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About Charles
Charles Watkins is Professor of Rural Geography in the School of Geography, Faculty of Social Sciences, at the University of Nottingham. He holds a BSc in Geography from Queen Mary College, University of London, and a PhD on woodland management and history from the University of Nottingham. Early in his career, he served as an ESRC postdoctoral researcher in the Departments of Geography and Law at the University of Exeter (1984-1986) and worked on ancient woodlands in the Chief Scientist’s Team of the Nature Conservancy Council. In 1987, he was Assistant Director of the Centre for Rural Studies at the Royal Agricultural College, Cirencester. Joining the University of Nottingham as Lecturer in Geography in 1992, he was promoted to Professor in 2002 and has held key leadership roles, including Head of the School of Geography (2006-2009 and 2021-2023) and Deputy Head of School (2012-2020).
Professor Watkins' research specializations include the cultural and environmental geography of trees, topographical art and landscape history of North-West Italy, animal geographies, agriculture and forest history, nature conservation and management, and rural geography. He directed the Leverhulme Trust project on British topographical art and landscape in NW Italy (2016-2020) and an AHRC-funded project on the cultural geography of tree collections and arboreta. His major publications encompass Trees Ancient and Modern: Woodland Cultures and Conservation (Reaktion Books, 2025), Rediscovering Lost Landscapes: Topographical Art in North-West Italy, 1800-1920 (with Pietro Piana and Ross Balzaretti, Boydell Press, 2021), Trees in Art (Reaktion Books, 2018), Trees, Woods and Forests: A Social and Cultural History (Reaktion Books, 2014), Europe's Changing Woods and Forests: From Wildwood to Managed Landscapes (edited with Keith Kirby, CABI, 2015), Uvedale Price 1747-1829: Decoding the Picturesque (with Ben Cowell, Boydell and Brewer, 2012), and The British Arboretum: Science, Trees and Culture in the Nineteenth Century (with Paul Elliott and Stephen Daniels, University of Pittsburgh Press, 2011). He has contributed articles to journals including Rural History and Land Use Policy. Watkins chaired the Ecological History Section of the International Union of Forest Research Organisations (2003-2009), the Society for Landscape Studies, and the Victoria County History Committee for Herefordshire. A Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries, he serves on the editorial boards of Landscape History and Rural History and has appeared on BBC Radio 4's The Long View.
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