Born in Oxford, Dorling attended local state schools, including Cheney School, a coeducational comprehensive and was employed as a play-worker in children's summer play-schemes.[7] Dorling graduated with a Bachelor of Science with Honours in Geography, Mathematics and Statistics at the University of Newcastle in 1989 and completed a PhD in the Visualization of Spatial Social Structure under the supervision of Stan Openshaw in 1991.[8]
From 1991 to 1993, Dorling was a Joseph Rowntree Foundation Fellow and from 1993 to 1996 he was British Academy Fellow at the University of Newcastle. From 1996 to 2000, he was on the faculty of the School of Geographical Sciences at the University of Bristol. From 2000 to 2003 he was Professor of Quantitative Human Geography at the University of Leeds. From 2003 to 2013 he was Professor of Human Geography and also in 2013 he was Professor for the Public Understanding of Social Science at the University of Sheffield.
Dorling in 2011
In September 2013 he became the Halford Mackinder Professor of Geography, attached to St Peter's College, Oxford.[9] In his inaugural lecture he spoke about the increasing disparity between Britain's richest 1% and the rest. He said: "Income inequality has now reached a new maximum and, for the first time in a century, even those just below the richest 1% are beginning to suffer, to see their disposable income drop."[10]
He has mapped (mainly using cartograms), analysed and commented upon UK demographic statistics. In 2005 he co-founded the Internet-based Worldmapper project, which now has about 700 world maps and spreadsheets of international statistics. He has been on radio, television and in newspaper articles.[6][11]
Dorling was very supportive of Jeremy Corbyn as Labour Party leader during his leadership from September 2015 until April 2020. In May 2016, Dorling said: "Jeremy Corbyn can take on the zealots and bigots who use migration to stir up fear and hatred. His popular appeal is not based on stoking up current prejudices. It is based on conviction, love and compassion. Just how cynical do you have to be not to see the hope and possibility in that?"[12] In May 2017 he appeared in a Labour Party political broadcast– "Labour Stands With You"– filmed by Ken Loach and published a week before the 2017 United Kingdom general election.
In February 2006, Dorling's work in human geography was described as "rummaging around" in numbers, crunching his way through reams of raw data, building up an extraordinary picture of poverty and wealth in contemporary Britain.[13]
In April 2010, an editorial in The Guardian was entitled "In Praise of Danny Dorling".[14]
Dorling, D. (1996). Area cartograms: their use and creation, Concepts and Techniques in Modern Geography series no. 59, University of East Anglia: Environmental Publications.
Dorling, D. (2020). Slowdown: The End of the Great Acceleration– and Why It's Good for the Planet, the Economy, and our Lives, New Haven & London: Yale University Press.
Dorling, D. and Koljonen, A. (2020). Finntopia: What We Can Learn from the World’s Happiest Country, Newcastle & New York: Agenda publishing / Columbia University Press.