Everything about Nigel Thrift totally explained
Professor
Nigel John Thrift is the current Vice Chancellor of the
University of Warwick and a leading academic in the field of
human geography.
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.
(External Link
) 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's 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
Books
- 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 D. Massey and Thrift N. (2000) Cities for All the People Not the Few. Bristol: Policy Press.
2000-2006 details omitted
Thrift N (2007) Non-Representational Theory
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. 311-337Further Information
Get more info on 'Nigel Thrift'.
|
External Link Exchanges
Do you know how hard it is to get a link from a large encyclopaedia? Well we're different and will prove it. To get a link from us just add the following HTML to your site on a relevant page:
<a href="http://nigel_thrift.totallyexplained.com">Nigel Thrift Totally Explained</a>
Then simply click through this link from your web page. Our crawlers will verify your link, extract the title of your web page and instantly add a link back to it. If you like you can remove the words Totally Explained and embed the link in article text.
As long as your link remains in place, we'll keep our link to you right here. Please play fair - our crawlers are watching. Your site must be closely related to this one's topic. Any kind of spamming, dubious practises or removing the link will result in your link from us being dropped and, potentially, your whole site being banned. |
