Helen Couclelis

1       Statement of interest

For many years now much of my research has been concerned with spatial
cognition, the nature of geographic concepts, and the way space and the
geographic world are represented in GIS. A more recent interest in the
'geographies of the information society' inspired the position paper I am
submitting.


3       Biographical note

Helen Couclelis

Helen Couclelis is Professor of Geography at the University of California,
Santa Barbara, and Associate Director, National Center for Geographic
Information and Analysis.  She received a  BS-equivalent in Architecture &
Civil Engineering from the National Technical University of Athens, a
Diploma in Urban and Regional Planning from the Technical University of
Munich, and a Dr.Phil. degree from Cambridge University in 1977.  She worked
for several years for Doxiadis Associates in Athens, as a research planner
and planning consultant to the Greek government, and as a member of a think
tank on urban, regional and environmental issues attached to the Greek
Minister of Coordination.  She joined the Geography Department at UC Santa
Barbara in 1982. She is currently CoEditor of *Environment and Planning B:
Planning and Design* and serves on the editorial board of *Geographical
Analysis*. She has over 50 publications on subjects ranging from urban and
regional models to the philosophy of geography.  Current research interests
include cellular automata models and integrated models of space and time,
spatial cognition, the effects of information technologies on urban
structure, and the connections of these topics with GIS.

Selected publications

Couclelis H, 1992, 'People manipulate objects (but cultivate fields): beyond
the raster-vector debate in GIS', in A Frank, I Campari and U Formentini
(Eds), Theories and Methods of of Spatio-Temporal Reasoning in Geographic
Space, Berlin: Springer Verlag, 65-77.

Couclelis H, 1996,  'Towards an operational typology of geographic entities
with ill-defined boundaries', in P Burrough and A Frank (Eds), Geographic
Objects With Indeterminate Boundaries, London: Taylor & Francis, 45-55.

Couclelis H, 1996,  'Verbal directions for way-finding: space, cognition,
and language', in J Portugali (Ed), The Construction of Cognitive Maps,
Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 133-153.

Couclelis H, 1996,  'Geographic Illusion Systems: towards a (very partial)
research agenda for GIS in the information age', Position Paper, NCGIA
Initiative 19 on GIS and Society.

Couclelis H, (in press),  'The death of distance', Editorial, Environment
and Planning B: Planning and Design