Retiring to work

Brief Biography

Peter Taylor is Emeritus Professor of Human Geography at Northumbria University and at Loughborough University. He is a Fellow of the British Academy and a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences (U.K.).

He obtained his PhD from Liverpool University in 1970 and taught at Newcastle University from 1968 to 1995. He has held visiting positions in the United States (Iowa, Clark, Dartmouth, Illinois, Binghamton, Virginia Tech, Delaware), Canada (Alberta), France (Paris), The Netherlands (Amsterdam), and Belgium (Ghent) and has been an Advisor to the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. He was the founding editor of Political Geography (Quarterly) in 1982 and Review of International Political Economy in 1992. He is founder and director of the Globalization and World Cities (GaWC) research network.

From 1994 to 1996 he was a member of the Gulbenkian Commission on the Future of the Social Sciences. Designated for Distinguished Scholarship Honors by the Association of American Geographers in 2003, he was awarded a “Lifetime Achievement Award” by the Political Geography Specialty Group of the Association of American Geographers in 2010. He has honorary doctorates from Oulu University (2006) and Ghent University (2008).

His recent and current research has focused upon the nature of cities, past and present, in relation to other cities, regions, states, and climate change.