Richard Huggett
Position: Reader in Physical Geography
BSc, PhD (London)
Room Number: 2.027 [Arthur Lewis Building]
Tel: +44(0)161 275 3620
Fax: +44(0)161 275 7878
Email: richard.huggett@manchester.ac.uk
My current research addresses four basic questions:
How is the environment put together?
This theme considers ‘ecological’ worldviews. It explores individual environmental components and the interdependence among them (see Huggett 1995, 1997a, 2002 below).
How does the environment change?
This theme investigates ‘evolutionary’ worldviews. It considers the ideas of ‘development’ and ‘evolution’ applied to individual environmental components and to the ecosphere as a whole (see Huggett 1997a below).
How fast does the environment change?
This theme centres on the debate overcatastrophism versus gradualism, (see Huggett 1997a, 1997b, in preparation below).
How do ecology and evolution interact?
This theme probes the very difficult but intriguing issue of how the structure and function of environmental components is translated into evolutionary changes in the ecosphere (see Huggett 1995, 1997a below).
Teaching commitments
Year 1: Environmental processes and change: the global system.
Year 3: The geography of life.
Postgraduate: MSc Modelling the environment.
Current and past postgraduate students
Matt Szabo Community, environment and sustainability
Recent journal articles
(2006) "A history of the systems approach in geomorphology", Géomorphologie: Relief, Processus, Environnement (accepted subject to minor revision).
(2002) "Cranks, conventionalists and geomorphology", Area 34: 182-9.
(1999) "Ecosphere, Biosphere, Gaia? What to call the global ecosystem", Global Biogeography and Ecology, 8: 425-31.
Recent books
Authored books
(206) The Natural History of the Earth: Debating Long-term Change in the Geosphere, Biosphere and Ecosphere. London: Routledge.
(2004) Fundamentals of Biogeography, 2nd edn. London: Routledge, 439 pp.
(2003) Fundamentals of Geomorphology, London Routledge, 386 pp.
(2002) Topography and the Environment, Harlow: Prentice Hall, 274 pp. (with J.E.Cheesman
(1997b) Catastrophism: Asteroids, Comets and Other Dynamic Events in Earth History, an updated paperback edition, London: Verso, 262 pp.
(1997a) Environmental Change: The Evolving Ecosphere, London: Routledge, 378 pp.
(1995) Geoecology: An Evolutionary Approach, London: Routledge, 320 pp.
Recent chapter in book
(2004) Lanscape as form and process. In J.A.Matthews and D.T.Herbert (eds) Unifying Geography: Common Heritage, Shared Future? London: Routledge.
Edited books
(2007) Companion Encyclopedia of Geography: From Local to Global, 2nd edn (Joint editor with Ian Douglas and Chris Perkins). London: Routledge (in press).