Biography

Before coming to Portsmouth, I taught for 15 years at Edinburgh University, where I was Co-Director of the ESRC Regional Research Laboratory and a Member of the Edinburgh Parallel Computing Centre.  In the 2004/5 Session I was Scholar-in-Residence at the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission.

Research interests

  • Historical GIS - use of GIS and visualisation methods for the development and analysis of large spatio-temporal databases of regional economic development; Internet-based historical GIS data resources, especially 19th century railroad GIS; simulation modelling of regional development
  • Historical regional dynamics - economic development of the North-East United States 1850-1900 with particular reference to the railroad, oil, coal mining and iron industries
  • Behavioural regional investment - development of new methods for analysing investment diversification that extend the theory of behavioural finance into the regional domain
  • Use of advanced data warehousing, spatial data mining and big data techniques to analyse the United States 1880 census and linked data sources
  • GIS - use of parallel processing and database methods within a GIS framework; Internet map and database server technologies; environmental applications of GIS