Edith Joan Wilson (known as Joan) was born in 1923 at Wednesbury, Staffordshire, the daughter of Arthur Wilson, commercial traveller, and Edith Cliff. She was educated at Queen Mary’s High School, Walsall, and studied geography at Girton College, 1941-44, achieving Honours Class 2. She attended the Cambridge Training College, 1944-45, where she gained the Cambridge Teachers’ Certificate, achieving Class 1. She then taught Geography at Batley Girls’ Grammar School from 1945-47 and Notting Hill and Ealing High School from 1947-57. She married George J Miller in 1958. From 1957-62 Joan Wilson was a Lecturer in Geography at Indiana University, USA. She then held successive positions at Illinois State University as Assistant Professor of Geography (1962-66), Associate Professor of Geography (1966-74, acquiring tenure in 1968), Professor of Geography (1974-93) and Adjunct Professor (1993-2015). She achieved a PhD in geography at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, USA in 1965. Specialising in cultural, historical and folk geography, and geography in education, she has published and lectured widely in addition to her teaching responsibilities. She travelled widely in the USA with her husband, co-author of college text ‘Geography of North America’.