Following the link below, you can read the above autobiographical essay which appeared as Chapter 17 in the edited collection of essays ‘Making Geography Matter: The Past and Present of a Changing Discipline‘ (Routledge, 2025), edited by Noel Castree, Trevor Barnes and Jennifer Salmond. What is the purpose of Geography? What do geographers study and why? How do they seek to shape the world they interrogate? The book addresses these questions by examining the lives and works of individual geographers, both past and present.

My chapter ‘Beyond Science – Climate Change in a “Wicked” World‘ demonstrates why geographer matters using my career in the study of climate change. Making sense of climate and its change is a task warranting the serious efforts of geographers, a task that has occupied my entire professional life.  This autobiographical essay reflects on how I have conducted this inquiry, sometimes outside the discipline of Geography but, always, with the training and instincts of a geographer. My journey from heavily quantitative research into climate dynamics to research and thought-leadership in how societies think about climate change has been a relatively unusual, but highly rewarding one.