Prescott started his career as a schoolteacher in Durham after undergraduate study, and was then appointed lecturer in the Department of Geography, University of Ibadan, Nigeria in 1956. He gained a Masters and his PhD while in post. He was appointed lecturer in geography at the University of Melbourne in 1961. He was made Professor in 1986 at the age of 55, and retired in 1996. He was a commentator on political matters and geography for Australian ABC radio, also commenting on and predicting Australian election outcomes, until 1987.
Scholarly contributions
Prescott's interests remained in political geography, always with a focus on borders and frontiers, and their material and political characteristics. Studies included Australian Aboriginal conceptions of territory and frontiers, border disputes in South East Asia and the South China Sea, and the effects of the colonial period on African borders. van Houtum summarized Prescott and Julian Minghi's two major contributions to border geography as showing "Where is the border located, how did it came about, evolve, change over time, become the topic of disputes and what are the political consequences of its location." Prescott's last book explored the legal and geographical problems of borders, and was coauthored with the renowned human rights lawyer and academic Gillian Triggs. Prescott was particularly active in examining the problems generated by maritime boundaries and borders, and resolution of disputes through negotiation and the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea. He said in his 1985 book with Schofield that "The marked increase in maritime space coming under the jurisdiction of coastal states in the post-war period, coupled with similarly significant changes in the diversity and intensity of offshore activities, radically transformed the nature of maritime boundary negotiations, enhancing both their complexity and importance. Clearly, the extension of coastal states' sovereignty seawards has generated the potential for many new maritime boundaries and a host of overlapping jurisdictional claims and offshore boundary disputes."
Selected works
Prescott published widely on boundary issues and political geography. A full list of his works was compiled by his wife Dorothy, available . Much of it is in/with conventional academic journals and publishers, and is therefore inaccessible online. In addition, his early work incorporated quotes in French and German, inaccessible to many. These books have, however, been re-released in the mid 2010s. Major works were:
Prescott, J.R.V. 1965. The Geography of Frontiers and Boundaries. London: Hutchinson. by Routledge, 2015.
Prescott, J.R.V. 1968. The geography of state policies. London: Hutchinson University Library. Reprinted 1986 and Routledge, 2015.
Prescott, J.R.V. 1971. The evolution of Nigeria's international and regional boundaries: 1861-1971. Vancouver: Tantalus Research.
