Professor Robert Whittaker

Emeritus Fellow

Professor Rob Whittaker is Emeritus Fellow at St Edmund Hall and Emeritus Professor of Biogeography at the University of Oxford. He retired from the Hall in September 2023 after 32 years of service.

Rob has a BSc in Botany and Geography from the University of Hull (1980), an MSc in Ecology from University College North Wales (1982), and a doctorate from University College Cardiff (1985), where he studied vegetation succession on recently deglaciated terrain, in the Jotunheim Mountains in Norway.

Biography

Rob joined the Oxford School of Geography and the Environment in 1986, having previously worked for a year as a research officer at Birkbeck College, London. In 1990 he was appointed to a university lectureship and to a fellowship at St Edmund Hall. In 1999 he was awarded the title of Reader and, in 2004, Professor of Biogeography. From 2015 to 2019 Rob held a part-time professorship in the Centre for Macroecology, Evolution and Climate at the University of Copenhagen.

Rob has published over 200 peer-review articles and is also co-author or co-editor of several books, the most recent of which are:

Whittaker, R. J., Fernández-Palacios, J. M. & Matthews, T. J. (2023) Island Biogeography: geo-environmental dynamics, ecology, evolution, human impact, and conservation. Oxford University, Press, Oxford.

Matthews, T. J., Triantis, K.A. & Whittaker, R.J. (eds) (2021) The Species-Area Relationship: Theory and Application. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.

Lomolino, M.V., Riddle, B.R., & Whittaker, R.J. (2017) Biogeography, 5th edn. Sinauer, Sunderland, MA.

Current Research

Rob continues to work on topics within the field of island biogeography and collaborates with a wide network of collaborators from countries including Denmark, Greece, Germany, Spain, Portugal, France and the USA..

Rob is a past editor-in-chief of two leading international journals: Global Ecology & Biogeography – a journal of macroecology, and Journal of Biogeography and is current editor-in-chief of Frontiers of Biogeography. He is also a founding member, Distinguished Fellow and past-President of the International Biogeography Society.

During his tenure as a Fellow of St Edmund Hall, Rob undertook stints as Dean, Vice-Principal, and Pro-Principal.