Gill Valentine

Professor of human geography at the University of Sheffield, where she has been a pro-vice-chancellor, Valentine made her name in 1989 with an article on the geography of women's fear: the places and hours they avoid, and how that map of fear restricts their use of the city more than actual violence does. Her 1990s work on lesbians and gay men in public space, with David Bell in Mapping Desire (1995), founded the geography of sexualities in the United Kingdom.

Children's Geographies (2004) and her studies of children's independence showed how parental fear and traffic have shrunk the space in which children move on their own, and Social Geographies (2001) became the discipline's textbook. In the last decade she has researched living with difference in diverse cities and questioned the idea that mere contact in public space produces tolerance: without equality, encounter can reinforce prejudice.

A fellow of the British Academy and editor of leading journals, Valentine has carried social geography into public space design, gender-aware planning and childhood policy. Her lesson is that the city is lived differently according to the body that moves through it, and that planning without knowing it is planning for a few.