The Department of Geography mourns the death of Paul Talbot, a former graduate student who received his PhD in 2004. Paul died on December 6th, 2014 in Champaign, Il. He had been in a coma for 9 years after a car accident in Thailand where he was working after he completed the dissertation. Paul obtained an undergraduate degree from the University of Illinois and arrived in Â鶹¹ÙÍø in Fall 1994 to study political geography and the transition from Communism in Russia. After completing the MA degree with a thesis on Russian parliamentary elections, he returned to Russia for a couple of years before coming back to Â鶹¹ÙÍø to start his PhD work. Using funding from a NSF dissertation award, he conducted a nationwide survey of Russians on their beliefs about the break-up of the Soviet Union and their preferences for a geopolitical arrangement involving Russia and its neighbors. Some of the key results were published in Eurasian Geography and Economics in 2005. Paul was also a highly successful and popular graduate part-time instructor in introductory human geography and advanced political geography classes.
After a stellar high school running career, Paul was on an athletics scholarship and won Academic All Big 10 honors in 1992-93 for the University of Illinois. He ran in the Bolder Â鶹¹ÙÍø multiple times with a best time of 35 minutes in 1995 and he loved to discuss/debate the pros and cons of various training schemes, shoe designs and national team programs. He was also a very talented poker player.