Professor Ian Klinke

I am responsible for human geography teaching at St John’s. I also lecture at the School of Geography and the Environment, where I hold an Associate Professorship. My doctorate is from University College London.

Teaching

I currently lecture across the undergraduate curriculum, particularly on issues of political geography. My option course ‘Geography at war’ is open to second-year students. I have contributed to the UNIQ Summer School and co-organised subject days for state school applicants. I am determined to play my part in making Oxford an inclusive place.

My research examines the history of geopolitics, a deeply controversial but surprisingly resilient tradition of thought which casts its spatial lens over world politics. Tracing the influence of geopolitical ideas from the late nineteenth century to the present, I focus on Germany but have also examined American geopolitics and the wider dynamics of European security. My most recent research monograph, Life, Earth, Colony: Friedrich Ratzel's Necropolitical Geography (University of Michigan Press, 2023), illuminates the founder of geopolitics and traces his reception from the late 19th century to the present. My first book, Cryptic Concrete: A Subterranean Journey into Cold War Germany (Wiley, 2018), examines West Germany’s now abandoned military landscape. I have held visiting positions at the Danish Institute for International Studies and National University of Singapore. In 2023, I was awarded a British Academy Mid-Career Fellowship.

What inspired me?

I found my way to geography both because of an interest in the history of geographic thought and because the field's interdisciplinarity spoke to the way in which I think. Human geography is a fascinating place to explore issues such as global inequality, climate change and colonialism in their contemporary and historical contexts. Because of its scope, it is also a fantastic place to theorise the relationship between society and space, nature and culture. If you’re interested in the subject and how I approach it, check out my co-authored (with Patricia Daley) Human Geography: A Very Short Introduction.

Selected publications

Klinke, I. (2025) ‘Aggression in felt slippers: Bahr, Kissinger, and the geopolitics of Ostpolitik, 1962-2022’ Global Studies Quarterly [online first]

Klinke, I. (2025) ‘Before astropolitics: Ratzel, Schmitt, and the question of cosmic colonisation’ Review of International Studies 51: 293–311

Daley, P. and Klinke I. (2025) Human Geography: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press)

Klinke I., Life, Earth, Colony: Friedrich Ratzel's Necropolitical Geography (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2023)

Hopkins, B. and Klinke, I. (2023) ‘Ellen Churchill Semple’s political economy: Slavery, frontier, imperium’ Annals of the Association of American Geographers 113: 2237-2251

Klinke I., Cryptic Concrete: A Subterranean Journey into Cold War Germany (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2018)