Historical geography; history and philosophy of geography; colonial and postcolonial geographies; decolonial and subaltern investigation; archival and global-comparative methods.

Member of the School's Gossip research group https://gossip.wp.st-andrews.ac.uk/

Co-editor (2015-2021) The Scottish Geographical Journal https://www.tandfonline.com/toc/rsgj19/current

Dan's research and teaching is broadly in the area of historical geography, and with a core interest in geography 'in the round', and how the discipline aspires to be critical, equitable, inclusive and hopeful (in an age of doom).  In more specialist terms, he has long-standing interests in: (a) how power dynamics of colonialism and empire, past and present, are lived, imagined and landscaped geographically; and (b) the nature of geography as a discipline and discourse concerned with links between environment and society, and 'us' and 'them', and that has struggled with a damaging investment in Eurocentric and imperialist ways of knowing.  He has worked, in these veins, on exploration and cartography; western-Native contact and colonialism in North America and the Pacific c. 1750-1850 (including the book Islands of Truth); the idea of tropicality c.1870-present (including the book Impure and Worldly Geography); and spaces of decolonisation and revolution c. 1940-1980.  His research engages postcolonial, subaltern and decolonial literatures and approaches, and is expedited through courses at St Andrews on the historical geography of capitalism; geographic thought; and colonial and postcolonial geographies.         

Dan's current projects are on: 'decolonisation and asymmetric life'; and 'the jungle environment of the Vietnam War'; and with a longer/wider book project on Colonialism's Geographies.  He is also involved in a collaborative project on 'imperial immunities' (with Prof. Jo Sharp SGSD, and Prof. Christos Lynteris SPAFS).

Colonialism's Geographies (book project)

Decolonisation and asymmetric life, 1945-1991 (funded project)

Life and times of the decolonial (unfunded project)