Series 508 - John Connell research papers on human geography in the Pacific region

John Connell completed his PhD (Arts) at the University College, London (UCL), in 1973. Following a research project in Bougainville, Papua New Guinea, he took up a lecturing position at the University of Sydney, where he has been a human geographer for over 20 years. His research interests are concerned with geographic, political, economic and social development in villages in developing countries, especially in the South Pacific region and other small island states – New Caledonia, Solomon Islands, Tonga, Fiji and Tuvalu, as well as Iran, Africa and Asia. His interests include rural development, rural migration, poverty and inequality, urbanisation, decolonisation and nationalism, the cultural geography of music, literature, food, sport, festivals and tourism, and more recently, medical tourism.

John Connell was elected Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences of Australia in 2000 and in 2007 won the New South Wales Geographical Societies McDonald Holmes Medal. He is ‘well known internationally as a key thinker in tourism studies, a scholar of popular music, a historian of the Pacific, and a consultant to the highest levels of the United Nations on international migration’. This quote is taken from his Citation for the Australia-International Medal, which he received in 2009. John Connell has been a consultant to the WHO (World Health Organisation), the South Pacific Commission, the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank, United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization, and the International Labour Organization.

A prodigious scholar, an inspirational teacher and ‘grass-roots ’ thinker, John Connell, has authored no fewer than 74 books and mentored a large number of students who have become leading academics, journalists, politicians and policy makers in Australia.