Sir Alan Wilson FBA
- Fellow type
- UK Fellow
- Year elected
- 1994
- Subjects
- Geography
- Sections
- Anthropology and Geography
Summary
Sir Alan Wilson FBA FAcSS FRS is the Executive Chair of the Ada Lovelace Institute. He was previously Professor of Urban and Regional Systems in the Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis at University College London. He is Chair of the Home Office Science Advisory Council. His current research is on the evolution of cities and the dynamics of global trade, migration, security and development aid. He writes the weekly Quaestio blog on research and interdisciplinarity.
He is a Cambridge Mathematics graduate and began his research career in elementary particle physics at the Rutherford Laboratory. He soon turned to the social sciences, working on cities, with posts in Oxford and London before becoming Professor of Urban and Regional geography in Leeds in 1970. He was a member of Oxford City Council from 1964-1967. He was Vice-Chancellor of the University of Leeds from 1991 to 2004 when he became Director-General for Higher Education in the then DfES. After a brief spell in Cambridge, he joined UCL in 2007. From 2007-2013 he was also Chair of the Arts and Humanities Research Council. He was Chair of the Lead Expert Group for the Government Office for Science Foresight Project on The Future of Cities from 2013-2015. He is a Member of Academia Europaea, an FBA, an FAcSS and an FRS. He was knighted in 2001.
Current post
Executive Chair, The Ada Lovelace Institute
Past appointments
Alan Turing Institute Chief Executive
2016 - 2018
Home Office Chair, Science Advisory Council
2016 -
Centre for Cities Trustee and Board Member
2016 -
University College London Professor of Urban and Regional Systems
2007 - 2018
University of Leeds Vice-Chancellor
1991 - 2004
University of Leeds Professor of Urban and Regional Geography
1970 -
Publications
Other Fellows of the British Academy
Professor Susan J Smith PBA
Professor Susan Smith is President of the British Academy. She is known for her contributions to social geography and for her collaborative interdisciplinary research on the links between housing, inequality, health and wellbeing.
Professor Haidy Geismar FBA
Material, Visual and Digital anthropology with a focus on museums and colonial collecting, intellectual and cultural property, cultures of digitization, and contemporary art practice in global context
Professor Kirsten Hastrup FBA
The entanglement of natural & social histories in Iceland & Greenland; the anthropological contribution to climate change research; the history of Artic anthropology; the foundations of anthropological knowledge
