Giles Foody - Biography#
Giles earned the BSc (geography, 1st class honours) and PhD degrees from the University of Sheffield in 1983 and 1986 respectively. He is Professor of Geographical Information Science in the School of Geography and a member of the Rights Lab, both in the Faculty of Social Science, University of Nottingham. He is the UK’s most prolific and most highly cited researcher in remote sensing.
His key research interests focus on image classification for thematic mapping, especially in relation to studies of land cover and human induced land cover change at scales ranging from local to global. He was a pioneer of:
- fuzzy/soft image classifications as well as object based classifications in the 1980s,
- neural networks for classification as well as means to spatially enhance analyses leading to super-resolution mapping in the 1990s,
- local approaches to enhance land cover mapping in the 2000s, and
- citizen sensors in mapping projects in 2010s.
Current major foci are mapping sites potentially associated with modern slavery in the ‘slavery from space’ project and of Sargassum beaching to address UN SDGs in Mexico.
He has contributed greatly to academic service, notably through:
- editorial roles (2 as editor-in-chief),
- reviewing (global top 1% peer reviewer) and
- full membership of major panels (e.g. national University research assessment exercises RAE2008, REF2014 and REF2021).
He has also led and shaped the subject for future generations:
- supervised 51 research students,
- co-authored the world’s first BSc in Geographical Information Systems (1989),
- launched an MSc (2007),
- defined the remote sensing curriculum for higher education in Southern Africa through an IEEE expert panel, and
- founded new groups (e.g. chair of transdisciplinary COST Action TD1202, involved 31 countries) and journals.
His work is interdisciplinary and extends beyond academia for real world impact and public benefit (e.g. anti-slavery agencies and citizen sensing with European National Mapping Agencies).
