S. Robert Aiken, PhD

Dr. Aiken was born in Northern Ireland and received his undergraduate education in Geography at The Queen's University of Belfast. He came to Canada to pursue graduate studies at MacMaster University and subsequently went on to the United States to do his Ph.D. at Penn State and post doctoral studies at Berkeley, California. He taught for three years at the University of Malaya, Kuala Lumpur, before joining Concordia in 1975. Dr. Aiken's research interests include tropical deforestation and other Developing Country environmental issues, hill stations of the Orient, tropical botanic gardens of the British Empire and Malaysia. Dr. Aiken retired in June 2007.

Refereed publications

Aiken, S. Robert and Colin H. Leigh (2005) Epilogue: Natural Wealth: Depletion or Conservation. In Vincent, Jeffrey R. and Rozali M. Ali. Managing Natural Wealth: Environment and Development in Malaysia. Resources for the Future: Washington, D.C.

Aiken, Robert S. (2004) Runaway Fires, Smoke-Haze Pollution, and Unnatural Disasters in Indonesia. The Geographical Review. 94 (1):55-79.

Aiken, S.R. (2002) Penang Hill: Landscape, evolution, heritage conservation, and sustainable tourism. Malaysian Journal of Tropical Geography 33 (1 & 2), 77-91.

Conference proceedings

Aiken, S.R. (1999) Conservation and sustainable development: confronting the contradictions. Proceedings of the North American Conference on the Monarch Butterfly, Morelia, Mexico.

Aiken, S.R. (2002) Penang Hill: landscape evolution, heritage conservation, and sustainable tourism. Penang Story International Conference, George Town, Penang, Malaysia, April.

Aiken, S.R. (2002) From forest realm to cultural landscape: economic development, forest loss, and conservation in Peninsular Malaysia, c, 1850-2000. EDEN II Workshop, Leiden University, The Netherlands, June.