Although oil shows no sign of running out anytime soon, the nature of oil is changing. Technology, higher prices, and government policy have opened up new “unconventional” oil reserves and spurred oil production in unconventional places.

Gavin Bridge will present the Distinguished Geographer Lecture “Oil’s Unconventional Future,” at 3 p.m. Monday, April 27, in the Old Main Room of the Bone Student Center. The event is free and open to the public.

Bridge, a professor of economic geography at Durham University, will explore the scale and significance of oil’s fast-arriving unconventional future. His research centers on the political economy and political ecology of extractive industries. His work garnered support from the U.S. National Science Foundation, the National Geographic Society, the European Commission and the U.K. Energy Research Centre.

He is co-author of Oil published by Polity Press, and a founding member of the Energy Geographies Working Group of the Royal Geographical Society-Institute of British Geographers.

The Distinguished Geographer Lecture Series is sponsored by the Illinois State University Department of Geography-Geology with generous support from Dr. E. Joan Miller. Anyone in need of accommodations can contact the Department of Geography-Geology at (309) 438-7649.