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Peter Keller is an extraordinary scholar, administrator and colleague. He retired from SFU Geography in the fall of 2024. His was a magnificent career with many contributions and highlights. His academic story started in the Fall of 1976 when he entered Trinity College in Dublin, Ireland. He was signed up to study Oceanography but got so excited about Geography that he switched disciplines – and has never looked back.

His Masters research brought him across the ocean to Canada where he explored the challenges in developing a tourism industry on Baffin Island in Nunavut at the University of Western Ontario (now Western University). For his PhD research, he changed tack and moved into GIScience to study spatial optimization. After he completed his PhD in 1985, he accepted a position at the University of Victoria where he stayed until 2016.

At UVic, Peter taught GIS, cartography, spatial analysis and tourism. He was the supervisor of over 50 graduate students. As a team, his lab advanced the capacity of GIScience to support spatial decision making, tourism development and community and participatory mapping. His research program was extraordinarily successful and saw collaboration with industry, government and communities.

During this period, Peter also initiated local GIS meetings in the Metro Vancouver area under the umbrella of the Pacific Institute of Cartographic Society. This collaboration grew into a profitable and highly visible annual meeting that attracted people from across Canada and internationally.

Following from his leadership in Canadian GIS, Peter began to volunteer in Northern Thailand and East Kalimantan working with both local and Indigenous communities. This work included efforts to establish a local autonomous Indigenous focused university which eventually failed, but was the basis for future international collaborations.

In the meantime, Peter’s superlative administration skills were recognized by UVic and he was invited to accept the position of Dean of Social Sciences, a position that he held for ten years from 2004 to 2014. His many initiatives as Dean included establishing a number of interdisciplinary programs, the establishment of UVic’s centre for community research and the UVic mapping collaboratory. He also took the lead in advocating for an additional new building for Social Sciences as well as a complete renovation of the old social science building (Cornett building). Both buildings were given a strong community focus primarily through externally funded community and Indigenous art installations.

In 2016, Peter was invited to accept the position of Provost and Vice President Academic at SFU, a post which he held until 2019.

In 2019, he returned to the Department of Geography at SFU where he was instrumental in introducing a number of positive changes to the GIScience Minor and Major, as well as bringing affability and enthusiasm to the Deparment.

More recently Peter started to volunteer for Academics Without Borders in 2019 to advance post-secondary capacity in countries like Ethiopia, Uganda and Nepal. These efforts included ongoing work to establish a new independent University of Nepal in Gaindekot.

Peter is the sort of academic who is always humble and kind while also being naturally skilled in research, community building and administration. He will be missed.