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School of Society and Environment – Department of Geography and Environmental Science
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David M. Smith Annual Lecture

The David M. Smith Annual Lecture was established in 2004 following the retirement of David Smith (1936-2021) from the School of Geography in 2001, where he had spent 28 years of his career.

A biographical memoir of David's life and career was published by the British Academy in 2023 and it is accessible here. It was written by Professor Tom Slater (Columbia University and formerly a student of David’s at Queen Mary) and Professor Roger Lee (Emeritus Professor at Queen Mary).

Over the years, many of the world’s most distinguished geographers have given the David M. Smith Annual Lecture:

  • 2024 Professor Pat Noxolo (University of Birmingham) ‘“In the teeth of the pressure”: Black lives and environmental crisis, in this more-than-human conjuncture’
  • 2023 Dr Ruth Craggs (King’s College London) ‘Apartheid, decolonisation and the history of geography in South Africa’
  • 2022 Professor Brij Maharaj (University of Kwazulu Natal) ‘Contesting displacement and the struggle for social justice: South African experiences’
  • 2021 Professor Anoop Nayak (Newcastle University) ‘Blasted places: smog, steel and stigma in a post-industrial town’
  • 2020 Professor Laura Pulido (University of Oregan) 'Wildfire rumours and denial in the Trump era'
  • 2019 Professor Iwona Sagan (University of Gdansk) 'From communism to neoliberalism and back to populism: changing models of (not only) urban policy'
  • 2018 Professor Gill Valentine (University of Sheffield) 'Popular understandings of tolerance: what can we learn from European societies with contrasting levels of diversity?'
  • 2017 Professor Don Mitchell (Uppsala University) 'Revolting New York: how 400 years of riot, revolt, uprising, and revolution shaped a city'.
  • 2016 Professor Tom Slater (University of Edinburgh) 'From territorial stigma to territorial justice: a critique of vested interest urbanism'.
  • 2015 Professor Jennifer Robinson (University College London) 'Post-democracy meets post-colony: London as a theory destination’
  • 2014 Professor Chris Philo (University of Glasgow) ‘Well-being, mental health and the Smiths’
  • 2013 Professor Susan Parnell (University of Cape Town) ‘Making cities fairer’
  • 2012 Professor Paul Cloke (University of Exeter) ‘Postsecular stirrings? Geographies of hope in amongst neoliberalism’
  • 2011 Professor Jamie Peck (University of British Columbia, Canada) ‘Fast policy, at the limits of neoliberalism’
  • 2010 Professor David Harvey (City University of New York) ‘The dialectics of social change’
  • 2009 Professor Onora O’Neill (University of Cambridge) ‘Geographical problems, political solutions?’
  • 2008 Professor Partha Chatterjee (Columbia University, New York) ‘Terrorism: a word that travelled’
  • 2007 Professor Susan M. Smith (University of Cambridge) ‘Who gets what, where in the tangled world of housing, mortgage and financial markets?’
  • 2006 Professor John Pickles (University of North Carolina) ‘New cartographies of the borderlands: on the geographies of democracy-to-come’
  • 2005 Professor Stuart Corbridge (London School of Economics and Political Science) ‘Development studies after 9/11: the (im)morality of critique’
  • 2004 Professor Doreen Massey (Open University) ‘Space, time and political responsibility’

The 14th David M. Smith Annual Lecture, 'Revolting New York: How 400 Years of Riot, Revolt, Uprising, and Revolution Shaped a City' was given on Thursday 30 November 2017 by Don Mitchell, Professor of Cultural Geography in the Department of Social and Economic Geography at Uppsala University, Sweden.

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