Weekly Program - "Maps That Show Us Who We Are (Not Just Where We Are)"

 
Published on Dec 21, 2016

What does the world look like when you map it using data? Social geographer Danny Dorling invites us to see the world anew, with his captivating and insightful maps that show Earth as it truly is -- a connected, ever-changing and fascinating place in which we all belong. You'll never look at a map the same way again.

Introducing our Speaker - Danny Dorling

Danny Dorling has invented new map projections and new ways of measuring and describing inequality -- and analyzed thousands of datasets about people and the planet. He is the Halford Mackinder Professor of Geography at the University of Oxford, UK. His work concerns issues of housing, health, employment, education, wealth and poverty.

In the press, Dorling has been described as "that rare university professor: expert, politically engaged and able to explain simply why his subject matters," and as one who has made it "his life's work to dig through the layers that make up Britain's human landscape, and then map it in ways nobody else had thought to do." Working with many others, he has done the same for all the countries of the world "giving a strikingly different perspective from the Mercator projection most commonly used." All this mapping lead him to worry more about inequality.

His recent books include co-authored texts The Atlas of the Real World: Mapping the Way We Live, Bankrupt Britain: An atlas of social change, and People and Places a 21st-century Atlas of the UK. Recent sole-authored books include So You Think You Know about Britain and Fair Play, both in 2011; in 2012 The No-nonsense Guide to Equality, The Visualization of Spatial Social Structure and The Population of the UK; Unequal Health: The Scandal of Our Times, The 32 Stops and Population Ten Billion in 2013; All That Is Solid in 2014; Injustice: Why social inequalities persist in 2015; and A Better Politics: How Government Can Make Us Happier in 2016.

Why you should listen Danny Dorling has invented new map projections and new ways of measuring and describing inequality -- and analyzed thousands of datasets about people and the planet. He is the Halford Mackinder Professor of Geography at the University of Oxford, UK. His work concerns issues of housing, health, employment, education, wealth and poverty. In the press, Dorling has been described as "that rare university professor: expert, politically engaged and able to explain simply why his subject matters," and as one who has made it "his life's work to dig through the layers that make up Britain's human landscape, and then map it in ways nobody else had thought to do." Working with many others, he has done the same for all the countries of the world "giving a strikingly different perspective from the Mercator projection most commonly used." All this mapping lead him to worry more about inequality. His recent books include co-authored texts The Atlas of the Real World: Mapping the Way We Live, Bankrupt Britain: An atlas of social change, and People and Places a 21st-century Atlas of the UK. Recent sole-authored books include So You Think You Know about Britain and Fair Play, both in 2011; in 2012 The No-nonsense Guide to Equality, The Visualization of Spatial Social Structure and The Population of the UK; Unequal Health: The Scandal of Our Times, The 32 Stops and Population Ten Billion in 2013; All That Is Solid in 2014; Injustice: Why social inequalities persist in 2015; and A Better Politics: How Government Can Make Us Happier in 2016.