David Matless

Contact

• workRoom A16 Sir Clive Granger
  University Park
  Nottingham
  NG7 2RD
  UK
• work0115 95 15436
• david.matless@nottingham.ac.uk

Research Summary

David Matless is Professor of Cultural Geography. He is the author of Landscape and Englishness (1998, revised edition 2016), an influential study of cultures of landscape in mid-twentieth century… read more

Recent Publications

• DAVID MATLESS, 2023. About England Reaktion Books.
• DAVID MATLESS, 2019. Checking the Sea: geographies of authority on the East Norfolk coast (1790-1932) Rural History. 30(2), 215-240
• DAVID MATLESS, 2019. Seeing More Flatly: The Regional Book. In: C FORSDICK, A LEAK AND R PHILLIPS, ed., Georges Perec’s Geographies UCL Press. 170-185
• DAVID MATLESS, 2018. Seaview: the Anthroposcenic. In: TIM DEE, ed., Ground Work: writings on places and people Jonathan Cape. 185-188

• View all publications

Current Research

David Matless is Professor of Cultural Geography. He is the author of Landscape and Englishness (1998, revised edition 2016), an influential study of cultures of landscape in mid-twentieth century England. His books About England (2023) and England's Green: Nature and Culture Since the 1960s (2024) explore the geographies of identity in England in the past six decades. The environmental themes of England's Green are also developed in a series of recent studies of the 'Anthroposcenic', showing the ways in which landscapes become emblematic of the Anthropocene, with a focus on the Norfolk coast.

His 2014 book, In the Nature of Landscape: Cultural Geography on the Norfolk Broads is a study in regional cultural landscape, while a related 2015 volume, The Regional Book, develops work on geographical description through an account of the Broads region. Other past areas of publication include the life and work of ecologist/artist Marietta Pallis (with Laura Cameron) and British geographical studies of the Eastern bloc (with Adam Swain and Jonathan Oldfield). He is also editor of The Place of Music (1998) and Geographies of British Modernity (2003).

Current work includes exploration of the collections held in the School of Geography at Nottingham, considering the ways in which geographers have visualised place, and how departmental collections may be re-animated, as outlined in a 2024 article in the Journal of Historical Geography.

• DAVID MATLESS, 2023. About England Reaktion Books.
• DAVID MATLESS, 2019. Checking the Sea: geographies of authority on the East Norfolk coast (1790-1932) Rural History. 30(2), 215-240
• DAVID MATLESS, 2019. Seeing More Flatly: The Regional Book. In: C FORSDICK, A LEAK AND R PHILLIPS, ed., Georges Perec’s Geographies UCL Press. 170-185
• DAVID MATLESS, 2018. Seaview: the Anthroposcenic. In: TIM DEE, ed., Ground Work: writings on places and people Jonathan Cape. 185-188
• DAVID MATLESS, 2018. The Agriculture Gallery: displaying modern farming in the Science Museum. In: JON AGAR and JACOB WARD, eds., Histories of Technology, the Environment and Modern Britain UCL Press. 101-122
• DAVID MATLESS, 2018. Next the Sea: Eccles and the Anthroposcenic Journal of Historical Geography. 62, 71-84
• DAVID MATLESS, 2017. The Anthroposcenic Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers. 42(3), 363-376
• DAVID MATLESS, 2017. Writing Regional Cultural Landscape: Cultural Geography on the Norfolk Broads. In: JAMES RIDING and MARTIN JONES, eds., Reanimating Regions: Culture, Politics, and Performance Routledge. 9-25
• DAVID MATLESS, 2017. At Ease. In: SIMON ROBERTS, ed., Merrie Albion Dewi Lewis Publishing. 149-150
• DAVID MATLESS, 2016. Climate change stories and the Anthroposcenic Nature Climate Change. 6, 118-119
• DANIEL ALLEN, CHARLES WATKINS and DAVID MATLESS, 2016. 'An incredibly vile sport: Campaigns against otter hunting in Britain, 1900-39 Rural History. 27(1), 79-101
• DAVID MATLESS, 2016. Stifle a Chuckle: the Fields of Kibbo Kift Journal of Historical Geography.
• DAVID MATLESS, 2016. Landscape and Englishness (second edition) Reaktion Books.
• MATLESS, DAVID, 2016. 'Goodbye It's 1987': Generation of the New Area. 48(3), 384-388
• DAVID MATLESS, 2016. Votive Leaves Uniformagazine. 7, 3-5
• D MATLESS, 2015. Thurne: Squint Uniformagazine. 2, 3-4
• DAVID MATLESS, 2015. The Regional Book Uniformbooks.
• DAVID MATLESS, 2015. Vessels and Smiles. In: Affinity and Kindred: photographs by Richard Denyer
• D MATLESS, 2014. In the Nature of Landscape: Cultural Geography on the Norfolk Broads Wiley-Blackwell.
• DAVID MATLESS, 2013. A geography of ghosts: the spectral landscapes of Mary Butts. In: M DEL PILAR BLANCO and E PEEREN, eds., The Spectralities Reader: Ghosts and Haunting in Contemporary Cultural Theory Bloomsbury Publishing. 445-472
• MATLESS, D., 2012. Accents of landscape in GPO country: The Horsey mail, 1938 Twentieth Century British History. 23(1), 57-79
• D MATLESS and M PEARSON, 2012. A Regional Conversation Cultural Geographies. 19(1), 123-129
• DAVID MATLESS, 2012. Communities of Landscape: Nation, Locality and Modernity in Interwar England. In: R HEYNICKX and T AVERMAETE, eds., Making a New World: Architecture and Communities in Interwar Europe Leuven University Press. 43-55
• MATLESS, D. AND CAMERON, L., 2011. Translocal Ecologies: The Norfolk Broads, the “natural,” and the International Phytogeographical Excursion, 1911 Journal of the History of Biology. 44(1), 15-41
• OLDFIELD, J., MATLESS, D. and SWAIN, A., 2011. The making of a sub-discipline: state initiatives and the production of British geographical studies of the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, 1945-71 Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers. New Series. 36(4), 574-589
• DAVID MATLESS, 2011. The Horsey Mail: Documentary as Landscape. In: S ANTHONY and J MANSELL, eds., The Projection of Britain: A History of the GPO Film Unit Palgrave MacMillan. 244-253
• DAVID MATLESS, 2011. Cycle of Erosion. In: C DESILVEY, S NAYLOR and C SACKETT, eds., Anticipatory History Uniformbooks. 32-33
• DAVID MATLESS, 2011. Ebb and Flood. In: C DESILVEY and S NAYLOR, eds., Anticipatory History Uniformbooks. 35
• MATLESS, D., 2010. Describing Landscape: Regional Sites Performance Research. 15(4), 72-82
• MATLESS, D., WATKINS, C. and MERCHANT, P., 2010. Nature trails: the production of instructive landscapes in Britain 1960-1972 Rural History. 21(1), 97-131
• MATLESS, D., 2009. East Anglian Stones: Erratic Prehistories from the Early Twentieth Century. In: PARKER, J., ed., Written On Stone: The Cultural Reception of Prehistoric Monuments Cambridge Scholars Publishing. 66-81 (In Press.)
• MATLESS, D., 2009. Nature Voices Journal of Historical Geography. 35, 178-188 (In Press.)
• MATLESS, D., OLDFIELD, J. and SWAIN, A., 2008. Geographically touring the eastern bloc: British geography, travel cultures and the Cold War Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers. 33(3), 354-375
• MATLESS, D., 2008. A geography of ghosts: the spectral landscapes of Mary Butts Cultural Geographies. 15(3), 335-358
• MATLESS, D, MERRIMAN, P, REVILL, G, CRESSWELL, T, LORIMER, H and ROSE, G AND WYLIE, J., 2008. Landscape, mobility, practice Social and Cultural Geography. 9, 191-212 (In Press.)
• MATLESS, D., 2008. Writing English Landscape History Anglia: Zeitschrift fur Englische Philologie. 126, 295-311 (In Press.)
• MATLESS, D., 2008. Properties of ancient landscape: the present prehistoric in twentieth-century Breckland Journal of Historical Geography. 34(1), 68-93
• MATLESS, D., OLDFIELD, J. and SWAIN, A., 2007. Encountering Soviet Geography: Oral Histories of British Geographical Studies of the USSR and Eastern Europe 1945-1991 Social & Cultural Geography. 8(3), 353-372
• CHARLES WATKINS, DAVID MATLESS AND PAUL MERCHANT, 2007. Science, sport and the otter, 1945-1978. In: RICHARD HOYLE, ed., Our hunting fathers. Field sports in England, 1850-1980 Carnegie. 165-186 (In Press.)
• MATLESS, D AND CAMERON, L, 2007. Devotional Landscape: Ecology and Orthodoxy in the Work of Marietta Pallis. In: CONAN, M, ed., Sacred Gardens and Landscapes: Ritual and Agency Dumbarton Oaks. 263-296
• MATLESS, D. and CAMERON, L., 2007. Geographies of local life: Marietta Pallis and friends, Long Gores, Hickling, Norfolk ENVIRONMENT AND PLANNING D: Society and Space. VOL 25(NUMB 1), 75-103
• MATLESS, D. and CAMERON, L., 2006. Experiment in landscape: the Norfolk excavations of Marietta Pallis Journal of Historical Geography. 32(1), 96-126
• MATLESS, D., MERCHANT, P. and WATKINS, C., 2005. Animal landscapes: otters and wildfowl in England 1945-1970 Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers. 30(2), 191-205
• MATLESS, D.S., 2005. Sonic geography in a nature region Social and Cultural Geography. 6(5), 745-766
• MATLESS, D.S., 2005. Visiting Chat Moss. In: Chat Moss 23-46
• MATLESS, D., 2004. Fields. In: Patterned Ground: Entanglements of Nature and Culture 134-135
• MATLESS, D., 2004. Landscape of Containment. In: Field Day 12-14
• MATLESS, D., 2004. Things Seen on a Broadland Walk. In: Field Day
• MATLESS, D., 2004. Post Offices. In: Patterned Ground: Entanglements of Nature and Culture 70-72
• MATLESS, D., 2004. Sir Francis Younghusband. In: Dictionary of Nineteenth Century British Scientists
• MATLESS, D., 2004. Sir Francis Younghusband. In: Oxford Dictionary of National Biography
• MATLESS, D., 2004. Geographical thoughts from the humanities Journal of Historical Geography. 29, 631-635
• MATLESS, D., 2004. Vaughan Cornish. In: Oxford Dictionary of National Biography
• MATLESS, D., 2004. Villages. In: Patterned Ground: Entanglements of Nature and Culture 161-164
• MATLESS, D. and CAMERON, L., 2004. Marietta Pallis. In: Oxford Dictionary of National Biography
• MATLESS, D., 2003. Original theories: science and the currency of the local Cultural Geographies. 10(3), 354-378
• CAMERON, L. and MATLESS, D., 2003. Benign ecology: Marietta Pallis and the floating fen of the delta of the Danube, 1912-1916 Cultural Geographies. VOL 10(NUMB 3), 253-277
• CHARLES WATKINS, DAVID MATLESS AND PAUL MERCHANT, 2003. Cultures of Nature: Botany in Herefordshire, England, 1945-1970. In: N WALFORD AND N EVANS, ed., Innovations in Rural Areas Presses Universitaires Blaise Pascal. 11-27
• MATLESS, D., GILBERT, D. and SHORT, B., 2003. Geographies of British Modernity Blackwell Publishing, Oxford, New York.
• MATLESS, D., 2003. The Properties of Landscape. In: Handbook of Cultural Geography 227-232
• MATLESS, D., 2002. Topographic Culture: Nikolaus Pevsner and the Buildings of England History Workshop Journal. 54(1), 73-99
• MATLESS, D., 2001. Bodies made of grass made of earth made of bodies: organicism, diet and national health in mid-twentieth-century England Journal of Historical Geography. VOL 27(PART 3), 355-376
• MATLESS, D., 2000. Action and Noise Over a Hundred Years: The Making of a Nature Region Body and Society. VOL 6(PART 3/4), 141-165
• MATLESS, D., 2000. Five Objects, Geographical Subjects. In: Cultural Turns/Geographical Turns
• MATLESS, D., 2000. Forms of knowledge and forms of belonging: regional survey and geographical citizenship. In: The City after Patrick Geddes
• MATLESS, D., 2000. Memory, Popular. In: Dictionary of Human Geography
• MATLESS, D., 2000. Action and Noise over a Hundred Years: the Making of a Nature Region. In: Bodies of Nature
• MATLESS, D., 2000. Versions of animal-human: Broadland, c. 1945-1970. In: Animal Spaces, Beastly Places Routledge, London and New York. 115-140
• MATLESS, D., 2000. Versions of animal-human: Broadland, c.1945-1970. In: Animal Spaces, Beastly Places
• MATLESS, D., 1999. The Uses of Cartographic Literacy. In: Mappings
• LEYSHON, A., MATLESS, D.S. and REVILL, G., eds., 1998. The Place of Music
• MATLESS, D.S., 1998. Landscape and Englishness Reaktion Books, London.
• MATLESS, D., 1997. The geographical self, the nature of the social and geoaesthetics: work in social and cultural geography, 1996 Progress in Human Geography. VOL 21(NUMBER 3), 393-405
• MATLESS, D., 1997. Moral Geographies of English Landscape Landscape Research. VOL 22(NUMBER 2), 141-156
• MATLESS, D., 1996. New material? Work in cultural and social geography, 1995 Progress in Human Geography. VOL 20(NUMBER 3), 379-391
• CROUCH, D. and MATLESS, D., 1996. Refiguring geography: Parish Maps of Common Ground Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers. VOL 21(NUMBER 1), 236-255
• MATLESS, D., 1996. Aliens, empire and naked climbing: an eminent geographer remembered Journal of Historical Geography. VOL 22(NUMBER 1), 86-90
• MATLESS, D., 1996. Visual culture and geographical citizenship: England in the 1940s Journal of Historical Geography. VOL 22(NUMBER 4), 424-439