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Trevor Barnes awarded RGS Founder’s Medal
24 June 2019
Pioneering developments in economic geography by UCL Geography alumnus
Her Majesty the Queen has approved the award by the Royal Geographical Society of its Founder’s Medal to UCL Geography alumnus, Professor Trevor Barnes, ‘For sustained excellence and pioneering developments in the field of economic geography’.
Trevor graduated from UCL in 1976 with a first-class Joint Degree in Economics and Geography, also winning the Jevons Prize in Economics. He went to the University of Minnesota Geography to carry out graduate work, in 1983 earning the Ralph Hall Brown Award for the best graduate student-published paper. He was then appointed to Geography at the University of British Columbia (UBC) and made a full professor in 1994.
His international reputation has been based on his contribution to the regeneration of economic geography on both sides of the Atlantic, and he has also published influential work on the philosophy and history of geography in the USA, including during the Vietnam War. At UBC, he received various Distinguished University Scholar awards but was also regularly voted Geography Teacher of the Year in undergraduate polls.
The RGS Founder’s Medal is one of the highest honours of its kind in the world and adds to a number of earlier awards received by Trevor. These include the Canadian Association of Geographers Award for Scholarly Distinction (2002) and the prestigious Presidential Award for Distinguished Achievement by the American Association of Geographers (2006). He is also a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada (2011), and was made a Fellow of the British Academy in 2014.