Professor David Green

Biography

Professor David Green is trained as a geographer (BA and PhD from University of Cambridge) and has worked at King’s since 1979 in the Geography Department. He is currently Professor of Historical Geography.

His main interests focus on historical geographies of poverty, wealth and welfare in Britain between the eighteenth and the twentieth centuries. He has published widely on topics as varied as poor relief in London to landownership in Britain and from the finance of eighteenth-century towns to postal workers health in the UK. What links these different interests together is an awareness of the spatial differences in social conditions and the different ways in which welfare policies operate to address these differences.

His work outside academia has included a variety of advisory and consultancy roles for a wide range of organisations, ranging from the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority (QCA) on developing new geography curricula at GCSE and A level to TV production companies and the New Deal for Communities programme.

He has appeared on national and international television in programmes relating to various aspects of nineteenth-century London, family history and the history of the British landscape. He is passionate about outreach activities that extend the opportunity to experience a university education as widely as possible. He is also equally passionate about his role as a teacher and as a learner. 

In the video below David tells us about his Wellcome-funded project 'Addressing Health'.

Research

• Poverty and poor relief in Britain from the eighteenth to the twentieth centuries
• Histories of welfare
• Occupational health in nineteenth and twentieth-century Britain
• Urban growth and finance in Britain from the eighteenth to the twentieth centuries
• Wealth and inheritance in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries

David has an eclectic range of research interests tied together by a concern with welfare. This poses a series of questions about the relationships between different dimensions of poverty and well-being, and the policy responses.

He is interested in how institutions, such as the state, local governments and employers, as well as individuals respond to need. This leads into historical analyses of poor relief, health care, pensions and inheritance practices – all of which are explored through a geographical lens that identifies place as a key element in understanding these topics.

Teaching

Undergraduate

• 6SSG0365 Economy, Society and Politics in 19th Century London (3rd year)

PhD supervision

David welcomes PHD students looking to study:

• poverty and poor relief in England and Wales from 1700 to 1930
• histories of occupational health in Britain
• wealth and inheritance in nineteenth and twentieth-century Britain
• British urban growth and change from the eighteenth to the twentieth century

Further details

See David's research profile