Gerard Toal

Who is Gerard Toal?

Gerard Toal is Professor of Government and International Affairs and Director of the Government and International Affairs program, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, National Capital Region campus. Toal grew up in the border region of Ireland, in the village of Smithborough, County Monaghan. He received a B.A. in History and Geography from National University of Ireland, Maynooth with First Class Honours in 1982. He obtained a M.A. in Geography from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1984 and a Ph.D. in Political Geography from Syracuse University in 1989. John O'Loughlin in Illinois and John A. Agnew in Syracuse, were his academic advisors. Following his Ph D, Toal was hired in 1989 as Assistant Professor of Geography at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg where he worked for ten years before moving to the Washington DC region to establish what became the Government and International Affairs program in the School of Public and International Affairs.

Toal’s research specializations include critical geopolitics, nationalism, political geography, post-Communism, and globalization. He conducts research in Washington DC, Bosnia-Herzegovina and on the Caucasus region. Ó Tuathail has been a key figure in establishing Critical Geopolitics as a domain of research within political geography and international relations. He is one of the contemporary geographers featured in the book Key Thinkers in Space and Place. He had authored, co-authored and/or edited seven books. His current book is Bosnia Remade: Ethnic Cleansing and Its Reversal, co-authored with Dr Carl Dahlman. It examines how wartime ethnic cleaning and a post-war displaced person returns process transformed the character of three towns in Bosnia. Professor Toal is an associate editor for the academic journals Geopolitics and Eurasian Geography and Economics, and serves on the editorial board of Political Geography and Nationalities Papers.