Smith, Neil (1954–)

Neil Smith is among the most influential and famous of living geographers. He is currently Distinguished Professor of Anthropology and Geography at the City University of New York (CUNY) and was the founding director of the Center for Place, Culture and Politics in the Graduate Center at CUNY.

Smith was born in Scotland in 1954 and studied for a BSc degree in geography at the University of St. andrews. In 1977, he left Scotland for Baltimore, where he began his PhD research on gentrification under the supervision of David Harvey at Johns Hopkins University, graduating in 1982. Though younger than Harvey, Smith underwent a similar academic and political transformation to that of his supervisor. This trajectory entailed a rejection of the kind of geography taught to ...