Dr Gerard Toal (Gearóid Ó Tuathail) is Professor of Government & International Affairs in the School of Public and International Affairs at Virginia Tech’s campus in Arlington, Virginia, in the Washington metro region (900 North Glebe Road, near the Ballston metro stop). He first came to the US in September 1982 from Ireland for graduate study in Geography. He joined the faculty at Virginia Tech in August 1989. Dr Toal has written books, and many articles, about the intersections of geopolitics and post-communist territorial conflicts. He lives in northwest Washington DC with his wife and two daughters. For the past two decades, he has been playing football (the real foot-and-ball kind) with a bunch of friends on the US National Mall, forever in search of the perfect goal.
Education
Ph.D. Political Geography, Maxwell School, Syracuse University, 1989.
MA, Geography, University of Illinois, 1984.
BA (First Class Honors), History and Geography, National University of Ireland, 1982.
Toal’s research is featured in the book Key Thinkers in Space and Place (Sage, second edition, 2010). Click here for Euan Hague’s essay on Gerard Toal.
For more about Dr Toal’s Irish background see his interview for the website Exploring Geopolitics.
Critical Geopolitics 