Jamie Pearce is Professor of Health Geography at the University of Edinburgh where he is co-Director of the Centre for Research on Environment Society and Health (CRESH). His research seeks to understand various social, political and environmental mechanisms operating at a range of geographical scales that establish and perpetuate spatial inequalities in health over the lifecourse. Working at the intersection of human geography, public health and epidemiology, he has particular interests in the role of unhealthy commodities (e.g. tobacco and alcohol products), environmental justice and health (e.g. air pollution, green space and multiple environmental deprivation), and macro-level health-related processes (e.g. social and economic inequality). Professor Pearce has led research projects funded by range of UK, EU and overseas funding bodies (totalling >£35m) including as Principle Investigator of a recent ESRC-funded ‘Lifecourse of Place: how environments throughout life can support healthy ageing’ and an ongoing Cancer Research UK study entitled
‘Neighbourhood differentials in tobacco pricing across England, Wales and Scotland’. Jamie is also a work package lead of the £5.9m UKPRP-funded consortium ‘Shaping Public hEalth poliCies To Reduce ineqUalities and harm (SPECTRUM)’.
Professor Pearce has extensive leadership experience including until September 2023 as Director of the ESRC Scottish Graduate School for Social Science Doctoral Training Partnership (SGSSS-DTP) where he twice led DTP applications to the ESRC and Scottish Funding Council (total funding >£30 million). Previously he was a member of academic staff at the University of Canterbury, New Zealand where was
founding Director (2004-09) of the GeoHealth Laboratory which was formed in partnership with the New Zealand Ministry of Health to undertake policy-focused research on the connections between health and place. Between 2014 and 2023, Jamie was Editor-in-Chief of the international journal Health and Place, and he is founding co-Editor of the recently established Wellbeing, Space & Society. He is currently Senior Editor (Medical Geography) of the interdisciplinary journal Social, Science & Medicine. With Professor Niamh Shortt, he co-organised the International Medical Geography Symposium work in Edinburgh attended by c. 350 delegates from around the world in June 2022.
Professor Pearce has published over 200 books, academic papers, and book chapters in range of public health, human geography, epidemiology and interdisciplinary outputs. He is also committed to ensuring that his research contributes to a healthier and fairer society. He is regularly invited to speak to policy and lay audiences including and is member of various advisory groups in Scotland such as Tobacco Control: Research and Evaluation Sub-Group (Scottish Ministerial Working Group on Tobacco Control): He has supervised 12 PhD students to completion (with 4 current) and been External Examiner of 28 PhD theses. Professor Pearce was recently elected as a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. In 2024 he was awarded a visiting Erskine Visiting Fellowship at the University of Canterbury, New Zealand.
