Mapping Futures Forum

Speaker Biographies

Richard Harris, Senior Lecturer, School of Geographical Sciences, University of Bristol
Rich Harris is a Senior Lecturer at the School of Geographical Sciences, University of Bristol, where he is also a member of the Centre for Market and Public Organisation, a leading research centre combining expertise in economics, geography and law to study the intersection between the public and private sectors of the economy, and in particular to understand the right way to organise and deliver public services. Rich primarily is a social geographer with a growing interest in the contribution of faith and religion to political debate and governance. Longer standing interests are in the causes and persistence of socio-spatial inequalities and, in recent work on education, how these may or may not relate to notions of choice and markets. His working practices are reflective quantification with interest in how space is conceived and incorporated in statistical modelling. He is the author, with Peter Sleight and Richard Webber, of Geodemographics, GIS and Neighbourhood Targeting (Wiley2005).

Mark Bishop, Product Manager, Pitney Bowes MapInfo.
Mark has an EMEA responsibility at Pitney Bowes MapInfo for a set of spatial web applications. He has a GIS degree from Kingston University and over 5 years experience in the geo-spatial industry. He has acquired a well rounded knowledge on how technology can help solve business problems using location and mapping. Initially working in the public sector for Surrey Fire and Rescue Service, where he was a member of an award winning team delivering the Mobile Data Project, Mark then moved into the private sector to work within a small consultancy business on GIS project work for many high profile retail and telco clients. In a Product Management capacity Mark has successfully launched a number of new spatial products and services. Mark has a strong personal interest in all things spatial and web. He enjoys cutting below the surface of overly complex technology terms, acronyms and buzzwords to establish true benefits and strives to be a conduit between the technology and business worlds.

Professor David Martin, School of Geography, University of Southampton
David Martin is Professor of Geography at the University of Southampton and Director of the Economic and Social Research Council's Census Programme. He has been interested in socioeconomic applications of geographical information systems for over 20 years. David worked closely with the Office for National Statistics to develop the automated zone design procedure which led to the creation of the 2001 census output areas and super output areas.

Dr Andrew Hudson-Smith, Senior Research Fellow and Research Manager, The Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis, University College London
Andrew's work focuses on Web 2.0 technologies for mapping and building the urban environment, he is also the author of the influential blog Digital Urban: http://www.digitalurban.blogspot.com

Dr Jonathan Reynolds, Academic Director, Oxford Institute of Retail Management, Said Business School
Jonathan is Academic Director of the Oxford Institute of Retail Management at the University of Oxford’s Saïd Business School. The Institute has worked for over 20 years to relate sound scholarship to the practical needs of retail businesses.
A geographer, planner and retailer by turn, his research interests focus on retail location analysis, the development of multi-channel retailing, marketing information systems, new forms of retail development and international retail performance. He has worked with a wide range of international retail organizations in support of this research and for executive education, including Tesco, IKEA, Marks & Spencer, Alliance Boots, Metro, S-Group, Kingfisher, Sainsbury, ICSC, CIES and RILA. He has directed Oxford’s annual Retail Location Analysis course for the past ten years.
As a faculty member of the Saïd Business School, he teaches marketing and retailing on the University’s undergraduate, MBA and MSc programmes. He is author of 3 books (with 2 forthcoming) and over 100 published articles on retail marketing and strategy, and regularly features on television and radio news and consumer affairs programmes.

Professor Martin Clarke, Professor, Geographical Modelling, University of Leeds
Martin is Professor of Geographical Modelling at the University of Leeds, where he has worked for over 30 years. He has written a number of books and many papers and has responsible for many innovative developments in spatial modelling. He was the founder of GMAP Ltd in the mid 1980s, a University spin-out company that worked with many of the world’s largest retail organisations including Ford, Wal-Mart, Exxon Mobil, Toyota and many others. He left GMAP to form Emaginating Ltd in 2003 and was also a co-founder of Twenty PLC which floated on AIM in 2006. Later in 2006 Twenty acquired Emaginating. Emaginating provides retail planning and analysis to a wide number of organisations including the Post Office, Thomas Cook, Yorkshire Water, and United Utilities.

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