Professor Gary Higgs, Director, GIS Research Centre, Faculty of Advanced Technology, University of Glamorgan, Pontypridd, Wales, UK. Gary is a past chairperson of the Quantitative Methods Study Group of the Royal Geographical Society with the Institute of British Geographers. His research interests are in the application of GIS in social and environmental studies.
Gary Higgs is a graduate of the Department of Geography, University of Wales, Aberystwyth, where he completed a BSc in physical geography and a PhD in hydrology. Gary was appointed to his present position after holding posts in the University of Wales, Cardiff and the University of Leeds. His recent funded research has been concerned with investigating GIS-based accessibility measures as indicators of social disadvantage in rural areas and with the application of GIS in health studies. Examples of this research were published in The Professional Geographer, Vol. 38, 2006. Gary also has interests in researaching temporal variations in mortality and deprivation in studies of health inequalities, spatial analytical approaches to examine potential clusters of morbidity, and factors influencing health status between urban and rural areas in relation to variations in service access, socio demographic change and lifestyle. Gary is involved in a project investigating geographical and socio-economic variations in referrals to a cancer genetics service, with K. McDonald and R. Iredale, University of Glamorgan. Early results have appeared in the 2007 article, The geography of genetics: An analysis of referral patterns to a cancer genetics service, Genomic Medicine, Vol. 1, 2000. Other relevant areas of research include the use of GIS techniques in investigating environmental justice in the UK (with M. Langford) and with examination of the factors influencing the uptake of dental services (with W. Richards).
Gary may be contacted at ghiggs@glam.ac.uk.
Updated: January 2009
Health and Medical Geography 