Dr. Graham Humphrys was the Head of the Geography department and previously sub-Dean of the Faculty of Economic and Social studies at the University of Swansea.
He served as the Chair of the GA's Publications and Communications Committee during the late 1970s and into the 1980s.
In this capacity, he wrote reviews of quite a few publications which were published in GA journals - have been looking at journals from this period to try to get some images.
He also edited and wrote or co-wrote a series of books related to his geographical work, which included economic and industrial geography and heritage a subject about which he was obviously passionate according to this account of an event in the year 2000.
He was an expert on Swansea and Cardiff's industrial heritage and the restoration of old industrial landscapes and gave regular talks on this theme.
His fieldwork excursions publications series ran to several editions and were a good seller as well apparently.
A special edition of 'Teaching Geography' in 1986 was all about economic and industrial geography, and Humphrys contributed to this, as well as other journal articles on this theme as part of his Presidential year.
He is also remembered here, from a former student who remembers his lectures on industrial change and the development of the S Wales area as a city region.
Graham's GA Presidential Address was on a theme which has gained recent currency: 'Changing Places'.
The idea of Changing Places is now more significant than it was back then.
He served as the Chair of the GA's Publications and Communications Committee during the late 1970s and into the 1980s.
I was unable to find a decent image of Graham, close-up. When I first started the project I did come across a small image on a Flickr account by Tehmina Goskar.
She sent me the image here and told me:
It's not that high res but in the photo he is talking about the Lower Swansea Valley Project which was one of the first post-industrial reclamation projects.
The symposium took place in November 2010 at the National Waterfront Museum, Swansea. All the best with the project.
Tehmina
Tehmina
From the GA Annual Report of 1983:
Dr. Graham Humphrys completed six years as Chairman of
the Publications and Communications Standing Committee. Under his chairmanship this
committee has been responsible for the recent surge in GA publications and the organisation
of successful national and regional conferences.
In this capacity, he wrote reviews of quite a few publications which were published in GA journals - have been looking at journals from this period to try to get some images.
He also edited and wrote or co-wrote a series of books related to his geographical work, which included economic and industrial geography and heritage a subject about which he was obviously passionate according to this account of an event in the year 2000.He was an expert on Swansea and Cardiff's industrial heritage and the restoration of old industrial landscapes and gave regular talks on this theme.
Graham contributed an article on Swansea Bay City to the 'Geographical' magazine in 1971.
A special edition of 'Teaching Geography' in 1986 was all about economic and industrial geography, and Humphrys contributed to this, as well as other journal articles on this theme as part of his Presidential year.
He is also remembered here, from a former student who remembers his lectures on industrial change and the development of the S Wales area as a city region.
Graham's GA Presidential Address was on a theme which has gained recent currency: 'Changing Places'.
The idea of Changing Places is now more significant than it was back then.
In his Address, Graham explored the factors that influence places.
A former student, David Herbert reflected on that time and his influence here:
I was away from the Department of Geography for six years during which time I completed a PhD at Birmingham University and had my first academic appointment at Keele University. During the early summer of 1965 a post of Lecturer in Human Geography was advertised at Swansea and it was suggested that I should apply. This I did successfully and after a semester at Toronto University I returned to Swansea in the Autumn of 1965.
My former teachers were still there but there had been new arrivals, most notably Graham Humphrys, the first South Wales-based staff member. His interests were in Economic Geography focused on South Wales and often his concept of the Swansea Bay City.
At Swansea University, Graham was following on from the legacy of W. G. V. Balchin.
I was born in 1934 in the town of Maesteg in the middle of the South Wales Coalfield.
Humphrys, G. (1972) South Wales: An Industrial Geography, David and Charles, Newton Abbot.
At Swansea University, Graham was following on from the legacy of W. G. V. Balchin.
In 2015, a journal article said:
Graham Humphrys has degrees from the universities of Bristol, McGill and Swansea, and is a former Senior Lecturer in Geography and former Dean of the Faculty of Social Sciences at Swansea University. His research interests focus on economic geography, the environment and geographical education. He is currently acting chairman of the Canadian Studies in Wales Group.
Updated February 2021
Thanks to Richard Daugherty for putting me in touch with Graham, who provided the following significant personal details to add to the post:
I went to the local Grammar School and then in 1953 I won an entrance scholarship to Bristol University to study for an Honours Degree in Geography. In my second year Bill Birch, one of my lecturers, persuaded me to take out a student membership of the Geographical Association.
I graduated in 1956 and then spent a year working at the McGill Subarctic Research Laboratory in Schefferville, northern Quebec to start working towards a Masters degree. The next two years I was at McGill University in Montreal as a Teaching Assistant and finishing my M.A.. As part of this I spent the summer of 1958 in the West Indies looking into the alumina industry in Jamaica, Trinidad and what was then British Guiana. I also visited the research centre that McGill had in Barbados. I gained my MA in 1959 and was then appointed as an Assistant Lecturer in Geography at Edinburgh University for the academic year 1959-60.
In 1960 I was appointed as an Assistant Lecturer in Geography at Swansea University.
I gained my Ph.D. in 1967, and then stayed until I retired as a Senior Lecturer in 1997.
My Head of Department at Swansea was Professor W.G.V. Balchin who was a keen member of the GA and very active in the Swansea GA Branch. (He served on the GA Council from 1949 until 1976, was a Trustee 1955-76, and President in 1971.)
I re-joined the GA as a full member when I came to Swansea, and was active in the local Branch until the early 1990s. I was a Committee Member throughout that time, and at various times I was Chairman and Secretary of the Branch. During my career I gave lectures at other Branches whenever I was invited. I also contributed to various GA publications. In the early 1970s I was one of the leaders on two field excursions to North America for Geography Teachers organised under the GA banner.
The first was Trans Canada in 1971 and the second down the western Cordillera in 1973. (Bill Balchin and Alice Coleman were the main organisers for both and I think they may have been based in the Isle of Thanet GA Branch).
I was elected as an ordinary member of the GA Council in 1976. The GA at Headquarters was reorganising at the time and in 1977, much to my surprise, I was invited to Chair the newly formed Publications and Communications Committee. (The Honorary GA Secretary for that committee was Michael Williams).
At the time he was in the Education Department at Manchester University but subsequently he was appointed to a Chair in Education in Swansea where he still lives. We met regularly until the lockdown.
The Publications Committee was worked hard. The GA urgently needed a publications policy which it did not have previously, and this had financial implications. For example, there were shelves stacked with unsold publications which, if my memory serves me rightly, went back to pre-war days. Until then decisions on occasional publications were very ad hoc which had resulted in further accumulation of unsold stock. I also remember that there were decisions to be made to get Primary Geography published.
Fortunately the Headquarters staff provided tremendous support. They were very professional and well organised and got through an enormous amount of work. I stayed as Chairman until 1983 but remained on the Council until my year as President : 1987-8.
During my year as President it was the GA’s turn to Chair the joint meetings of representatives of British Geography organisations. At the time the three main national organisations were the RGS, the IBG and the GA, but there were others on the committee representing the Heads of University Geography Departments, The Royal Society, The Royal Scottish Geographical Society and so on. By the end of 1988 it had been decided to reform the Committee into The Council of British Geography which I believe still meets.
My involvement with the GA reduced after my year as President. At the Swansea level, restructuring of local schools had reduced the number of geography school teachers involved and it was difficult to maintain a programme. By this time there was little support for the local GA from the staff of the University Geography Department. I was away from Swansea for a couple of semesters in the 1990s, at Rhodes University in South Africa and at a University in Hokkaido and the Swansea GA Branch faded away, which was very sad.
To end on a more cheerful note. Swansea did make a useful contribution to the GA at the local and national level in the second half of the twentieth century, with three national Presidents - Bill Balchin, Richard Daugherty and me, and an Honorary Secretary – Michael Williams, and three of us are still here.
All happy memories.
Good luck with your year as President.
Thanks so much to Graham for sending that through.
References
HUMPHRYS, GRAHAM. “Japanese Industry at Home.” Geography, vol. 80, no. 1, 1995, pp. 15–22. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/40572605.
HUMPHRYS, GRAHAM. “Japanese Industry at Home.” Geography, vol. 80, no. 1, 1995, pp. 15–22. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/40572605.
https://ucl.scienceopen.com/hosted-document?doi=10.14324/111.444.ljcs.2015v30.002 - from 2015
Humphrys, Graham. “Changing Places.” Geography, vol. 73, no. 4, 1988, pp. 298–307. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/40571462.
https://www.iwa.wales/click/2010/11/making-our-past-work-for-the-present/
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/240442920_The_economic_development_of_the_British_coal_industry_From_industrial_revolution_to_the_present_day
Humphrys, Graham. “Recent Trends in Industrial Geography.” Teaching Geography, vol. 11, no. 3, 1986, pp. 120–121. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/23751638
Humphrys, Graham. “Changing Places.” Geography, vol. 73, no. 4, 1988, pp. 298–307. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/40571462.
https://www.iwa.wales/click/2010/11/making-our-past-work-for-the-present/
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/240442920_The_economic_development_of_the_British_coal_industry_From_industrial_revolution_to_the_present_day
Humphrys, Graham. “Recent Trends in Industrial Geography.” Teaching Geography, vol. 11, no. 3, 1986, pp. 120–121. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/23751638
Humphrys, G. (1972) South Wales: An Industrial Geography, David and Charles, Newton Abbot.
https://collections.swansea.ac.uk/s/swansea-2020/page/on-our-doorstep - memories by David Herbert, who was associated with the University of Swansea for over 40 years.
Coates, Bryan E., et al. “Annual Report of the Geographical Association 1983.” Geography, vol. 69, no. 2, 1984, pp. 167–175. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/40570820. Accessed 8 Nov. 2020.
Updated December 2020
In 2003, Chris Kington asked a number of former Presidents what had sparked their interest in geography. He lent me the letters and here is the response that Graham sent. At the time he was living in Swansea.
He talked about the place in which he was born and grew up in: Maesteg, and how he came to appreciate the importance of the physical geography of this place on the people who lived there, and the rise of the coal industry He didn't appreciate this until he got into the 6th form of the local Grammar School.
"What made this all click academically was good teaching. I had two good geography teachers, a man who taught physical geography and a woman who taught human geography...."
The regional distribution of Growth Industries in Britain, Geography, V 39, 1964.
Industrial change; Lessons from South Wales, Geography, V 61, 1976
What University Geographers expect from their new students, Teaching Geography, V 3, 1977
Patterns on the map: Land utilisation survey maps as resources for teaching and learning, (with Alice Coleman, H. A. Sandford and J Bale), Geographical Association, Sheffield, 1982.
Trends in Textiles, Geography, V. 69 (2), pp. 150 ‑ 153, 1984.
Recent trends in Industrial Geography, Teaching Geography, V. 11, No. 3, 120 ‑ 121, 1986
Thanks to Chris Kington for the loan of the letters.
As always. further memories of Graham Humphrys would be welcome.
Updated August 2025
Graham also received the RGS Gill Memorial award in 1994.
