The cartographer Alexander Kent has conducted an extensive study of cartographic style in European state topographic maps. After degrees at Oxford Brookes University and Queens’ College, Cambridge, he lectured in GIS, Remote Sensing, and Cartography in the UK and was appointed Cartographic Editor of the Atlas of the Social and Intellectual History of Islam at the Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies. He became the youngest person to be elected Fellow of the British Cartographic Society in 2002 and became a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society shortly after. His PhD thesis An Analysis of the Cartographic Language of European State Topographic Maps: Aesthetics, Style, and Identity (University of Kent) won the National Geographic Society Award in 2007. Alex became Assistant Editor of The Cartographic Journal in 2006, Editor of the Bulletin of the Society of Cartographers in 2007, and in June this year, was appointed Head of the Cartographic Unit at Southampton University.