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

Alice Coleman's Centenary

There is a separate post for Alice Coleman on the blog.

This year marks the centenary of her birth.

See later update.

Image source: https://hummedia.manchester.ac.uk/institutes/mui/sius2014/LorettaLees_SIUS.pdf

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1468-2427.12047

In an article in 'The Guardian' in 2019, Lynsey Hanley (author of the excellent 'Estates') talks about Alice's contributions to improving people's lives and campaigning against concrete tower blocks. 

I am reminded here of some classic schools' TV programmes from the 1980s set in Glasgow - part of the 'Geography Casebook' and looking at the problems of the city's redevelopment, with Kitty Murphy describing how it used to be in the tenements they replaced with the streets "so warm and good".

https://theconversation.com/tower-block-boom-how-high-rise-apartments-became-the-height-of-luxury-56178

Source:

https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2019/feb/28/delicate-sense-of-terror-what-does-concrete-do-to-our-mental-health 

More to come as the Centenary gets nearer.

UPDATE

Sadly we heard of Alice's passing in May this year, just before her 100th birthday. 

A celebration of her work is in the Summer 2023 issue of GA Magazine.

Sir Clements Markham - a detour

While researching the early period of the GA, the name Clements Markham kept appearing.
He was not particularly linked with the GA, but would certainly have spent some time working with other GA Presidents.
The first pictures shows Markham aged 25, when he was elected to the Royal Geographical Society. At the bottom is a picture of him later in life.
It's a reminder of the close links between the GA and the RGS (later the RGS-IBG) which have persisted from the early meetings of the GA, and the use of RGS premises following the war.
Clements Markham was the Honorary Secretary of the RGS from 1863-1888 and later President for a further 12 years.
The Royal Society provides further details on his impressive geographical credentials:

He was mainly responsible for organising the National Antarctic Expedition of 1901–04, and for launching the polar career of Robert Falcon Scott, who named a peak Mount Markham in Antarctica in his honour.

Markham began his career as a Royal Naval cadet and midshipman, during which time he went to the Arctic with HMS Assistance in one of the many searches for the lost expedition of Sir John Franklin. 

Markham served as a geographer to the India Office, and was responsible for the collection of cinchona plants from their native Peruvian forests, and their transplantation in India. By this means the Indian government acquired a home source from which quinine could be extracted. 

Markham also served as geographer to Sir Robert Napier's Abyssinian expeditionary force, and was present in 1868 at the fall of Magdala. 

The main achievement of Markham's RGS presidency was the revival at the end of the 19th century of British interest in Antarctic exploration, after a 50-year interval. He had strong and determined ideas about how the National Antarctic Expedition should be organised, and fought hard to ensure that it was run primarily as a naval enterprise, under Scott's command. To do this he overcame hostility and opposition from much of the scientific community. In the years following the expedition he continued to champion Scott's career, to the extent of disregarding or disparaging the achievements of other contemporary explorers. 

He was also linked with the Hakluyt Society.

This film from the BFI shows the visit of the President of Peru to the RGS, and laying a wreath at Markham's memorial outside the entrance.

References

Image credit - public domain
http://www.npg.org.uk/collections/search/portraitExtended/mw08208/Sir-Clements-Robert-Markham

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clements_Markham

https://makingscience.royalsociety.org/s/rs/people/fst00055875 - Royal Society
https://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/details/r/2898f105-6ee9-4a79-8554-b01a8b5a3c51

Memorial - image taken from Dr. Ursula Rack's blog https://arcticandantarctic.wordpress.com/2018/05/10/fellow-of-the-royal-geographical-society-in-london/