Olsson, Gunnar (1935-)

Gunnar Olsson served for a decade as professor of geography at the University of Michigan and for 20 years as director of the doctoral program at the Nordic School of Planning (Nordplan) in Stockholm, before returning to Uppsala University in the late 1990s. He has become one of the more influential deconstructive voices within poststructuralist geography. Idiosyncratically drawing on reactionary and rebellious ideas from geometry, philosophy, theology, cartography, semiotics, and aesthetics, the political implications of Olsson's work have been a constant source of academic controversy.

Olsson completed his doctoral studies at Uppsala University in 1968. His early work dealt with distance and human interaction and was based on methods emanating from the quantitative tradition in geography. From the 1970s onward, Ols-son has been a key figure ...