Alan Wilson – contributions to research on population and migration

ABSTRACT

This article reviews Alan Wilson's research on population and migration in the 1970s and the 2010s, which supplements his principal contribution - mathematical modelling of urban and regional systems. In the 1970s, drawing on input-output models of economies and working with Philip Rees, Wilson established the accounting basis for Andrei Rogers' multi-regional projection model, adding international migration. Innovative methods were developed to complete demographic accounts, where there were data gaps. In the 2010s, working with Adam Dennett, Wilson systematized methods for estimating migration flows between regions in Europe, employing his family of spatial interaction models. The key aim of both research strands was to ensure that no information was ignored to ensure consistency in population and migration models. The influence of Wilson's contributions to research on population and migration is traced through a survey of subsequent research.     

The origins of the theophoric week in the Germanic languages

The Germanic terms for the days of the week that contain the names of Germanic deities are often taken to result from Romano‐Germanic interactions in the fourth century AD. Yet this need not be the case: the linguistic arguments underpinning this view are not decisive. A reassessment of these names suggests that an early medieval process of transfer in scholarly Christian contexts may be equally, if not more, plausible.     

The mean measure of divergence and the use of non-metric data in the estimation of biological distances

The mean measure of divergence as a means of comparing two populations on the basis of non-metric data is described. Some statistical properties of this measure are derived and it is shown that its variance has frequently been misquoted in the literature. Alternative means of comparing two populations are presented and some improvements to the measure of divergence are suggested.     

Rural geographical research: working in rural places and with rural communities

ABSTRACT

Across a number of disciplines at the University of Aberdeen, there is a long tradition of research focused upon the interrogation of issues associated with rural places and rural communities. Since the mid-1960s, rural geographical research has been a prominent component of the research undertaken by academic staff in Geography. Drawing upon an analysis of the large corpus of ‘rural’ publications arising from this scholarly enterprise, this paper presents a chronologically structured overview of how rural geographical research at Aberdeen has reflected developments in, and contributed to, the evolution of the sub-discipline of rural geography.