John Rennie Short

Short was born in Stirling, Scotland. He was raised in nearby Tullibody, a village in the County of Clackmannanshire. He attended the county grammar school, Alloa Academy. He received the MA in geography from Aberdeen University in 1973.[1] followed by a PhD in geography from the University of Bristol, with a received dissertation, "Residential Mobility in The Private Housing Market of Bristol" (1977).[1] From 1976 to 1978, he was a postdoctoral research fellow in Bristol's School of Geographical Sciences.[1]

In 1978, Short was appointed lecturer in geography at the University of Reading.  From 1985 to 1987, he was also visiting senior research fellow at the Urban Research Unit of the Australian National University. He left Reading in 1990 to join Syracuse University's Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs as professor of geography. In 2002, he left Syracuse for an appointment as professor and chair of the Department of Geography and Environmental Systems at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC). He was appointed to his current position in the School of Public Policy at UMBC in 2005.

Short has published in human geography's subfields, including the urban, the political, the environmental, the economic, and the cultural.[2][3][4][5][6] His scholarship incorporates social and cultural theory methodologies, archival research strategies, and data analyses.   Short's work has been presented in television[7] and radio[8] interviews, print interviews in national and special newspapers[9] and essays on scholarly/journalistic websites.[10]

His work has been translated into many languages including Arabic[11] Chinese[12] Czech[13] Japanese,[14] Korean,[15] Persian[16] Portuguese[17] Spanish[18] and Vietnamese.[19]

• 2020 Fulbright Research Fellowship[20]
• 2009 Helen and John S. Best Fellowship[21] American Geographical Society Library
• 2002 Leverhulme Professorship [22]
• 2001 Alexander O. Vietor Fellowship [23]Beinecke Library Yale University
• 2001 Frank Hideo Kono Visiting Fellowship Huntington Library
• 2000 Appleby-Mosher Research Award Maxwell School Syracuse University
• 1999 Dibner[24] Library Fellowship Smithsonian Institution
• 1996 National Endowment for Humanities Fellowship Newberry Library
• 1996 Andrew Mellon Fellowship American Philosophical Society
• 1996 Appleby-Mosher Research Award Maxwell School Syracuse University
• 1995 Research Fellowship New York State Library
• 1990 Erasmus Professorship Groningen University
• 1985 Senior Visiting Research Fellowship Australian National University
• 1985 British Academy Visiting Fellowship Huntington Library
• 1976 Social Science Research Council Postdoctoral Fellowship

Short's research papers contribute to four main areas of political economy.

The first is an exploration of urban society. Amongst many articles and book chapters, his work includes a long engagement with analysing housing dynamics[25][26] to broader concerns with generating models of metropolitan change,[27] urban cultural economy,[28] traffic issues,[29] immigration,[30] suburban change,[31] the relationship between globalisation and cities,[32] measuring the extent of globalisation in cities,[33] urban flânerie,[34] urban environmental issues,[35] in a time of climate change,[36] how city regions seek to reposition themselves in discursive space through branding campaigns[37] and event hosting.[38][39] More recent work has focused on the Global South including the rise of new middle class[40] and the informal economy in the Colombian city of Cali.[41]

A second body of work contributes to broader issues of cultural economy and politics. An influential text, Imagined Country[42] first published in 1991 and reissued in 2005, was an important part of the cultural turn. In that book Short elaborated the idea of national environmental ideologies though the depictions of wilderness, countryside and city in landscape painting, cinema and novels. Other work focuses on globalisation,[43] language,[44] wealth,[45] wealth and political power,[46] and wealth and immigration.[47]

A third contribution is to political geography and geopolitics. His work on the US includes analyses of elections,[48][49] voting systems,[50] gerrymandering,[51] and legitimation crisis.[52] Work on geopolitics includes issues in the East China and South China Seas.[53][54] In 2020 he was awarded a Fulbright Fellowship to research the geopolitics of the South China Sea.

The fourth theme, mainly expressed in book form, is the history of cartography. Short builds upon and extends the work of the critical cartographic theorist John Brian Harley to deconstruct maps as social and political texts. Short explores the power dynamics in how the USA[55] and Korea[56] were represented in maps, the creation of a spatial sensitivity in the early modern era,[57] the role of indigenous people in so-called exploration and discovery of the New World,[58] and the emergence of the national atlas as important feature of modern nationalism.[59] He has also penned a general introduction to the subject.[60]

He has promoted the publication of younger scholars’ work through editorship of three-book series Space Place and Society,[61] Cities [62] and Critical Introductions to Urbanism and the City.[63]

He is on the editorial board of the journal "Sustainability".[64]