Saturday 23 July 2022

Fawcett Fellowship 2022-23

I was pleased to hear yesterday that I have been awarded one of the Fawcett Fellowships for 2022-23

Fawcett Fellowships are awarded each year by the UCL Institute of Education.

Edith Fawcett endowed annual Fellowships in the Department of Geography at UCL in 1987 in memory of her father, Professor C B Fawcett, who was head of the department between 1928 and 1949. 

C B Fawcett's obituary is here. He served as Vice President of the RGS from 1949-1951.

Charles Bungay Fawcett had a link with the early years of the Geographical Association in that he joined the staff under A. J Herbertson at the then-new School of Geography at Oxford University. He was later a lecturer at University College, Southampton, and Leeds University. In 1928, he was appointed Professor of Geography at University College London, where he remained until his retirement in 1949.

The Fellowships were originally designed to enable UK-based teachers and other professional geographers in mid-career to spend a sabbatical term studying at UCL. The teaching Fellows continued to be paid their full salary and the scheme funded replacement geography teaching.

In 2018, a second option was added, which provided a format based around twilight workshops and a focus for research rather than the sabbatical term. Fellows are given access to research libraries and the experienced staff of UCL IOE.

I wrote a statement outlining my proposed focus of Everyday Geographies and their place within the curriculum, to allow me to pursue the thinking I had already completed in preparation for my GA Presidential year, the lecture and related sessions through that year.

This classic book by C B Fawcett is still in print. He also wrote a Political Geography of the British Empire first published in 1933.
In the introduction to the book he thanks Robert Ogilvie Buchanan, another former President of the GA.


I shall be sharing my progress and thinking here, so that others can see what is involved and perhaps considers putting themselves forward for a Fellowship next year.


Updated August 2023

While researching a number of updates for other Presidents I came across the papers of Charles and Frank Fenner and their travels to the UK.
Describing a visit to the BAAS Section E committee in the 1930s...

2 to 3 September 1937, Nottingham, BAAS Meeting

Professor Fawcett (London) gave his Presidential address on World Movements of Population. He stressed the fact, and supported it with unanswerable figures, that the Southern Hemisphere could never be of any great importance in world history. Have often stressed to my students the same thing, based on the same facts, but presented differently. He brought out many other remarkable facts about world tendencies in population. It was a very fine effort, indeed, one of the best I’ve heard at any time.

I am just back from the Geography dinner. A most excellent and pleasant meeting. I was seated by the President as an honoured guest, with Mrs Haile, wife of the Trent waterworks engineer, who has made all those wonderful flood models, on my right. And Mrs Roach, sister of Brigadier General Winterbottom, who has had charge of surveys all over the world, on my left. Both were very pleasant and we talked freely so that the hours went by without noticing. Next on the left was Dr Bews, of Natal, South Africa, who has written a geographical book that I must get hold of. 
Next on the right was, of course, Professor Fawcett.

Fawcett, London, is a very fine man, and I have told you of his excellent Presidential address. Opposite was Dudley Stamp, who has written geographies of all the world, and all its countries. We talked of possible Land Utilization mapping in Australia. He it was, I suspect, who gave the President material for the remark in his speech of the quiet-spoken man from Australia whose books they knew and who had lately travelled 35,000 miles at the rate of 150 miles per day. A bit of a stretch of my figures. Just before I left a young man of the London University came up and said he must meet me, as he gave two lectures every year from my books! And, in general, everyone was very friendly and nice. Saw Stevens and Maclaren to say goodbye. General Winterbottom is the most charming fellow, fine after-dinner speaker.


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