Much of my recent research relates to various aspects of geographical information retrieval (GIR). This includes the development of meta-gazetteers that provide access to place name data from mutiple sources; modelling of vague spatial language (such as near and north) for purposes of interpreting and generating geo-spatial language; acquisition and modelling of vernacular place names; geographical place ontologies and spatio-textual indexing methods for spatially-aware web search engines. I also work on GIR topics relating to ecology, including extracting wildlife observations from social media, geo-referencing (obtaining the coordinates for) social media containing wildlife information, and using social media to map aspects of the environment such as species distribution and land cover.

I have also worked on 3D modelling of buildings; multiscale spatial databases; visualization of migration data; environmental change detection; spatio-temporal data modelling; the computer reconstruction and visualisation of fossils; and automated cartographic design with regard to map generalisation and automated text placement. Work on the problem of cartographic text placement led to the development of the commercial cartographic program Maplex, which is now an ESRI product.