Professor Peter Wood CGeog

Biography

Peter Wood obtained his BSc and PhD from the University of Birmingham. He is Emeritus Professor of Geography at University College London, and was Head of the UCL Department of Geography between 1997 and 2002. He held a number of other positions at UCL, including responsibilities for student recruitment, schools liaison and student welfare, and for some years was a member of the UCL Council. His original research interests were in manufacturing change and regional development, but his primary focus from the 1980s became the service sector, especially the growth of producer and business services. Research projects supported by the ESRC and the European Commission included investigations into the growth of business services in England and Scotland; the regional conditions influencing their expansion to overseas markets; their role in providing clients with technical and managerial expertise and its regional implications; and the impacts of the use of business consultancies on client innovation. In the 1990s this work extended to studies of the qualities supporting economically successful cities in service based economies. Recent research includes studies of the internationalisation of UK higher education. Peter Wood was Vice-Chair of the RGS-IBG Chartered Geographer Final Assessors Committee between 2002 and 2014, and has been Hon Secretary of the Council of British Geography (COBRIG) since 2010. He was also Chair of the Soddy Trust from 2015 to 2019, when he became Chair of the Frederick Soddy Award Fund, of the RGS-IBG.