Biographies of all the Presidents of the Geographical Association since the founding of the Association in 1893. Researched by Alan Parkinson (GA President 2021-22), with contributions from others, including the former Presidents themselves where possible.
Showing posts with label #everydaygeographies. Show all posts
Showing posts with label #everydaygeographies. Show all posts
GeoLincs is the South Lincolnshire GA Branch. I visited when it was in Bourne, back in 2015 in an early meeting of the branch. I'd just taken over as Head of Geography at King's Ely Junior (now Prep) and took a drive over to speak to a good group of teachers. I'm heading back there next month.
Via LinkedIn from Dr. Aidan Hesslewood, who is a fellow moderator on the GA's Secondary Geography Quality Mark moderation team.The second Geolincs session of this academic year is approaching, and we have Richard Bustin and Alan Parkinson coming along to share lots of important ideas: Wednesday 18th March, from 1400-1700 (light refreshments included) at Spalding Grammar School.
I’m really excited to welcome Alan back to the branch (he last spoke in 2015) and to Richard for the first time, and I hope you can join us for a stimulating afternoon of geography curriculum discussion, particularly in light of upcoming reforms. This session will be suitable for all: student teachers, teachers, subject leads, and senior leaders.
Feel free to message me here if you'd like to come along.
Geolincs (the GA branch for South Lincs and surrounding counties) aims to sustain excellence in geography education in Lincolnshire and the surrounding counties. It is a non-profit network that provides opportunities for professional growth and events are completely free to attend.
It endeavours to: · Explore and develop teaching expertise and subject knowledge · Share ideas through participation and networking · Provide a forum for debate and discussion
Here's the title slide from my presentation. Hope to see some of you there.
John Beddoe was mentioned in a piece called 'Wayside Geography' by John Linton Myres (GA President in 1925), which I blogged about recently. He was a doctor who pioneered some of the techniques of observation in scientific recording which are still used in some of the ethnographic fieldwork that is carried out even now.
John Nowell Linton Myres was the GA President in 1925. His entry on the blog is here. He was an archaeologist, closely linked with the Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford.
In 1925, at a GA Annual Meeting he spoke on 'Wayside Geography' which was apparently broadcast on BBC Radio. He expanded that into a longer piece, published in 1926 which is worth reading, as it has connections with the idea of everyday geographies.
This is the big month for any GA President since 1976 (prior to that the GA Conference was held over the New Year and the first week of January to kick off the President's year and allow them to set out their stall.)
The first part of the month was obviously dictated by the preparations for the GA conference, and ensuring that as many people as possible were able to attend in a format which suited them. This resulted in a number of late changes to the programme - inevitable when there are so many hundreds of people involved and their circumstances change.
We were also keeping a wary eye on COVID cases rising and the need to avoid unecessary contact with others - although guidance had also changed. Some people reconsidered their plans to attend the conference.
As always, the approach to the Easter holidays meant a great deal of extra work for the team at Solly Street and building excitement with late bookings pinging in minute by minute towards the deadline for registration, which was then extended for a few more days as there was a rush of last minute bookings.
April started with me already on holiday, and there was plenty of pre-conference organisation and admin to do. It was time to complete my GA Presidential address, which I thought I had done, but kept tinkering with until a week or so before the time.
I updated my Chirpty circle diagram ready to put into my Presidential lecture, which shows the people I interact with on Twitter.
There are many elements to draw together for a conference and they all came together well. I am so grateful to everyone who took part, and particularly to Isabel Richardson, Becky Kitchen and everyone at the GA, many of whom came along in person.
I prepared my presentation for the GEOLive event, which was based around my book 'Why Study Geography'.
My Presidential lecture was also finalised, and then tweaked endlessly, and there were still things that I remembered I was going to say.
On the 10th of April, I headed over to Guildford - first long drive for a while and first time on the M25 since before the pandemic.
I got involved in a few things:
- Arriving on Sunday and spending four hours helping to set up the GA reception desk and stand, stuff delegate bags, prepare lanyards etc. Also finally got my GA Presidents badge.
- Meeting the team who were going to be live streaming sessions, including Maddie Duggan who I had met before
- A lovely Italian meal in Guildford the evening before everything started, up on the High Street.
April 11th-13th was the actual GA Conference. It was really wonderful.
- Talking to exhibitors and welcoming delegates - I spoke to as many people as I could
- Welcoming and chairing the Public Lecture by Professor James Cheshire
- Attending the wine reception and also the conference dinner on the first evening
- Sorting accommodation
- Chairing a number of sessions, including Professor Ian Cook's excellent Follow the Things session,
- Trying to speak to as many of the attendees, exhibitors and delegates as I could
- Doing my Presidential Address to a large crowd - a little down on previous years, but there were people joining online and I was very pleased with how it went - thanks to Alastair Owens for the introduction
- Chairing a discussion with the author Cal Flyn - her book 'Islands of Abandonment' was one of my favourite reads of recent years and has been nominated for (and won) a whole range of awards. It was lovely to see Cal, although there were a few technical issues on the day which meant she couldn't see us.
- Attending a number of sessions including those presented by Sharon Witt and Helen Clarke, Alan Kinder and Eleanor Rawling
- Lunch sat in the sun with my department from King's Ely Geog, who had come out in force to supprt me. Particular thanks to Claire Kyndt for stepping up and presenting a workshop on her fieldwork ideas based on the 'Dear Data' book
- Up to the Teachmeet at the end of the day, at Seasons Restaurant near the Cathedral. Some wonderful presentations, particularly the one from Iram Sammar. You can watch a recording of the Teachmeet here.
- Food at the networking and board games evening - a chat to Peter Vujakovic of the British Cartographic Society
- Down to the Beermeet - a bit of a walk - some great conversations and thanks to those who bought me a drink
- Chairing a session on Follow the Things by Professor Ian Cook
- Watching several excellent sessions, and also presenting my own session at the GEOLive event.
- Helping to take down some of the conference elements that I had helped to set up on the Sunday
- Chairing the final session of the day: the Rex Walford Lecture
A few images from the day - there are many more to come, but I haven't been given the links to view them just yet.
Delegates will be able to access copies of the recordings now.
Thanks to all the GA Solly Street HQ staff:
Copies of presentations will also be appearing on the GA Conference webpage.
Some other things I got up to this month:
- continuing to work on ERASMUS projects, including contributing to the GI Pedagogy project
- liaising with the various schools that I work with in a number of ways
- creating some materials for the MAT that I am supporting for the next term and a bit
- setting up multiplier events for ERASMUS
- pencilling in meetings at the Council of British Geographers (COBRIG) at the RGS-IBG
- working on my paper for the 100th IGU in Paris - my session has been scheduled for the Wednesday of the IGU.
- heading down for a day wandering London, visit to RGS-IBG and then an amazing conference
- setting up a D3 multiplier event on Eventbrite
My Ordnance Survey webinar needed preparing for the end of April, and this was on the theme of fieldwork. Thanks to those who came along. The recording will be available for that soon as well.
Also preparing a suite of resources for a Prince's Teaching Institute event in June.
April 29th saw the GA going green...
Make sure that you start planning for the National Fieldwork Week.
I rounded off the month by sharing the news that we have a new elected Trustee vacancy and also have a new co-opted trustee who will
I also visited Cambridge and got a copy of a number of new books, and saw some excellent art from Ai Wei Wei, and David Hockney.
As usual, here are the month's Twitter statistics - a bumper month with a quarter of a million impressions.
I'm also closing in on 7000 followers having added over 1200 in the 8 months since I made my Tweets open for my Presidential year, and 200 in the last month alone.
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.
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.
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
I'm taken the time to share a little preview of all of the sessions at the 2022 GA Conference in the coming weeks, and will also update them after the event with links through to the conference resources that are shared. This concludes the process.
It will be lovely to have my hand on a physical copy of the final programme and go through it with a highlighter as a ritual of attending conference since 2004.
I'm going to share a little preview of all of the sessions at the 2022 GA Conference in the coming weeks, and will also update them after the event with links through to the conference resources that are shared. I'm now on sessions numbered 101-125 in order of their appearance in the conference programme.
It will be lovely to have my hand on a physical copy of this.
I'm going to share a little preview of all of the sessions at the 2022 GA Conference in the coming weeks, and will also update them after the event with links through to the conference resources that are shared. I'm now on sessions numbered 76-100 in order of their appearance in the conference programme. Will be lovely to have my hand on a physical copy of this.
I'm going to share a little preview of all of the sessions at the 2022 GA Conference in the coming weeks, and will also update them after the event with links through to the conference resources that are shared. I'm now on sessions numbered 51-75 in order of their appearance in the conference programme. Will be lovely to have my hand on a physical copy of this.
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