Much of my recent research relates to various aspects of geographical information retrieval (GIR) including the development of meta-gazetteers that provide access to place name data from mutiple sources; modelling of vague spatial languge (such as near and north); acquisition and modelling of vernacular place names; geographical place ontologies and spatio-textual indexing methods for spatially-aware web search engines. The main sources of funding for this work have been the EC projects SPIRIT, TRIPOD and RECOGNITION and the UK Ordnance Survey.

I have also worked on 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.

People's Place Names is a web questionnaire to obtain knowledge of the use of vernacular place names in Britain. It originated from a project funded by the Ordnance Survey, Southampton and was developed by Florian Twaroch.