Nigel Thrift

Nigel John Thrift (born 12 October 1949 in Bath)^[1][2] is the current Vice Chancellor of the University of Warwick and a leading academic in the field of human geography.

Early life and career

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 ^[3] and was awarded the Victoria Medal of the Royal Geographical Society.^[4] In 2005 he was appointed Vice Chancellor of the University of Warwick, taking up the position in July 2006.

Contribution to geography

Thrift has been described as one of the world's leading human geographers ^[5] and social scientists, and is credited with coining the phrase soft capitalism as well as originating 'Non-representational theory'. He has been awarded several prizes and commendations recognising his research including the Scottish Geographical Medal in 2009, and he was elected Fellow of the British Academy in 2003. Thrift sits on a number of advisory committees for the UK Government, and was a member of the ESRC Research Priorities Board. In 1982 Thrift co-founded the journal Environment and Planning D: Society and Space^[6] whilst serving as managing editor, since 1979, of Environment and Planning A.^[7]

His work on time, language, power, representations and the body have been influential and 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 has 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 the limits of the mediation of our world through language and how we might see, sense and communicate beyond it.

Selected bibliography

Selected Books

Thrift has written three monographs and co-authored more than twenty other books.^[8]

• 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 Massey D and Thrift N (2000) Cities for All the People Not the Few. Bristol: Policy Press.
• Thrift N and May J (eds.) (2001) Timespace: Geographies of Temporality. London: Routledge.
• Amin A and Thrift N (2002) Cities: Reimagining the Urban. Cambridge: Polity Press.
• Amin A Massey D and Thrift N (2003) Decentring the Nation. A Radical Approach to the Regions. London: Catalyst.
• Harrison S Pile S and Thrift N (eds.) (2004) Patterned Ground: Entanglements of Nature and Culture. London: Reaktion.
• Thrift N (2005) Knowing Capitalism (Theory, Culture and Society). London: Sage.
• Thrift N (2007) Non-Representational Theory. London: Routledge.
• Glennie P & Thrift N (2009) Shaping The Day: A History of Timekeeping in England and Wales 1300 - 1800. Oxford: Oxford University Press
• Kitchin R & Thrift N Co-editors of The International Encyclopedia of Human Geography, Oxford and Boston: Elsevier Publishing

Journal articles

• Thrift N (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 (1997) "The Rise of Soft Capitalism" in Cultural Values, Volume 1, Number 1, 1997 , pp. 29–57
• 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. 311–337
• Thrift N (2004) "Intensities of Feeling: Towards a Spatial Politics of Affect" in Geografiska Annaler. Series B, Human Geography, Volume 86, Number 1, pp. 57-78
• Thrift N (2005) "But malice aforethought: cities and the natural history of hatred" in Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, Volume 30, Number 2, pp. 133-150

References

Warf B (2004) "Nigel Thrift" in Hubbard P, Kitchin R & Valentine G (Eds.) Key Thinkers on Space and Place, London: Sage

1. ^ Debrett's entry
2. ^ Lucy Hodges (13 September 2007). "Going up in the world: Warwick's rank ambitions". The Independent on Sunday. http://www.independent.co.uk/news/education/higher/going-up-in-the-world-warwicks-rank-ambitions-402122.html. Retrieved 15 November 2009. 
3. ^ http://www.britac.ac.uk/fellowship/directory/ord.asp?letter=T
4. ^ "Vice-Chancellor, Professor Nigel Thrift". University of Warwick. http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/services/vco/vc/. Retrieved 2009-06-26. 
5. ^ The Geographer Spring 2009 page 2
6. ^ http://www.envplan.com/epd/epdinfo.html
7. ^ http://www.envplan.com/epa/epainfo.html
8. ^ A full list of all of the books he has co-authored is available from Professor Thrift's website: Nigel Thrift's Books and Monographs - nigelthrift.org

External links

• Nigel Thrift's research website

Academic offices
Preceded by David VandeLinde	Vice-Chancellor of the University of Warwick 2006–present	Succeeded by Incumbent

Persondata
Name	Thrift, Nigel
Alternative names	Thrift, Nigel John (full name)
Short description	British human geographer
Date of birth	12 October 1949
Place of birth	Bath
Date of death
Place of death