Professor Danny Dorling

Personal website: Bio | Books | Publications | Talks | Videos | Links

Danny Dorling joined the School of Geography and the Environment in September 2013 to take up the Halford Mackinder Professorship in Geography. He was previously a professor of Geography at the University of Sheffield. He has also worked in Newcastle, Bristol, Leeds and New Zealand, went to university in Newcastle upon Tyne, and to school in Oxford.

Much of Danny's work is available open access (see www.dannydorling.org). With a group of colleagues he helped create the website www.worldmapper.org which shows who has most and least in the world. His work concerns issues of housing, health, employment, education, wealth and poverty. His recent books include, co-authored texts: The Atlas of the Real World: Mapping the way we live; Bankrupt Britain: An atlas of social change; Rule Britannia: Brexit and the end of empire; and Finntopia: what we can learn from the world's happiest country.

Sole authored books include, So you think you know about Britain and Fair Play, both in 2011; in 2012 The No-nonsense Guide to Equality, The Visualization of Social Spatial Structure and The Population of the UK; Unequal Health, The 32 Stops and Population Ten Billion in 2013; All That is Solid in 2014; and Injustice: Why social inequalities persist revised in 2015. In 2016 with Bethan Thomas he authored People and Places: A 21st century atlas of the UK, A Better Politics: How government can make us happier and with Carl Lee: Geography: ideas in profile. In 2017 with Dimitris Ballas and Ben Hennig he produced The Human Atlas of Europe and also wrote the sole authored book The Equality Effect: Improving life for everyone. In 2018 he edited Peak Inequality: Britain's ticking time bomb. In 2020 he published Slowdown: the end of the great acceleration - and why it's good for the planet, the economy, and our lives. Due out in 2023 is his latest book: Shattered Nation: Inequality and the Geography of a Failing State.

Before a career in academia Danny was employed as a play-worker in children's play-schemes and in pre-school education where the underlying rationale was that playing is learning for living. He tries not to forget this. He is an Academician of the Academy of the Learned Societies in the Social Sciences, a former Honorary President of the Society of Cartographers and a current patron of Roadpeace, the national charity for road crash victims.

Personal website: Bio | Books | Publications | Talks | Videos | Links

Recent academic papers

Others are available on the Geovisualization, Inequality and Space webpages.

• Hiam, L., McKee, M. and Dorling, D. (2024) Influenza: cause or excuse? An analysis of flu’s influence on worsening mortality trends in England and Wales, 2010–19. British Medical Bulletin, 15 January, 1-18.
• Dorling, D. (2023) The souls of the people of Oxford, ‘Something Needs To Change’. The Oxford Magazine, No. 456, Noughth Week, Michaelmas Term, 10 October. [PDF: 2MB]
• Dorling, D. (2022) Where are we heading? The example of generational change in British academic Geography. Environment and Planning F, 1(1): 125-142.
• Wami, W., Walsh, D., Hennig, B. McCartney, G., Dorling, D., Galea, S. Sampson, S. and Dundas. R. (2021) Spatial and temporal inequalities in mortality in the USA, 1968-2016, Health and Place, 70(July): 102586.
• Hiam, L., Dorling, D. and McKee, M. (2020) Things fall apart: The British Health Crisis 2010-2020. British Medical Bulletin, 133(1): 4-15.
• Dorling, D. (2019) Kindness: A new kind of rigour for British Geographers. Emotion, Space and Society, 33, 100630.
• Dorling, D. (2018) Dying quietly: English suburbs and the stiff upper lip. The Political Quarterly, September. DOI: 10.1111/1467-923X.12579
• Hiam, L., Dorling, D. and McKee, M. (2018) The cuts and poor health: when and how can we say that one thing causes another? Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine, 111(6): 199-202.
• Ballas, D., Dorling, D. and Hennig, B.D. (2017) Analysing the regional geography of poverty, austerity and inequality in Europe: a human cartographic perspective, Regional Studies, 51 (1): 174-185.
• Hiam, L., Dorling, D., Harrison, D. and McKee, M. (2017) What caused the spike in mortality in England and Wales in January 2015? Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine, 110(4): 131-137.
• Morris, T., Dorling, D. and Davey Smith, G. (2016) How well can we predict educational outcomes? Examining the roles of cognitive ability and social position in educational attainment. Contemporary Social Science, 11 (2-3): 154-168.
• Rodriguez, J.M., Geronimus, A.T., Bound, J. and Dorling, D. (2015) Black lives matter: Differential mortality and the racial composition of the U.S. Electorate, 1970-2004. Social Science and Medicine, 136-137: 193-199.
• Dorling, D. (2014) Commentary: All the presidents' children. International Journal of Epidemiology. (Download PDF).
• Dorling, D. (2013) Fairness and the changing fortunes of people in Britain. Journal of the Royal Statistical Society A, 176(1): 97-128.
• Dorling, D. (2012) Inequality constitutes a particular place. Social and Cultural Geography, 13(1): 1-9.
• Fahmy, E., Gordon, D., Dorling, D., Rigby, J. and Wheeler, B. (2011) Poverty and place in Britain, 1968 - 99. Environment and Planning A, 43(3): 594-617.
• Pearce, J.R. and Dorling, D. (2010) The influence of selective migration patterns among smokers and nonsmokers on geographical inequalities in health. Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 100(2): 393-408.
• Thomas, B., Dorling, D. and Davey Smith, G. (2010) Inequalities in premature mortality in Britain: observational study from 1921 to 2007. British Medical Journal, 341:c3639.

Revisiting the point-source hypothesis of the coronary heart disease epidemic in light of the COVID-19 pandemic - Extra link with further links to 30 key references.

More of Danny's papers can also be found at http://www.dannydorling.org