Dr. Kenneth Field
Senior Principal Cartographic Product Engineer at ESRI
Ken is a permanently recovering academic from the UK with a Bachelor’s in Cartography from Oxford Polytechnic and a PhD in GIS from the University of Leicester. He grew tired of admin, so he ditched his 20-year academic career and moved to the USA, landing in California.
Today, Ken gives talks, writes, and teaches about cartography, all while making maps at Esri. He is particularly fond of the ICA Commission on Map Design, where he served as Chair for eight years and currently holds the position of Vice-Chair.
Ken has won several awards for his maps, cartographic pedagogy, kitchen tile designs, and his books, including Cartography and Thematic Mapping. He co-founded mappery.org and teaches a Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) on Cartography, which so far has enrolled over 175,000 participants. Ken also snowboards (reasonably), plays drums (badly), and is a long-suffering supporter of his home-town football team Nottingham Forest.
At the end of the day, maps are both Ken’s profession and passion.