­­­John Paul “JP” Jones III (Ph.D. Ohio State University) is Special Advisor to Jenny Lee, Vice President of Arizona International and Dean of International Education. Jones was previously Dean of International Education and is also Professor in the School of Geography, Development, and Environment in the university’s College of Social and Behavioral Sciences. 

Jones was appointed Dean of Arizona International’s division of International Education in January 2022. In that time, he has worked to deepen the university’s strategic partnerships by further developing its pioneering “microcampus” – or dual degree – programs, in which UArizona faculty assist faculty at select international partner institutions to provide collaboratively-delivered, affordable UArizona degrees that complement and enrich the curricular opportunities for students across many world regions. 

Before joining Arizona International, Jones served for over a dozen years as the Don Bennett Moon Dean for the College of Social and Behavioral Sciences (SBS). In addition to championing several dual degree programs from SBS in collaboration with Arizona International’s strategic partners, he was responsible for leading twenty SBS academic units and fifteen centers and institutes focused on research and community outreach.

Jones is a human geographer with a long interest in social theory, geographic methodology, and the history of geographic thought. His work is informed by developments in poststructuralist theory, including research on the crisis of representation and the social construction of identity within the context of new developments in spatial ontology and epistemology. Over the past fifteen years he has contributed to debates over the role of spatial scale in geography and the other social sciences. His research has been grounded in diverse empirical projects, including several funded by the National Science Foundation. 

Jones has authored over 100 articles and book chapters (Google Scholar; CV and access to most publications). He is the past editor and associate editor of his discipline’s flagship journal, the Annals of the American Association of Geographers. He served as founding co-editor of the Sage journal, Dialogues in Human Geography, and, for Wiley, he edits the textbook series, “Critical Introductions to Geography.” Jones was a Fulbright Professor at University College Dublin and has held visiting appointments at the University of Nijmegen in the Netherlands, the Universitat de Girona in Spain, and the London School of Economics. In 2015, he received the Lifetime Achievement Award from his professional organization, the American Association of Geographers.