500 000 page views

An amazing milestone to pass for a blog about the GA and its Presidents, which is one of my GA Presidential legacy projects.

Thanks for reading. I shall continue adding details of future GA Presidents (and updates on past ones...) indefinitely... If you have anything to add about the 100+ people who have held that role, feel free to get in touch...

1000 posts!

I started this blog as a "legacy project" from my GA Presidential journey, and Presidential year in 2021-22.

It has attracted some interest and had over 450 000 page views, which is not bad for a blog.

Thanks to all the GA Presidents - past, present and future for their support and contributions.

I have just passed 1000 posts on the blog.

Thanks for visiting and reading.

GA Conference 2026 #2: Day 2: Musical Geographies

Late morning on Day 2 of the conference was the session that Matt Podbury and I had prepared for the conference programme. 

This was connected with his work on GeographyPods.

Prior to that Matt and I sat in the exhibition area and spoke to lots and lots of geographers. 

We had been given a room that was too small. The Sched app was telling us that it would be overflowing and we tried to fit as many people in the room as we could - around 40. 

Here's Matt presenting his part of our session.

The presentation we used is up on Scribd and has been embedded on a post over on the World of Music blog.

It would be great if anyone reading this was able to fill in the Google Form below to help me with some of the posts I've been producing. There are also plenty of other forms on the blog in places. 

Please have a browse through the blog.

Heading for the GA Conference for the first time?

Fiona Sheriff has written a guide for first timers for the Learning to Teach Geography blog.

300 000 page views

Just checked the stats counter and the blog has passed 300 000 page views which is quite impressive, but good to see after the years of research and writing that went into creating this blog.

Thanks for visiting and reading, and remember I'm always interested in updates on any of the GA Presidents featured on this blog.

Sharing the blog on Substack

It's time to share this blog as part of a series of posts on my Substack on blogs I run other than LivingGeography - this is #17 in the series of posts.

Check out the LivingGeography Substack here and be sure to subscribe.

Musical Geographies at the GA Conference 2026

So Matt Podbury and I are putting the band back together...

 

Our session at the GA Conference 2026 has been accepted and we've teamed up for some musical improvisation... this one's in 9/8....

Here's the details, we submitted, which will appear in the programme in due course:

Musical Geographies: Sense of Place and Storytelling in the curriculum

Music is a dynamic, everyday phenomenon that connects billions of people, places, and cultures. It offers a powerful lens through which to understand the world and our place within it. From local rhythms to global genres, music, and its associated visuals provide students and teachers with meaningful insights into diverse environments which help shape their worldview. 

For this collaborative lecture, Matt Podbury and Alan Parkinson are putting the band back together!

Matt will share how an idea to showcase his vinyl collection evolved into a rich, three-week unit on the Geography of Music for KS3 students. This explores themes such as sense of place, landscape and emotion, and the role of music in shaping our cultural identity, and addresses how music can be both a unifying and divisive force. Students design and produce their own vinyl LPs to end the unit.

Alan will share his new collaborative World of Music blog, which charts a year long journey through curriculum resources and collaborative pedagogy around music and its meanings; a playlist of ideas for teaching everyday geographies.

You will gain practical ideas, resources and inspiration for incorporating music into your own geography curriculum.

This one goes up to 11!

For my contribution, I've put together a Google Form here.

Thanks to those who have already sent their contributions.

A few new updates

I've tickled away at the site over the summer and updated the entries for quite a few people. 

I'm keen to keep the site up to date as the years progress since my own Presidential year. 

If you are reading this and you have been a GA member for a while or have a story (or pictures) from a previous GA Conference, or anecdotes relating to past GA Presidents,  please get in touch.

GA Conference - 2001 - University of Sussex

Thanks to Joseph Kerski for the image

Geographer for Hire

As regular readers of my LivingGeography blog will know, I've been reducing my time in the classroom - partly as a way to ensure that teaching stays sustainable for me at my advanced age, but also because I've been fortunate to have a range of interesting external projects in the last couple of years, including books, curriculum making with the Oak National project, BBC Bitesize work, work with the Environment Agency and my ongoing role at the Royal Geographical Society. I've shared this work in my Worldly Wednesdays posts during the year.

This year, I have gone down to three days teaching a week.

Most of those projects mentioned above have now come to an end, although a few new things have already been pencilled in for this year. This means that I have some time free some weeks this academic year to get involved in further projects and am always interested in something new.

If you think I could help you with a project, even if it's just for a few hours or days then feel free to get in touch and tell me more about what you have in mind. Below you can see some of the organisations and publishers I've worked with over the years. 

I haven't added the Geographical Association and the Royal Geographical Society because they're obvious.

My email is a DOT parkinson AT gmail.com

Also find me on LinkedIn.

Message me on BlueSky @geoblogs

Image: Alice Griffiths

250 000 page views

I always like to mark significant milestones of page views. A little surge of visitors in the last few months across my blogs. Wondering whether it's AI scraping text to train itself...  Thanks for visiting the blog.

LivingGeography - another milestone passed

Thanks to everyone who has visited the blog over the years and/or subscribed to the Substack. I started this blog when I heard that I had got my job working for the Geographical Association as Secondary Curriculum Leader back in 2008. A lot of things have happened since, and millions of words written.

200 000 page views

Good to see another small milestone passed on this blog.

Thanks for reading!

We are all Gravesian

 Earlier this week was Norman Graves' 100th birthday, as mentioned in a previous post.

John Morgan has written a piece on the enduring importance of his work for those involved in curriculum design and teacher education for the GERECO blog. This blog has infrequent posts, but they are always worth reading.

GEReCo is the Geography Education Research Collective / UK Commission on Geographical Education of the International Geographical Union

Members are listed here. Some very well known names there, including former GA Presidents.

New GA Manchester Branch blog

 The GA Manchester Branch has a new blog. I always like to see more people turning to blogging rather than TikTok and the like...

The branch is one of the oldest, and has previously been recognised by the GA for its importance. Manchester also regularly hosts the GA Conference. I've been privileged enough to speak at the branch in the past.

There's a useful calendar of future events and summaries of previous events.

900 posts

I started this blog when it was announced that I was going to become GA President for 2021-22. That was back in 2019 now.

I decided that along with my theme of 'Everyday Geographies' - which continues to be something I use in my work in various ways, I would research every previous President, and then keep it going to profile each President who comes after me.

It expanded into a general history of some key moments as well, and took in readings of all the GA's journals, all the Presidential addresses and several days down in the GA Archive stacks at Solly Street. I shall continue with it, and share important GA news and events, as well as adding biographies of future Presidents.

Thanks for reading....

150 000 page views

This blog has been a labour of love and taken many hundreds (even thousands) of hours over the last five years that it has been taking shape. 

There are now well over 800 posts, and I've referenced hundreds of issues of GA journals and other books and have a fleshed out biography of over 100 GA Presidents.

We've now passed 150 000 page views - another small milestone to have passed. Thanks for your interest, and as always if you have any additional information on any previous (or present) GA President, please get in touch. I'm still always keen to receive pictures taken at previous GA Conferences.

New role... new blog...

As you'll have perhaps seen from a post at the end of April, I'm going to be working as the Vice President: Education of the RGS from June. 

As with any major project that I get involved with, or new role, I've started a new blog. This will track my work over the coming years, and also publicise relevant RGS-IBG activity. 

When I started out on my GA Presidential journey,  I started a blog which now has over 850 posts on it, and includes a biography of every GA President to date as well as much more on the history of the Association and its activities.

No. 1 Kensington Gore is known as "the Home of Geography". 

I've taken that as the name for my new blog, as I'll be visiting more regularly than I have for a few years.

Lowther Lodge has been the home of the Royal Geographical Society for over 100 years. 

You can visit the new blog here. 

Please check back regularly over the months to come...

100 000 page views

It's coming up to five years since I started this blog.

At the time, I had been announcd as the forthcoming GA President and started my year as Junior Vice President (the final person to hold that role for the time being.

The blog has just passed 100 000 page views... which is nice...

The next President to be added will be Hina Robinson, on the 1st of September.

In a month, we will find out who will be her successor as GA President: either Catherine Owen or Kit Marie Rackley.

Update

Congratulations to Catherine Owen.

75 000 views

Thanks for visiting and reading.

If you have any further information on any former President of the Geographical Association, or even the current one, please get in touch.

I am always interested in hearing more information relating to your own experiences of previous GA Conferences (especially from years gone by), CPD events, books of interest, curriculum change and anything else GA related.

800 posts and over 50 000 views

I started this blog in April 2019. It was then that I was able to tell people something that I heard in November 2018: that I was going to be the President for the Geographical Association for 2021-22.

As part of any legacy I might leave after my year in office, I decided to write a biography of every GA President to date, and also to add future Presidents for as long as possible.

Inevitably it was also a biography of the GA as well. I scan-read every single issue of the GA's journals: particularly 'The Geographical Teacher' and 'Geography', going all the way back to 1901.

This was to look for mentions of what Presidents had done before, during and after holding the office. Presidential addresses were also printed for some decades. Many have been lost to history.

At the same time, I also got involved in the Geographer's Gaze project. This involved opening up some of the slides that are in the GA's collection.

I also visited several places connected with the GA.

I was unable to access the GA's archives because of COVID, and have still only managed about eight hours or so in the stacks down in the warehouse at Solly Street.

Please have a look through your photos and see whether you have any from old GA Conferences you attended back in the day... I'll keep the blog going and hopefully get back up to Solly Street some time to continue to fill in the gaps.

Thanks for reading.

Visits have increased dramatically in recent weeks, particularly from Singapore it seems.