Q&A with Professor Michael Woods
Read our interview with one of our four 2025 Honorary Fellowship recipients, Professor Michael Woods.
Michael Woods is recipient of an Honorary Fellowship 2025 for service to geography.
What did you want to be, or where did you want to work, when you were a teenager?
"I had always been drawn to geography – my mother said I taught myself to read with the Usborne Book of the World – but as a teenager I didn’t imagine that it could be a career.
"Instead I wanted to be a journalist, and something of that ambition has remained in how I’ve approached my research: an intense desire to understand what’s going on in the world and a commitment to writing and communicating clearly to wide audiences."
What role do you do now and how would you describe your work?
"I’m Professor of Human Geography at Aberystwyth University. One of the joys (and pressures) of being an academic is that the work encompasses many roles, and different aspects have been at the fore at different points in my career.
"Right now I have a good balance: managing research projects (and still getting to do fieldwork and research myself); teaching students; helping others to plan and develop research and grow as researchers; writing; and working with policymakers and communities to try to use research to make a difference."
What has been the highlight of your career, regardless of how big or small, so far?
"The biggest privilege of being a geographer is the opportunity to travel and meet people around the world and to hear their stories.
"It’s hard to choose one highlight, but I fondly remember interviewing a return migrant worker in a small Chinese village and emerging to see the sunset over the Daube Mountains; sailing up a tributary of the Amazon to visit an Indigenous community experimenting with ecotourism; and spending time with a farmer on his family ranch on the sun-soaked pampa of southern Brazil."
What has been the highlight of your career so far?
"The biggest privilege of being a geographer is the opportunity to travel and meet people around the world and to hear their stories.
"It’s hard to choose one highlight, but I fondly remember interviewing a return migrant worker in a small Chinese village and emerging to see the sunset over the Daube Mountains; sailing up a tributary of the Amazon to visit an Indigenous community experimenting with ecotourism; and spending time with a farmer on his family ranch on the sun-soaked pampa of southern Brazil."
What projects are you working on right now?
"Rural spatial justice is exploring connections between rural discontent and disruptive politics: why rural people vote for populist and radical parties, but also the consequences for rural communities. It’s a mixed methods study with case studies in Britain, Europe and the USA."
"I’m also Director of the Rural Wales Local Policy Innovation Partnership, which is very different. We aim to inform policy for inclusive, sustainable development in the region. Our work is responsive to research needs identified by stakeholders and includes experiments with Innovation Labs and Community-led Research."
Do you have any advice for someone wanting to go into your field?
"Be curious and open-minded: take opportunities that may take you in new directions.
"Be flexible and patient: you sometimes need to do things that interest you less in order to get to do the research or project you really want to do.
"Be a good colleague and academic citizen: collaborate, support others, go to conferences, do your share of reviewing and committee work."
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