Rate My Professor Robin Kearns

Professor Robin Kearns serves as Professor of Geography and Head of the School of Environment within the Faculty of Science at the University of Auckland. He completed his MA in Geography at the University of Auckland in the early 1980s and pursued doctoral studies in Canada. Over his extensive career at the University of Auckland, Kearns has progressed through academic ranks to his current professorial role. His research centers on social and cultural geography, with a pioneering focus on health geography that examines the intersections of place, health, and wellbeing. Key areas include place attachment, health care spaces, housing and home, ageing in place, islands and coastal bluespaces, urban dynamics, and music geographies. Kearns has collaborated widely across disciplines, contributing to interdisciplinary research themes such as contested environments, globalising processes, and living with environmental change.

Kearns has produced over 260 publications, achieving an h-index of 58 and more than 11,000 citations on Google Scholar. Notable works include the seminal paper 'From medical to health geography: novelty, place and theory after a decade of change' (Progress in Human Geography, 2002), which has garnered over 800 citations. He co-edited 'Blue Space, Health and Wellbeing: Hydrophilia Unbounded' (Routledge, 2020) and has contributed to the Geographies of Health series and 'A Companion to Health and Medical Geography' (2009). His influence is evident in editorial roles, including the board of Wellbeing, Space and Society, and supervision of over 30 Master's students and more than a dozen PhD candidates. Major honors include election as a Fellow of the Royal Society Te Apārangi (2020), the Ako Aotearoa National Award for Sustained Excellence in Tertiary Teaching (2011) with induction into the Academy of Tertiary Teaching Excellence, two University of Auckland teaching awards, and the Melinda S. Meade Distinguished Scholarship Award in Health and Medical Geography from the American Association of Geographers (2018). Kearns also serves on the New Zealand Geographic Board.