Denis Edmund Cosgrove, born in Liverpool on 3rd
May 1948, was a highly distinguished cultural geographer, who held
professorships at Royal Holloway, University of London and the University of
California.
He was the second eldest of six children born to Peter and
Gwendoline Cosgrove. His father was a bank clerk and a devout Roman Catholic. Denis
attended St Francis Xavier’s College, as had his father. Bizarrely, the school
told his parents that geography was a ‘girls’ subject’ and that if he was to
stay in the A-stream he had to drop it in favour of Latin or Greek.
Fortunately, his passion for the subject was not dimmed by the school’s
short-sightedness, and he won an open scholarship to read geography at St
Catherine’s College, Oxford. After graduation he completed an MA at the
University of Toronto before returning to Oxford to do a doctorate. Earning his
living as a lecturer at Oxford Polytechnic he submitted a thesis on Venetian
landscape for a Bachelor of Letters degree. The examiner, considering it an
outstanding piece of work, insisted it be resubmitted for a Doctor of
Philosophy degree.
He moved on to Loughborough University in 1998, Royal
Holloway in 1994, and in 2000 was appointed Alexander von Humboldt Professor of
Geography at the University of California. He was named Getty Distinguished
Scholar for 2008-09. In 1988 he was awarded the prestigious Back Award by the
Royal Geographical Society, and an honorary doctorate from Tallinn University
in 2008.
Cosgrove's research interests
evolved from a focus on the meanings of landscape in human and cultural
geography, especially in Western Europe since the 15th century, to a broader
concern with the role of spatial images and representations in the making and
communicating of knowledge. His research made a major contribution to the
development of geography of media and communication.
He was diagnosed with stomach
cancer in 2006 and died in Los Angeles on 21 March 2008 aged just 59. He was
survived by his first wife Isabel, his second wife Carmen and a son and two
daughters.
At the time of his birth the
Cosgrove family home was at 16 Kenilworth Road L16. They later moved to 10
Hallville Road L18.
