Ian Masser
Professorial Fellow
Research interests
Spatial data infrastructures, GI policy, GIS & organisations
Biography
Educated in geography and town planning at Liverpool University Ian Masser received his PhD in 1975 and was awarded a LittD in 1993 by the same University for his contributions to the fields of planning methods, geographic information management and comparative studies. These three interests feature prominently in Ian's research activities. From 1986-1991 he was national coordinator of ESRC's Regional Research Laboratory initiative and he co-directed the European Science Foundation's GISDATA scientific programme from 1992 to 1997. His publications include sixteen books and over 250 contributions to conference proceedings, books and major journals.
Ian retired from the position of Professor of Urban Planning at the International Institute for Geo-Information Science and Earth Observation (ITC) in September 2002 after four and a half years service. Prior to that he was Professor of Town and Regional Planning at the University of Sheffield for nearly 20 years. Ian was the Founder Chairman of the Association of Geographic Information Laboratories in Europe (AGILE) and President of the European Umbrella Organisation for Geographic Information (EUROGI) from 1999 to 2003. He was also President of the Global Spatial Data Infrastructure Association from September 2002 to February 2004. Ian has held visiting positions at universities in Australia, Germany, Greece, Italy, Iraq, Japan, the Netherlands, Switzerland and the United States and at government research centres in Korea and Malaysia. He has also acted as advisor to a large number of national and international agencies including the European Commission, Eurostat, OECD, UNCRD and the World Bank.
masser@onetel.com