Alan Jarvis

Alan Jarvis is a leading figure in academic publishing in the United Kingdom. As editorial director of social sciences books at Routledge/Taylor & Francis, he manages one of the most prestigious and largest publishing programmes in the social sciences.

Early life

Jarvis was born in Halesowen in the West Midlands UK in 1965 and studied literature at the University of Cambridge, graduating in 1986 with a first-class degree.

Career

He joined Routledge in 1986 as editorial assistant for economics and geography and was rapidly promoted to editor the following year. His proactive and productive commissioning developed the Routledge economics list into one of the leading lists in heterodox economics with a global author base and particular strengths in transport economics and the history of economic thought. Notable books from this period include Flying Off Course and Production Efficiency in Doomsday England.

Jarvis was promoted first to senior editor and then to publisher and became responsible for managing the whole of Routledge’s growing list in social sciences. With the merger of Routledge with Taylor & Francis in 1999, Jarvis was promoted to Editorial Director. Subsequent acquisitions of smaller scholarly publishers such as Gordon & Breach, Curzon, Frank Cass, Cavendish and LEA have led to the division's doubling in size.

Jarvis has been particularly involved in developing Routledge’s programme of scholarly monographs and the Routledge Research imprint now rivals many University presses for the quality of its research publishing.

Under his dynamic leadership, Routledge has become firmly established as one of the world’s leading academic social science publishers, publishing hundreds of academic textbooks, monographs and reference works each year, having a backlist of several thousand titles and a turnover in excess of £30 million.