Guthlac Ceri Klaus Peach (26 October 1939 – 3 October 2018) was a geographer from Bridgend, Wales. He was an undergraduate (BA 1961), graduate student (DPhil, 1964), and lecturer at Merton College, Oxford before being appointed to a lectureship in geography at St Catherine's College, Oxford (known colloquially as St Catz) in 1965 at the age of 26. He held this post jointly with a lectureship at Keble College, Oxford and a Faculty Lectureship at the University of Oxford.
He was elected as a tutorial fellow (teaching fellow) in geography at St Catherine's in 1969 and also held various non-teaching posts, including several college offices: Domestic Bursar, Senior Tutor, Finance Bursar and Acting Master. During his tenure as Senior Tutor, women were first admitted to the college. As Domestic Bursar, he negotiated college charges with the then Junior Common Room President, Peter Mandelson.
He was Professor of Social geography at the School of Geography and the Environment, University of Oxford from 1992 to 2007 and on retirement from his Oxford chair he was appointed Professor of at the Institute for Social Change at the University of Manchester.
Time at St Catherine's College
Peach found the move from Merton, Oxford's oldest college, to St Catherine's (known as St Catz), Oxfords newest college, to be liberating:
During his time at St Catherine's the number of undergraduate geographers accepted by the college increased from 4 each year to between 10 and 12. The University Schools results also became some of the best in the arts subjects at the college. Notable students taught by Ceri Peach include Denis Cosgrove, who went on to become Alexander von Humboldt Professor of Geography at University of California, Los Angeles; Mike Walker and Geoff Duller, who went on to become professors of geography at the University of Wales; Mike Summerfield, Professor of Physical Geography at the University of Edinburgh; Vaughan Robinson, professor at King's College London; Michael Keith, professor of sociology at Goldsmiths, University of London; Gary Bridge, professor at Cardiff University, Chris Keylock, professor of fluid mechanics at Loughborough University, and Dr Margaret Byron, teaching fellow at the University of Leicester.
Other graduates in geography taught by Peach at St Catherine's have achieved success in other fields and include Matthew Pinsent, who received four gold medals for rowing in successive Olympic Games.
Field of research
Peach's main field of research was human migration and the racial segregation of minority groups, ethnic groups and religious groups in the United Kingdom, the United States and Western Europe.
During his sabbatical at the Demography Department of Australian National University, in 1973, his understanding of the relationship between spatial patterns of residential segregation was transformed. This led him to investigate ethnic intermarriage as an index of social interaction.
During his next sabbatical at Yale University, in 1977, he disproved the 'triple melting pot theory' of American cultural assimilation which, based on data collection in New Haven, Connecticut, argued that while national ethnic identity in the United States would dissolve, it would do so within maintained religious boundaries of Catholic, Protestant and Jewish. His research proved that while the so-called 'Protestant pot' seemed plausible, a 'Catholic-pot' seemed unlikely:
His research in the 1970s and 1980s focused on housing tenure and segregation in the United Kingdom and the United States and during this time he worked closely with Dr Samir Shah and later with Dr Margaret Byron.
In the 1990s and 2000s Peach continued his research on issues of segregation with particular focus on the dynamics relating to, and the arguments surrounding, Ghetto formation and White flight. This included differences between British and American cities and whether British cities had become more segregated than Chicago. He also examined the growth of the Muslim population in Europe, and particularly in Britain, and this has developed into a large scale study of the cultural geography of Muslim mosques, Sikh Gurdwaras and Hindu Mandirs on the landscape of Britain.