Pickles, John (1952-)

John Pickles currently holds the Earl N. Phillips Distinguished Chair of International Studies and Geography at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, where he is chair of the department of geography. He has also held academic appointments at the universities of Kentucky, Minnesota, and West Virginia; at the Ohio State University; at the Pennsylvania State University (Penn State); and at Natal Pietermaritzburg and Trieste.

For the past 20 yrs. (years), two main strands of scholarship have been the hallmark of Pickles's research work. The first and perhaps most well-known aspect of Pickles's scholarship concerns critical geographic information systems (GIS) and, more recently, critical cartography. The publication of the groundbreaking edited collection Ground Truth: The Social Implications of Geographical Information Systems in 1995 contributed to a ...