We have been commissioned to produce a third edition of Key Thinkers on Space and Place. The first edition was published in 2004, the second in 2010. The list of thinkers from the second edition are listed below.
For this edition, we wish to add 25 new thinkers to the book. Our aim is widen the range of international thinkers and across disciplines, diversify thinkers with respect to gender and race, and add thinkers who work against Eurocentric notions of space and place. As with the previous two editions, we are seeking to focus on ‘contemporary’ thinkers (their primary work has been in the last fifty years) rather than historical figures.
We are seeking suggestions for thinkers to include in the book. Please send a list of up to 10 people you think deserves an entry, preferably with a two or three sentence justification to rob.kitchin@mu.ie, or tweet your suggestion to us via @robkitchin #ktsp3rd
We appreciate that defining what constitutes a ‘key thinker’ is tricky. In making your suggestions, we would like to emphasise that what we are seeking are people who are exerting a significant influence on how space and place, and related concepts such as landscape, region, environment and nature, are thought about and researched. So, it is not simply people who are important actors in a discipline or field (which could include people who are key catalysts, or organizers, synthesisers, textbook writers, administrators, etc.). It is people who are driving and shaping spatial thinking, praxes and agendas. While some people might be producing interesting ideas, it is those whose ideas travel, stick and influence who we are interested in.
It is difficult to say that someone whose work has only been cited 300 times is a key thinker, even if they are doing excellent work. We’re aware of the issues of using citation as a metric, but someone making a significant impact will have some kind of reasonable and growing footprint that demonstrates others are engaging with their thinking in productive ways. It could be that the footprint is relatively small but is growing rapidly and their influence is demonstrated through conference sessions dedicated to their work, or author meets critics sessions being organised, or they are regularly getting asked to do invited talks/keynotes, or receiving prestigious grants (e.g., ERC/MacArthur genius award) and prizes, etc. They might be key thinkers outside of the Anglo-American sphere, or outside of Geography and related disciplines, who deserve to have their ideas introduced to a different audience.
In short, they will be people that a wide community of scholars interested in space and place will recognize as being widely influential in shaping contemporary thinking and setting agendas.
Mary Gilmartin, Phil Hubbard, Rob Kitchin and Sue Roberts
Key Thinkers included in the Second Edition
1 Benedict Anderson
2 Marc Augé
3 Trevor Barnes
4 Jean Baudrillard
5 Zygmunt Bauman
6 Ulrich Beck
7 Brian Berry
8 Homi K. Bhabha
9 Pierre Bourdieu
10 Judith Butler
11 Anne Buttimer
12 Manuel Castells
13 Michel de Certeau
14 Stuart E. Corbridge
15 Denis Cosgrove
16 Mike Davis
17 Michael Dear
18 Gilles Deleuze
19 Peter Dicken
20 Arturo Escobar
21 Michel Foucault
22 J.K. Gibson-Graham
23 Anthony Giddens
24 Reginald Golledge
25 Derek Gregory
26 Torsten Hägerstrand
27 Peter Haggett
28 Stuart Hall
29 Donna Haraway
30 J. Brian Harley
31 David Harvey
32 bell hooks
33 Tim Ingold
34 Peter Jackson
35 Cindi Katz
36 Bruno Latour
37 Henri Lefebvre
38 David Ley
39 Kevin Lynch
40 Doreen Massey
41 Linda McDowell
42 Anssi Paasi
43 Allan Pred
44 Gillian Rose
45 Edward W. Said
46 Saskia Sassen
47 Andrew Sayer
48 Amartya Sen
49 David Sibley
50 Neil Smith
51 Edward W. Soja
52 Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak
53 Michael Storper
54 Peter Taylor
55 Nigel Thrift
56 Gearóid Ó Tuathail (Gerard Toal)
57 Waldo Tobler
58 Yi-Fu Tuan
59 John Urry
60 Paul Virilio
61 Immanuel Wallerstein
62 Michael J. Watts
63 Benno Werlen
64 Raymond Williams
65 Alan Wilson
66 Iris Marion Young