Gordon L Clark DSc (Oxon) FBA is the Halford Mackinder Professor of Geography at Oxford University, holds a Professorial Fellowship at St Peter's College and is Sir Louis Matheson Distinguished Visiting Professor at Monash University's Faculty of Business and Economics (Melbourne). Until recently he was also a Senior Research Associate at Harvard Law School. Previous academic appointments have been at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, the University of Chicago, Carnegie Mellon's Heinz School and Monash University. Other honours including include being Andrew Mellon Fellow at the US National Academy of Sciences and Visiting Scholar Deutscher Akademischer Austausch Dienst at the University of Marburg.

He has held a number of senior administrative posts including Associate Dean (Finance, Graduate Studies) and Dean of the Faculty of Arts at Monash University (Melbourne), Chair of the Faculty Board of Anthropology and Geography (Oxford), and most recently Director and Head of the Oxford University Centre for the Environment including the School of Geography and the Environment. Professor Clark has served on the Social Science Committee of the British Academy, is an elected member of the Oxford University's Socially Responsible Investment Committee (overseeing investment of the university's endowment), is an employer-nominated trustee of the Oxford Staff Pension Scheme, is a consultant to MetallRente (Germany's largest DC pension plan), and is a Founding Governor of the UK Pension Policy Institute.