John Rennie Short is professor emeritus of geography and public policy in the School of Public Policy at University of Maryland, Baltimore County.

[1] From 1976 to 1978, he was a postdoctoral research fellow in Bristol's School of Geographical Sciences.

He left Reading in 1990 to join Syracuse University's Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs as professor of geography.

In 2002, he left Syracuse for an appointment as professor and chair of the Department of Geography and Environmental Systems at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC).

Short has published in human geography's subfields, including the urban, the political, the environmental, the economic, and the cultural.

[2][3][4][5] His scholarship incorporates social and cultural theory methodologies, archival research strategies, and data analyses.

[10] His work has been translated into many languages including Arabic,[11] Chinese,[12] Czech,[13] Italian,[14] Japanese,[15] Korean,[16] Persian,[17] Portuguese,[18] Spanish,[19] and Turkish.

[20] Short's research papers contribute to four main areas of political economy.

Amongst many articles and book chapters, his work includes a long engagement with analysing housing dynamics[26][27] to broader concerns with the pandemic and the city,[28] generating models of metropolitan change,[29] urban cultural economy,[30] traffic issues,[31][32] immigration,[33] suburban change,[34] the relationship between globalisation and cities,[35] measuring the extent of globalisation in cities,[36] urban flânerie,[37] urban environmental issues,[38] climate change,[39][40] how city regions seek to reposition themselves in discursive space through branding campaigns[41] and the hosting of the Olympic Games.

[45] A second body of work contributes to broader issues of cultural economy and politics.

An influential text, Imagined Country[46] first published in 1991 and reissued in 2005, was an important part of the cultural turn.

In that book Short elaborated the idea of national environmental ideologies though the depictions of wilderness, countryside and city in landscape painting, cinema and novels.

His work on the US includes analyses of elections,[52] voting systems,[53] gerrymandering,[54] and legitimation crisis.

[56][57] In 2020 he was awarded a Fulbright ASEAN Fellowship to research the geopolitics of the South China Sea.

The fourth theme, mainly expressed in book form, is the history of cartography.

Short builds upon and extends the work of the critical cartographic theorist John Brian Harley to deconstruct maps as social and political texts.

Short explores the power dynamics in how the US[58] and Korea[59] were represented in maps, the creation of a spatial sensitivity in the early modern era,[60] the role of indigenous people in so-called exploration and discovery of the New World,[61] and the emergence of the national atlas as important feature of modern nationalism.

[63] He has promoted the publication of younger scholars’ work through editorship of three-book series Space Place and Society,[64] Cities[65] and Critical Introductions to Urbanism and the City.

[66] He served on the inaugural editorial board of the journals Environment and Planning D: Society and Space.

2024 Demography and the Making of The Modern World: Public Policies and Demographic Forces.

Oxford University Press, (Co-authored with Lisa Benton-Short), ISBN 9780197662809.

2021 Stress Testing the USA: Public Policy and Reaction to Disaster Events (2nd edition).

2021  Housing and Residential Structure: Alternative Approaches (reprinting of 1980 book).

2018  A Regional Geography of the United States and Canada: Toward A Sustainable Future.

Rowman and Littlefield, (Co-authored with Lisa Benton-Short and Chris Mayda), ISBN 9781138280366.

(Translated into Chinese and Persian), ISBN 9781137382658 2014 Human Geography A Short Introduction.

2013  Stress Testing The USA: Public Policy and Reaction to Disaster Events.

University of Chicago Press (Translated into Korean), ISBN 9780226753546 2012 Globalization, Modernity and The City.

2001 Global Dimensions: Space, Place and The Contemporary World Reaktion University of Chicago Press (Translated into Chinese), ISBN 9781861891020.

Addison Wesley Longman (Co-authored with Y. Kim) (Translated into Persian), ISBN 0582369126 (paperback).