:1 (76-77; doi:10:10.1177/204382061200200101

David Nally and ___, 'Lessons from the past: Why do famines still plague us?' Chronicle of High Education. Chronicle Review 58:9 (21 October 2011) B10-B12; ISSN 0009-5982.

‘Annual General Meeting and Medal and Awards Celebration,’ Geographical Journal 176:3 (2010) 256-266. doi: 10.1111/j.1475-4959.2010.00377.x

‘Reply to Reading Gerry Kearns’ Geopolitics and Empire: The Legacy of Halford Mackinder,’ Political Geography, 30: 1 (2011) 49-58; doi:10.1016/j.polgeo.2010.09.007

‘The descent of Darwin,’ Environment and Planning A 42:2 (2010) 257-258; doi:10.1068/a42453; http://www.envplan.com/epa/editorials/a42453.pdf

‘Geography, geopolitics, and empire,’ Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 35:2 (2010) 183-207; doi: 10.1111/j.1475-5661.2009.00375.x

‘Green our overseas diplomacy: we should use our influence abroad to combat global warming, not to fuel wars’ Wired UK Edition (January 2010) 91; http://www.wired.co.uk/wired-magazine/archive/2010/01/features/rebooting-britain-exercise-a-green-foreign-policy.aspx

‘Mackinder Redux,’ Human Geography 2:2 (2009) 44-47.

___ and Simon Reid-Henry, ‘Vital geographies: life, luck and the human condition,’ Annals of the Association of American Geographers 99:3 (2009) 554-574; doi:10.1080/00045600902967177.

‘Rotten tree, rotten apple: why building on Mackinder hasn’t brought Kaplan any closer to relevant analysis to the conflicts of today,’ Foreign Policy 172 (May-June 2009); http://www.foreignpolicy.com/story/cms.php?story_id=4979&page=4

‘Video interview on Public Knowledge,’ Public Knowledge Journal 1:1 (2009): http://pkjournal.org/blog/?page_id=339.

‘Progressive Geopolitics,’ Geography Compass 2:5 (2008) 1599-1620; doi:10.1111/j.1749-8198.2008.00125.x

David Nally and ___, ‘Disaster capitalism in historical perspective,’ Geographical Journal 174:3 (2008) 285-6; doi: 10.1111/j.1475-4959.2008.292_1.x.

‘The geography of terror,’ Political Geography 27 (2008) 360-364; doi:10.1016/j.polgeo.2008.01.004

‘Forging early-modern colonial Ireland,’ Journal of Historical Geography 34 (2008) 138-144; doi:10.1016/j.jhg.2007.11.004

‘Dublin, modernity and the postcolonial fix,’ Irish Geography 39 (2006) 177-183.

‘The social shell,’ Historical Geography 34 (2006) 49-70.

‘The spatial poetics of James Joyce,’ New Formations 57 (2006) 107-125; http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/lwish/nf/2005/00000057/00000001/art00009

‘Naturalising empire: echoes of Mackinder for the next American century?’ Geopolitics 11 (2006) 74-98; doi:10.1080/14650040500524095

‘The political pivot of geography,’ Geographical Journal 170 (2004) 337-346; doi:10.1111/j.0016-7398.2004.00135.x

‘Mother Ireland and the revolutionary sisters,’ Cultural Geographies 11 (2004) 459-483; doi:10.1191/1474474004eu315oa

‘Ireland after theory’, Bullán: an Irish Studies Journal 6 (2002) 107-114.

‘Constructions of the social,’ Journal of Urban History 28 (2001) 98-106.

‘“Educate that holy hatred”: place, trauma and identity in the Irish nationalism of John Mitchel,’ Political Geography 20 (2001) 885-911; doi:10.1016/S0962-6298(01)00018-X

‘Time and some citizenship: nationalism and Thomas Davis,’ Bullán: an Irish Studies Journal 5 (2001) 23-54.

‘Maps, models and registers: the historical geography of the population of England,’ Journal of Historical Geography 26 (2000) 298-304; doi:10.1006/jhge.2000.0196

‘Graham Smith (1953-99): an appreciation,’ Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers NS 24 (1999) 495-500; doi:10.1111/j.0020-2754.1999.t01-1-00481.x

‘The virtuous circle of facts and values in the New Western History,’ Annals of the Association of American Geographers 88 (1998) 377-409; doi:10.1111/0004-5608.00106

‘The imperial subject: geography and travel writing in the work of Halford Mackinder and Mary Kingsley,’ Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers NS 22 (1997) 450-72; doi:10.1111/j.0020-2754.1997.00450.x

___, P. Laxton and J. Campbell, ‘Duncan and the cholera test: public health in mid-nineteenth century Liverpool,’ Transactions of the Historic Society of Lancashire and Cheshire 143 (1993) 87-115.

‘Class and environment in Fatal Years,’ Bulletin of the History of Medicine 68 (1994) 113-123.

‘Le handicap urbain et le déclin de la mortalité en Angleterre et au Pays de Galles,’ Annales de démographie historique 1993, 75-105.

‘Historical Geography,’ Progress in Human Geography 16 (1992) 406-413

‘Historical Geography,’ Progress in Human Geography 15 (1991) 47-56.

‘Cholera, nuisances and environmental management in Islington 1830-1855,’ Medical History Special Supplement no.11 (1992) 94-125.

‘This Common Inheritance: green idealism versus Tory pragmatism,’ Journal of Biogeography 18 (1991) 363-370.

‘Historical Geography,’ Progress in Human Geography 13 (1989) 259-266.

‘Death in the time of cholera,’ Journal of Historical Geography 15 (1989) 425-432; doi:10.1016/0305-7488(89)90007-8

‘Historical Geography,’ Progress in Human Geography 12 (1988) 103-110

‘Private property and public health reform in England 1830-1870,’ Social Science and Medicine 26 (1988) 187-199; doi:10.1016/0277-9536(88)90058-5

‘History, geography and world systems theory,’ Journal of Historical Geography 14 (1988) 281-292; doi:10.1016/S0305-7488(88)80223-8

‘Safeguard for a social contract,’ Times Higher Education Supplement 15 July (1988) 13.

‘Private enterprise rains O.K.? London and its water supply,’ London Journal 12 (1987) 180-186.

‘Historical Geography,’ Progress in Human Geography 10 (1985) 587-594.

‘Halford Mackinder,’ Geographers: Biobibliographical Studies 9 (1985) 71-86.

‘Cholera and public health reform: the significance of the geographical patterns,’ Bulletin of the Society for the Social History of Medicine 35 (1984) 30-32.

‘Closed space and political practice: Halford Mackinder and Frederick Jackson Turner,’ Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 2 (1984) 23-34; doi:10.1068/d020023

‘Making space for Marx,’ Journal of Historical Geography 10 (1984) 411-417.

Book chapters

'The political pivot of Geography,' in Derek Gregory and Noel Castree (eds), Human Geography. Volume 1 (London: Sage, 2011) 61-78 [reprint of 2004 article above].

'Geopolitics,' in John Agnew and David Livingstone (eds), Handbook of Geographical Knowledge (London: Sage, 2011) 610-622.

'Echoes of Schmitt among the ideologists of the new American Empire,' in Stephen Legg (ed.), Spatiality, Sovereignty and Carl Schmitt: Geographies of the Nomos (London: Routledge, 2011) 74-90. ISBN 9780415600675.

‘Frontier,’ in Derek Gregory, Ron Johnston, Geraldine Pratt, Michael Watts, and Sarah Whatmore (eds), Dictionary of Human Geography, sixth edition (London: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009) 264-5.

‘Frontier process,’ in Derek Gregory, Ron Johnston, Geraldine Pratt, Michael Watts, and Sarah Whatmore (eds), Dictionary of Human Geography, sixth edition (London: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009) 265.

‘Heartland,’ in Derek Gregory, Ron Johnston, Geraldine Pratt, Michael Watts, and Sarah Whatmore (eds), Dictionary of Human Geography, sixth edition (London: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009) 326-7.

‘Sequent occupance,’ in Derek Gregory, Ron Johnston, Geraldine Pratt, Michael Watts, and Sarah Whatmore (eds), Dictionary of Human Geography, sixth edition (London: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009) 677.

‘Mackinder, H. J.,’ in Rob Kitchin and Nigel Thrift (eds), International Encyclopedia of Human Geography (Oxford: Elsevier, 2009) 309-311.

‘Kropótkin, P.,’ in Rob Kitchin and Nigel Thrift (eds), International Encyclopedia of Human Geography (Oxford: Elsevier, 2009) 56-58.

‘Taking theory for a walk in Ireland,’ in Elizabeth Gagen, Hayden Lorimer and Alex Vasudevan (eds), Practicing the archive: reflections on methods and practice in historical geography (London: Historical Geography Research Group, 2008) 9-22.

‘The history of medical geography after Foucault,’ in Stuart Elden and Jeremy Crampton (eds) Space, knowledge and power: Foucault and Geography (Aldershot: Ashgate Press, 2007) 205-222; http://books.google.com/books?id=LgRfBCMFPrAC&pg=PA205&source=gbs_toc_r&cad=0_0&sig=ACfU3U3DCLvoraAexosi7mZO-NStrUgKGg

‘Bare life, political violence and the territorial structure of Britain and Ireland,’ in Derek Gregory and Allan Pred (eds), Violent geographies: fear, terror and political violence (New York: Routledge, 2006) 9-34.

‘Europe as the just measure of the world,’ in Phillipe Pelletier (ed.), Reclus: textes et contextes (Lyon: Université de Lyon, 2006).

‘Halford Mackinder,’ in Bernard Lightman (ed.) Dictionary of nineteenth-century British scientists (London: Thoemmes Press, 2004)

‘Environmental history,’ in James Duncan, Nuala Johnson, Richard Schein (eds), A companion to cultural geography (Oxford: Blackwell, 2004) 194-208; doi:10.1002/9780470996515.ch13

‘Nation, empire, cosmopolis: Ireland and the break with Britain,’ in David Gilbert, Dave Matless and Brian Short (eds), Geographies of British modernity: space and society in the twentieth century, (Oxford: Blackwell, 2003) 204-228; doi:10.1002/9780470752258.ch11

‘Imperial geopolitics,’ in John Agnew, Katharyne Mitchell, Gearoid O’Tuathail (eds), A companion to political geography (Oxford: Blackwell, 2003) 173-186; http://books.google.com/books?id=p2c6VJnZRuoC&printsec=frontcover&dq=%22a+companion+to+political+geography%22&client=firefox-a&sig=ACfU3U14UExOEjGEt8LtAECkz_2bRBKdyg#PPA173,M1

___ and Paul Laxton, ‘Ethnic groups as public health hazards: the Famine Irish in Liverpool and lazaretto politics,’ in Esteban Rodríguez-Ocaña (ed.), The politics of the healthy life: an international perspective (Sheffield: European Association for the History of Medicine and Health, 2002) 13-40.

Paul Laxton and ___, ‘Power and salubrity: the politics of sanitary reform in Victorian Liverpool,’ in Patrice Bourdelais (ed.), Les hygiénistes: enjeux, modèles et pratiques (XVIIIe-XXe siècles) (Paris: Belin, 2001) 163-192.

‘Town Hall and Whitehall: sanitary intelligence in Liverpool, 1840-63,’ in Sally Sheard and Helen Power (eds), Body and city: histories of urban public health (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2000) 89-108.

‘Demography and industrialisation: a geographical overview,’ in Anders Brändström and Lars-Göran Tedebrand (eds) Industrialisation and the Epidemiologic Transition (Umea: Demographic Data Base, 1999) 3-27.

‘Tuberculosis and the medicalisation of English society, 1880-1920,’ in John Woodward and Robert Jütte (eds), Coping with sickness: historical aspects of health care in a European perspective (Sheffield: European Association for the History of Medicine, 1995) 147-170.

___, W. Robert Lee and John Rogers, ‘Urbanisierung und Professionalisierung als Bestimmungsfaktoren bei der Gestaltung des deutschen Gesundheitssystems im 19. Jahrhundert im internationalen Vergleich,’ in Heinz-Gerhard Haupt and Peter Marschalck (eds), Städtische Bevölkerungsentwicklung in Deutschland im 19. Jahrhundert: Soziale und demographische Aspekte der Urbanisierung (St. Katharinen, Germany: Scripta Mercaturae Verlag, 1994) 258-281.

‘The city as spectacle: Paris and the celebration of the Bicentenary of the French Revolution,’ in Gerry Kearns and Chris Philo (eds), Selling places: the city as cultural capital, past and present (London: Pergamon, 1993) 49-102; includes ‘Culture, history, capital: a critical introduction to the selling of places,’ by Philo and Kearns, 1-32.

‘Quiet prosperity: the Nordic countries,’ in Stuart Corbridge (ed.), World economy (Oxford: Andromeda, 1993) 86-95.

‘Fin-de-siècle geopolitics: Mackinder, Hobson and theories of global closure,’ in Peter Taylor (ed.), Political geography of the twentieth century (London: Belhaven Press, 1993) 9-30.

‘Historical and geographical perspectives,’ in Alisdair Rogers, Heather Viles, Andrew Goudie (eds), The student’s companion to geography (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1992) 13-18.

‘Biology, class, and the urban penalty,’ in Gerry Kearns and Charles Withers (eds), Urbanising Britain: essays on class and community in the nineteenth century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991) 12-30; http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&id=nnWQuHFs10MC&dq=%22urbanising+britain%22&printsec=frontcover&source=web&ots=CzAsrqlLSw&sig=DYmPbIG5kz1XigBq1P-MRDbYJKE&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=1&ct=result#PPA12,M1

___ and Charles Withers, ‘Introduction,’ in Gerry Kearns and Charles Withers (eds), Urbanising Britain: essays on class and community in the nineteenth century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991) 1-11; http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&id=nnWQuHFs10MC&dq=%22urbanising+britain%22&printsec=frontcover&source=web&ots=CzAsrqlLSw&sig=DYmPbIG5kz1XigBq1P-MRDbYJKE&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=1&ct=result#PPA1,M1

___, W. Robert Lee and John Rogers, ‘The interaction of political and economic factors in the public health of England, Germany and Sweden,’ in John Rogers and Marie Clark Nelson (eds), Urbanisation and the epidemiologic transition (Uppsala: Family History Project, 1989) 9-81

‘Introduction,’ in John Rogers and Marie Clark Nelson (eds), Urbanisation and the epidemiologic transition (Uppsala: Family History Project, 1989) 7-8.

‘Zivilis and hygaeia: urban public health during the epidemiologic transition,’ in Richard Lawton (ed.), The rise and fall of great cities (London: Belhaven, 1989) 96-124.

‘The urban penalty and the population history of England,’ in Anders Brändström and Lars-Göran Tedebrand (eds), Society and health during the demographic transition (Stockholm: Almqvist and Wiksell, 1988) 213-236.