Doreen Massey - Honorary Vice President

For a while, the GA has had several Honorary Vice Presidents, and they will also feature on the blog as they offer guidance to the Governing Body, which the President serves on as a Trustee and played a part in the history of the Association.

Doreen Massey was a geographical legend.

When I joined the Geographical Association in 2008, my first meeting, even before I started officially with the GA, was at the Open University with Doreen, Clive Barnett and Joe Smith.  I travelled over to the Open University with David Lambert. I remember being particularly excited as I was just about to embark on a new career after 20 years in the classroom and was suddenly in the company of such wonderful thinkers and listened carefully to what Doreen had to say about the way that the OU and the GA could work together - in the end, our plans never quite came to fruition. Joe Smith has certainly gone on to slightly different things in recent years of course... It was such an exciting time for me personally.

Doreen was such a great sport that she also joined in with our Mission:Explore missions at the University of Derby, flicking the V's to Bryan Ledgard.



Doreen went from Manchester High school for Girls to St Hugh’s College, Oxford, where she gained a first in geography, and became more politically aware. Between 1968 and 1980 she worked at the Centre for Environmental Studies, researching into urban and regional problems, and a sabbatical enabled her to study for a master’s at the University of Pennsylvania (1971-72). Doreen was a great fan of Liverpool football club and would no doubt have been celebrating their victory in the Premier league last year.
My review of her lecture at the GA Conference is here. It was a wonderful talk which got rave reviews at the time. (PDF download)

I remember going to see Doreen at the BBC as well, for a recording of the Radio 4 Thinking Allowed programme, with Will Self and Richard Sennett. An edited version of their discussions is available here.

I also had a chat with her when I met her with Margaret Roberts at the Derby Conference. I was wearing a Google T-shirt with a map pin and the words 'I am here'. It remains a favourite t-shirt of mine. She saw it and commented on the fact that noone was really anywhere for very long... this was later the theme of her lecture of course.

She was involved in a little posthumous dispute at the University of Oxford when a picture of her was joined by a picture of another Oxford geography graduate Theresa May. This led to a campaign to remove the picture of Theresa May #notallgeographers
Some people wondered how she would have felt about sharing a wall with a picture of a Conservative PM.
There was a tribute to Doreen at the GA Conference the following year.

Check out Doreen's work. There is plenty to go at with an internet search or two.

There are some YouTube clips where you can hear Doreen speak. A few of them are included below.

I remember hearing of Doreen's death. I was awake early at Rhyd-y-Creuau in March 2016 and the news came up on my Twitter feed... the day started and I took a wander in the grounds and thought about what she had achieved. When I told my colleague Claire she was similarly upset at the news.

References
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doreen_Massey_(geographer)

An obituary in the Guardian: https://www.theguardian.com/education/2016/mar/27/doreen-massey-obituary

RGS Obituary

An obituary by Rob Kitchin. This gives a really full picture of her massive contribution to truly radical geography and deep thinking on space and place in the tradition of David Harvey.

Image: Bryan Ledgard / Geographical Association

Memories of Doreen would be very welcome...