Nigel Thrift

Born in 1949, and educated at Nailsea School south west of Bristol, Thrift then studied geography at the University of Wales, Aberystwyth and did his PhD at the University of Bristol. Thrift has held posts at numerous universities, including the University of Cambridge, the University of Leeds, the Australian National University, the University of Wales, Lampeter, the University of Bristol, and the University of Oxford.

In 2005 he was appointed vice-chancellor of the University of Warwick, taking up the position in July 2006. He intended to retire at the end of the university’s 50th anniversary year in 2015, but extended by a month to the end of January 2016.[5]

Thrift was knighted in the 2015 New Year Honours for services to higher education.[6][7]

Thrift has been described as one of the world's leading human geographers[8] and social scientists. He was the third most highly cited human geographer between 1996 and 2017 [9]. He is credited with coining the phrase soft capitalism as well as originating non-representational theory. In 1982 he co-founded the journal Environment and Planning D: Society and Space[10] whilst serving as managing editor, since 1979, of Environment and Planning A.[11]

Thrift's early work was most readily associated with economic geography, especially international finance. His later work has paid attention to subjectivity, representation, identity, and practice in Western societies. In one theory, Thrift coins the term qualculation. In Movement-Space: The Changing Domain of Thinking Resulting From the Development of New Kinds of Spatial Awareness, Nigel Thrift explains the concept: “calculation has become so ubiquitous that it has entered a new phase, which I call ‘qualculation’, an activity arising out of the construction of new generative microworlds which allow many millions of calculations continually to be made in the background of any encounter.” (Thrift 584)

A book with Ash Amin published in 2013 was critical of certain kinds of 'left politics'.[12] His work on time, language, power, representations, and the body has been influential, and it has been suggested that Thrift's career reflects and in some cases spurred substantial intellectual changes in human geography in the 1980s and 1990s.

His work on what he terms non-representational theory stresses performative and embodied knowledges and is a radical attempt to wrench the social sciences and humanities out of an emphasis on representation and interpretation by moving away from contemplative models of thought and action to those based on practice. Thrift has claimed that non-representational theory addresses the "unprocessual" nature of much of social and cultural theory. Major themes within non-representational theory include subjectification, space as a verb, technologies of being, embodiment, and play and excess. Non-representational theory has provoked substantial debate within the field of human geography around the limits of the mediation of our world through language and how we might see, sense, and communicate beyond it

Thrift has also edited and authored a number of books, encyclopaedias, and primers in human geography.

At Oxford, Thrift served as head of the Life and Environmental Sciences Division before becoming Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Research.

Thrift's role as Vice Chancellor at Warwick saw him launch several new initiatives, boosting the University's presence in London (an expansion of the Business School in The Shard building) and overseas (through a strong partnership with Monash University, and with plans to develop a campus in California). Warwick is now ranked in the world's top 100 universities, and in the top 10 in the UK.[13] During Thrift's tenure, job cuts to those without sufficient research income in the Medical School and Life Sciences were controversial.[14] and the incongruity between his progressive writings and his corporatisation of the university has been noted by some commentators [15]

Thrift was a chair of a section of the British Research Assessment Exercise (Main Panel H, 2005–07 and member, 2001 Panel for Geography), chaired the Industry Commission on Higher Education (2012-) and the IPPR Commission on the Future of Higher Education.[16]

In the financial year 2011–12, Thrift's salary rose by £50,000 (21%) to £288,000.[17] Some students claimed that the pay raise was unjustified, but their protests were rebuffed. In June 2013 when a pay rise of £42,000 (to £316,000) was announced, a small number of students again protested. The grounds were that the raise went against university cutbacks to staff and student support/bursaries.[18] In the same year, English professor and outspoken critic of the corporatisation and marketisation of Higher Education, Prof. Thomas Docherty, was controversially suspended for some months in 2014.[19]

Thrift's pay increase of £16,000 announced in December 2014, was again met with protests.[20] On 3 December 2014 police used CS spray to tackle protests at the University of Warwick, after a security guard was assaulted[21] (two protestors, including a student were later prosecuted[22]). Thrift issued a written statement that denounced the alleged violence.[23] Ken Sloan, Warwick's then registrar, stated that Thrift had been "targeted personally and directly" by students, including being spat on and verbally assaulted near his home.[24]

• Knighted, for services to higher education (2015)
• Deputy Lieutenant for the West Midlands (2014)
• Honorary LLD, Monash University (2013)
• Honorary LLD, University of Bristol (2010)
• Scottish Geographical Medal, Royal Scottish Geographical Society (2008)[25]
• Distinguished Scholarship Honours, Association of American Geographers (2007)
• Victoria Medal of the Royal Geographical Society.[26] (2003)
• Fellow of the British Academy (2003)[27](2003)
• Fellow, Academy of Learned Societies for the Social Sciences FAcSS (2000)
• Fellow, Swedish Collegium for Advanced Study in the Social Sciences (1999)
• University of Helsinki Medal (1999)
• Newbigin Prize, Royal Scottish Geographical Society (1998)
• Fellow, Netherlands Institute of Advanced Study (1993)
• Royal Geographical Society Heath Award (1988)

• Warf B (2004) "Nigel Thrift" in Hubbard P, Kitchin R & Valentine G (Eds.) Key Thinkers on Space and Place, London: Sage