Perfil

Russell King is Emeritus Professor of Geography at the University of Sussex. He has a BA in Geography (1966), an MSc in Economics (1967) and a PhD in Land Reform Studies (1970), all from the University of London. After a Postdoctoral Fellowship in Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Durham, he was appointed Lecturer in Geography at the University of Leicester, after which, in 1986, he became Professor of Geography at Trinity College Dublin. Moving to Sussex to take the established Chair in Geography in 1993, he founded the Sussex Centre for Migration Research in 1997 and was Dean of the School of European Studies 1998–2001.

Specialising in research into human migration, he was a founder-member of IMISCOE, the largest global network of migration scholars, in 2004 and has since served that organisation in various capacities. During 2012–2013, he was the Willy Brandt Professor in Migration Studies at Malmö University and, earlier in his career, he held visiting appointments at the University of Malta, Ben Gurion University of the Negev, the University of Trieste and Cornell University. In 2021 he was awarded an honorary PhD by the University of Lisbon.

Russell King’s scientific output – mainly in the field of migration but also with earlier studies on land reform, tourism, economic geography, European Studies and Mediterranean Studies – comprises 17 authored and co-authored books, 26 edited books, more than 100 chapters in edited books and over 200 articles in international refereed journals. His most recent book (jointly authored with Nilay Kılınç) is A Place in the Homeland? Turkish-German Return Migration (Edinburgh University Press, 2025). He was the editor of the Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 2000–2013. He has directed around 20 funded research projects and supervised, to date, 60 PhD theses.