Robert Mayhew

I was an undergraduate and graduate student in the School of Geography at the University of Oxford, a (then) wonderful place which tolerated my eccentricities, whilst the good offices of my tutors at Hertford College and especially Jack Langton at St John's College downright encouraged me to think and pursue my interests wherever the might lead me. “Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive,/ But to be young was very heaven.”

I then held a British Academy research fellowship at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, another centre of spirited and independent thought long associated with a scholarly and humane understanding of the task of the geographer, before moving to a lectureship at the University of Wales, Aberystwyth in 1999. I moved to a Readership in Historical Geography here in Bristol in 2005. I was awarded a Philip Leverhulme Prize in 2007 and was made Professor of Historical Geography and Intellectual History in 2008. I am the book reviews editor for H-Net's historical geography network and also edit the two monograph series: “Studies in Historical Geography” for IB Tauris (7 titles published to date with two further books under contract) and Ashgate's Historical Geography series (1 title published to date with five further books under contract).