Russell King is Professor of Geography at the University of Sussex and Director of the Sussex Centre for Migration Research, one of the largest groupings of migration scholars worldwide. Trained as a Human Geographer, with BA and PhD. degrees in Geography from the LSE, he also has an MSc. in Economics and an Mlitt. in History, and is a firm advocate of interdisciplinary teaching and research. After an academic career as Research Fellow in Middle Eastern Studies at Durham University, Lecturer in Geography at the University of Leicester, and Professor of Geography at Trinity College Dublin, his move to Sussex in 1993 brought him to a university where interdisciplinarity was, and remains, a founding principle.
After Russell's early studies in land reform – the topic of his doctorate and the theme of many of his publications in the 1970s (including Land Reform: The Italian Experience, and Land Reform: A World Survey) – he has for the past thirty years or more specialised in the study of human migration, researching its various forms (labour migration, return migration, retirement migration, student migration) in many countries around the world. In recent years Russell has carried out several research projects on Albanian migration and has co-authored two books on the subject – Out of Albania with Nicola Mai, and Remittances, Gender and Development: Albania’s Society and Economy in Transition with Julie Vullnetari.
Since 2000 he has been Editor of The Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, one of the world’s foremost migration journals. Combining his geographical interests in maps and migration, he headed the Sussex team which produced for Myriad Editions The Atlas of Human Migration.
