Alan Dykes undertook a PhD on tropical rainforest landforms in Brunei, supervised by Professor John Thornes, then took up his first academic post lecturing in geomorphology at Huddersfield University. Now a Senior Lecturer in Civil Engineering at Kingston University, he continues his research into all aspects of landslide science from geotechnical controls to landform evolution and specialising in peatland instability.
 
John Wainwright has researched questions of soil erosion, ecogeomorphology, land degradation and landform evolution across a range of space and time scales, originally inspired by the supervision of Professor John Thornes in his PhD on the erosion of prehistoric archaeological sites. He has subsequently lectured at the universities of Southampton, King's College London, Sheffield and Strasbourg, and is now at Durham University, where he is Professor of Physical Geography.

Mark Mulligan is currently a Reader in Geography at King's College London. Professor John Thornes supervised Mark's PhD at King's College London from 1991.  Mark has remained there as a member of the academic staff since 1994 and in 2004 was awarded the Gill Memorial Award of the Royal Geographical Society-Institute of British Geographers for 'innovative monitoring and modelling' of environmental systems. Mark works on a variety of topics in the areas of environmental spatial policy support, ecosystem service modelling and understanding environmental change, at scales from local to global and with a particular emphasis on tropical forests in Latin America and semi-arid drylands in the Mediterranean.