RGSQ Lecture Series
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Professor Peter J. Rimmer, ANU
The J.P. Thomson Medal is the most prestigious award given by The Royal Geographical Society of Queensland. The Thomson Medal was established in 1900 to honour Dr James Park Thomson, CBE, LLD Hon, FRGSA, founding Secretary of the Society. The Medal recognises the high qualities of scholarship and contribution to the study of geography.
This year's recipient of the JP Thomson award is Professor Peter Rimmer. His Thomson Oration will address China's Geologistics.
Abstract: China’s logistics are front and centre in this Oration. Logistics has been honed as a policy tool within China before being transformed into a geologistics strategy known as the Belt and Road Initiative. Reflecting different logistics geographies between China’s interior and coastal regions, this Initiative distinguishes between land-based planning in Eurasia and a maritime stratagem for the world’s oceanic realm. My task is to unpack these arenas by identifying and examining the Silk Road Economic Belt’s three land bridges and three secondary economic corridors, and the 21st Century Maritime Road’s four blue economic passages to reveal the Initiative’s geographical scope, significance and emerging impact. Likely logistics developments within China are then considered before looking ahead to the country’s economic position in 2050 and examining an integrating project that falls beyond the Initiative’s underlying transcontinental, reverse, and classic models.
Bio: Peter J. Rimmer AM is an Emeritus Professor in the School of History, Culture and Language, ANU College of Asia and the Pacific, Australian National University. A Geography graduate of Manchester, Canterbury (NZ) and Australian National Universities, he has a teaching qualification from Cambridge University. He has been Lecturer in Geography at Monash University (1965-67), Research Fellow, Fellow, Senior Fellow and Professor in the Department of Geography/Human Geography, Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies, The Australian National University (1967-2000); elected a Fellow of the Academy of the Social Sciences of Australia (1992); served as a Distinguished Professor of Global Logistics in the Graduate School of Logistics, Inha University, Incheon, Korea (2005-07); awarded the degree of Doctor of Letters by examination at the Australian National University (2006); made a Member of the Order of Australia (2007) ‘for service to economic geography, and to the urban and regional development in the Asia-Pacific Rim’; and designated a Life Member of the Institute of Australian Geographers (2017). He has supervised the doctoral research work of 27 successful PhD students, including the late Associate Professor Lisa Drummond (Welch), whose bequest has led to the institution of a prize in his name from 2023 for ANU’s proposed course on ‘Maps and Mapping in Asia and the Pacific’. Also, he has served as an external assessor and examiner at universities in Australia, Canada, Malaysia, and Hong Kong; acted as a member of the ACT Board of Senior Secondary Studies (Geography and Asian Studies); and worked as a consultant for international aid agencies, which has included contributing to the Transport Efficiency through Logistics Development Policy Report for the Asian Development Bank and the Ministry of Transport, People’s Republic of China. His 320 publications include:Rikisha to Rapid Transit: Urban Public Transport Systems and Policy in Southeast Asia; The Underside of Malaysian History: Pullers, Prostitutes, Plantation Workers… (ed. with Lisa Allen); Pacific Rim Development: Integration and Globalisation of the Asia-Pacific Economy (ed.); Cities, Transport & Communications: The Integration of Southeast Asia since 1850 (with Howard Dick); The City in Southeast Asia: Patterns, Processes and Policy (with Howard Dick); Asian-Pacific Rim Logistics: Global Context and Local Policies; Consumer Logistics: The Digital Wave (with Booi Kam); China’s Global Visions and Actions: Reactions to Belt, Road and Beyond; and Configured by Consumption: How Consumption-Demand Will Reshape Supply Chain Operations (with Booi Kam).
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