Honorary Membership

The GA Awards are presented each year after the Presidential Address at the GA Conference.

The highest award is Honorary Membership.

This year it was presented to Iain Palôt.

Iain has been Chair of the Post-16 and HE Committee for some years and also served on Governing Body.

The Committee produces a regular newsletter, which can be picked up at the conference. This year's edition can be downloaded here.

In it, Iain reflects on his career and involvement with the committee and the GA:

This piece is one for looking back, remembering those members of the committee who contributed so much and whose efforts should not be forgotten. Over the years we have been so well supported by people like George Metcalf, the NATFHE rep and the committee Treasurer in the days when we had a delegated budget. 

One meeting a year was always at the Victory Club at Marble Arch as he was able to stay at a reduced rate having made the journey down from Dunfermline. 

Other members of our illustrious team have included Brian Harris from Thames Valley, Alan Marriott, Andrew Powell from Kingston, Tim Foster from FSC Blencathra, Antony Allchin, Mick Dawson, Dave Turton, Julia Jones, Helen Hore, Simon Oakes, Bob Digby, and others too numerous to mention.

Secretaries, Treasurers, Saturday fieldwork organisers, Travel and Tourism specialists, Geography Matters Editors [Dave T had a couple of blokes out at “the airfield” who printed it very cheaply, and we gave away huge numbers of copies at conference]. Those were the days! 

I have been chairman for long enough and could not have done the job without the support of my wife and the committee members, particularly Antony and then Helen, to whom I owe a huge debt of gratitude. To Gill for taking on the editing of GM in the face of a number of difficulties and her own personal workload. And to all the committee members that I have not mentioned – thank you for your support and contributions to the work we have undertaken. 

I am now what Catherine Owen reminded me of as we gossiped at the back of a conference session, an OLD, some would say very old, WHITE MAN - and the time is right for change. 

The committee will be co-chaired by Laura-Jayne Ward and Ellie Barker and I wish them all the success for the future. I am confident that they will do a great job in the tradition of the P16/HE PC. They are looking for someone to fill the gap left by my leaving, to add new skills and greater diversity to the committee. I am only sorry that I will not have the opportunity to work with Servel Miller from Chester whom I am certain will add greatly to the deliberations of the committee. 

Thank you all for your friendship, help and support over the past 40+ years of my GA membership. I shall miss being involved and hope to see some of you at conference this and in future years. Post-16/HE Phase Committee.

Congratulations Iain, and thanks.

GA Presidency Month 7: March 2022

This was another rather busy month all round, and was the start of the second half of my Presidential year.

March sees the build up to the conference and a push to get delegates organised for their bookings - it's pleasing to see the bookings rising through the month, but also a time to keep fingers crossed that this year's budgets and personal circumstances don't mean people fail to book a ticket. The remote option is a useful addition now, although it adds significantly to the logistics of planning the event.

There is a meeting of the GA's Governing Body in the first weekend of the month. This was originally planned to have been face to face meeting finally, but ended up being online again, as it was scheduled just before the removal of some of the legal requirements on meetings and isolating were removed by the Government. This was a very busy meeting which had a great many items on the agenda.

This is a time when the next Vice President (and ultimately President) is ratified, along with other decisions.

There are also decisions made in this week about the GA Publishers Awards and also the GA Awards. Voting closes for the GA Award for Excellence as well. 

The results of all these will be announced at the GA Prize Giving and Public Lecture which kicks off the conference.

The following week I was gearing up for a trip - the first overseas trip for over two years. This took place in Gent in Belgium. It was a meeting of the partners of the GI Pedagogy project, and we were delighted to be there. More on that later in the post.

National Fieldwork Week is taking place in June, and there were plenty of meetings and other work around this event. I organised a couple of events for the week.

Thanks to Paula Richardson for her hard work driving this forward, and also to the new website manager Emmalene for her hard work in getting the materials up on the website.

Some other things that occurred this month:

- a great many conversations and other decisions about the planning for the GA Conference, including exchanges around the final stages of the conference. This is getting closer now. There were decisions on chairing sessions to make, and numerous meetings and Zoom calls with Isabel and Becky who are spearheading the conference planning. A huge amount of work.

The publication of our Code of Practice was a key moment. 

This offers guidance for all the delegates at our conference, and other events, and explained how we are supporting visitors in many wayss.

- further work to get ready for the National Fieldwork Week in June.

- liaising with and talking to chairs of the GA's SIGs - as President, I have requested that I receive copies of the minutes of all their meetings in case there are things I can do to support them, and to learn about the range of activity going on - these meetings occur almost every other weekend, and there is plenty to learn from colleagues who are experts in their chosen area - there were specific meetings with particular groups, along with Alastair Owens (who will take over as President in September 2022)

- reviewing for Routledge

- preparing for the IGU in Paris in July and liaising over fees and hotel planning as well as preparing a trip to the Place de Saint Sulpice for a Georges Perec pilgrimage...

- uploading resources and ideas for colleagues in the Liverpool alliance of schools I am supporting

- starting to prepare materials for another group of schools I am working with, and ideas for training in the new academic year

- working on the two ERASMUS projects I am completing for my school - one of these is now in the final stages and there has been a great deal of work to do there.

I led a session for the West London Alliance on curriculum making - the 2nd of two sessions.

We also had the amazing news of the discovery of Sir Ernest Shackleton's ship 'Endurance' - an expedition I had been following since the beginning and a period of history I have a great many 

At the end of the 2nd week of March, I headed for Gent.

Thanks to the partners of the GI Pedagogy project for their company during a sunny long weekend where we were able to complete a lot of work, and also have a couple of nice meals in the city. It was lovely to be able to use my passport and get out of the country for the next 2 years.

There is also a new pathway for the GA Conference, which had been developed by Christine Winter (one of the new GA Research Engagement leads) and Kit Rackley. Many thanks to both of them, and anyone else involved, for their efforts.

This was published on the Decolonising Geography website.

We worked on the Geographers' Gaze materials - they will appear in a month or two hopefully.

In the third week, I contributed to a session for the GeogLive! event.

To round off the month, I went for a weekend in Center Parcs to decompress for a while and enjoy time in the woods - the weather was glorious.

The final week included more meetings, and a final event.

I hosted a GeogChat meeting on the theme of Everyday Geographies. Thanks to those who took part in the discussions. Search the #GeogChat tag to see some of the contributions.

The month ended with snow... quite a change after the sunshine of just a few days ago.

This was a particularly tough end to the Lent term. We are constantly thinking that things must be getting back to normal, but they really aren't. There has been a lot of staff and pupil absence due to COVID and at times I have been fairly sure I have had it for a 2nd time, but have always tested negative.

I am very much keeping my fingers crossed for the next couple of weeks. I look forward to seeing you in Guildford in 2 weeks time.

Images of Gent: Alan Parkinson, and shared under CC license

Here's the month's Twitter statistics as usual.