Fiona Sheriff and the Open University

Fiona Sheriff is the current Vice President of the Geographical Association. She will take over as President in September 2026.

Fiona has previously shared her journey through the Open University on a LinkedIn post. This sort of detail will probably end up in her entry on the GA Presidents blog - which is a while off yet.

"When I started studying for my A Levels back in 2004 I wasn’t really sure what I wanted to do. Not all of my friends wanted to go to university, and it wasn’t the ‘normal’ thing to do where I lived. A few things happened during my A Levels which meant I missed large chunks of tuition and really struggled catching up. This meant I finished with 2 A Levels and 2 AS levels. My best grade was Geography, and my teacher Anna was so kind and supportive along the way.

Fast forward to mid 2007 and I saw an advert for OU on the TV. 

I knew I didn’t have enough UCAS points for a traditional uni route so looked up the OU, as despite my A level results, I loved learning and felt I wanted to do a degree ‘for fun’.

At the time there were no tuition fees, just course fees for each unit. As I came from a low income family I received financial support which included money to buy a laptop. I think I paid around £500 for my whole degree.

I switched and changed units a fair amount and decided that the ‘open’ route was best for me, so that I could study units which interested me - these just happened to be mostly geographically themed. I worked full time throughout the 5 years I studied for and graduated in 2013 at a lovely ceremony at the Barbican in London.

What did my OU degree teach me?

• Resilience - it isn’t easy studying and working full time! Many an essay was written in small chunks over time (sometimes at 3am!)
• To be adaptable - not everything always go to plan
• To be resourceful - looking further afield than the associated materials, which can be hard when you don’t have a tutor to catch up with in-person
• To be grateful for different education opportunities.
• That anyone can get a degree with the right support. Your A levels do not define you.

18 year old me, with her very short list of A levels results never thought she would be a teacher, head of department, a ‘go-to’ person for geography, an author, a leader of CPD, a Fellow, a consultant or the Vice-President of the Geographical Association .

Without the OU I wouldn’t have my degree and my path would have looked incredibly different. There are routes to higher education qualifications, and sometimes it might seem like a degree is unobtainable. But do check out the OU. I am very grateful for my time studying with them."

This is a great reminder of the value of lifelong learning.

Many previous GA Presidents were connected with universities for most of their careers.

Current ways of studying are very different to back then.

There are also plenty of links with the Open University and the Geographical Association (and the Royal Geographical Society).

One of my first acts when joining the GA in 2008 was to travel with David Lambert to a meeting with the late Clive Barnett and the late Doreen Massey. The other person in that meeting was Professor Joe Smith - now Director of the Royal Geographical Society!

GA Conference 1988

At the LSE...

As previously posted, one of the speakers was Michael Palin.

Hetan Shah - Honorary Vice President

For a period, the GA had Honorary Vice Presidents, and they will also feature on the Blog. The current Honorary Vice President is Peter Jackson, who I will mention in a later post. Their role is advisory and to provide a sounding board for GA activity. They have previously attended meetings of Governing Body. I have previously mentioned Doreen Massey, who had this role.

Hetan Shah was an Honorary Vice President for some years.

Hetan is the Chief Executive of the British Academy, a Visiting Professor at King's College London and Deputy Chair of the Ada Lovelace Institute. 

He served as Executive Director of the Royal Statistical Society from 2011 to 2019.

Doreen Massey - Honorary Vice President

For a while, the GA has had several Honorary Vice Presidents, and they will also feature on the blog as they offer guidance to the Governing Body, which the President serves on as a Trustee and played a part in the history of the Association.

Doreen Massey was a geographical legend.

When I joined the Geographical Association in 2008, my first meeting, even before I started officially with the GA, was at the Open University with Doreen, Clive Barnett and Joe Smith.  I travelled over to the Open University with David Lambert. I remember being particularly excited as I was just about to embark on a new career after 20 years in the classroom and was suddenly in the company of such wonderful thinkers and listened carefully to what Doreen had to say about the way that the OU and the GA could work together - in the end, our plans never quite came to fruition. Joe Smith has certainly gone on to slightly different things in recent years of course... It was such an exciting time for me personally.

Doreen was such a great sport that she also joined in with our Mission:Explore missions at the University of Derby, flicking the V's to Bryan Ledgard.



Doreen went from Manchester High school for Girls to St Hugh’s College, Oxford, where she gained a first in geography, and became more politically aware. Between 1968 and 1980 she worked at the Centre for Environmental Studies, researching into urban and regional problems, and a sabbatical enabled her to study for a master’s at the University of Pennsylvania (1971-72). Doreen was a great fan of Liverpool football club and would no doubt have been celebrating their victory in the Premier league last year.
My review of her lecture at the GA Conference is here. It was a wonderful talk which got rave reviews at the time. (PDF download)

I remember going to see Doreen at the BBC as well, for a recording of the Radio 4 Thinking Allowed programme, with Will Self and Richard Sennett. An edited version of their discussions is available here.

I also had a chat with her when I met her with Margaret Roberts at the Derby Conference. I was wearing a Google T-shirt with a map pin and the words 'I am here'. It remains a favourite t-shirt of mine. She saw it and commented on the fact that noone was really anywhere for very long... this was later the theme of her lecture of course.

She was involved in a little posthumous dispute at the University of Oxford when a picture of her was joined by a picture of another Oxford geography graduate Theresa May. This led to a campaign to remove the picture of Theresa May #notallgeographers
Some people wondered how she would have felt about sharing a wall with a picture of a Conservative PM.
There was a tribute to Doreen at the GA Conference the following year.

Check out Doreen's work. There is plenty to go at with an internet search or two.

There are some YouTube clips where you can hear Doreen speak. A few of them are included below.

I remember hearing of Doreen's death. I was awake early at Rhyd-y-Creuau in March 2016 and the news came up on my Twitter feed... the day started and I took a wander in the grounds and thought about what she had achieved. When I told my colleague Claire she was similarly upset at the news.

References
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doreen_Massey_(geographer)

An obituary in the Guardian: https://www.theguardian.com/education/2016/mar/27/doreen-massey-obituary

RGS Obituary

An obituary by Rob Kitchin. This gives a really full picture of her massive contribution to truly radical geography and deep thinking on space and place in the tradition of David Harvey.

Image: Bryan Ledgard / Geographical Association

Memories of Doreen would be very welcome...