working together to address global problems: royal geographical society (with ibg) medals and awards...

Working together to address global problems:Royal Geographical Society (with IBG) Medals

and Awards ceremony 2014

JUDITH REES, GEOFFREY BOULTON, HANS ROSLING, SUSAN J SMITH,UMA KOTHARI AND JOHN DEARING

Royal Geographical Society (with IBG), 1 Kensington Gore, London SW7 2ARE-mail: [email protected]

The Royal Geographical Society (with IBG)’s annual Medals and Awards recognise achievements inresearching, communicating and teaching a wide range of geographical knowledge. The speechesand citations are a record of the ceremony of 2014 with comments by Hans Rosling and ProfessorsGeoffrey Boulton, Susan J Smith, Uma Kothari and John Dearing. The speeches encompasscommunicating geographical data, glaciology, environmental change, human geography and globaldevelopment.

KEY WORDS: geography, communication, teaching and learning, geographical knowledge,fieldwork

President’s introduction

P rofessor Dame Judith Rees: Good evening andwelcome to the Society’s medals and awardspresentations. It is a huge pleasure for me to

preside over this ceremony which celebrates theachievements not only of those working directly inour discipline, but also those using geographicalinformation to promote a better understanding of theworld we live in. The awards also for me highlightwhat is good about geography, the diversity ofperspectives and the engagement of the recipients,in their different ways, with some of the majorchallenges of our time.

As was the case last year, we are presenting theawards in three groups and I will be sharing thepresentations with Andrew Linnell, the Vice Presidentfor Education, and John Shears, the incoming VicePresident for Expeditions and Fieldwork. Paul Rose,who finishes his term as Vice President for Expeditionsand Fieldwork, could not join us today, and I want totake this opportunity to thank him for all his hardwork, energy and humour.

First will be the Medals, which I will present.Second will be the Scholarly Awards of the Society.These will be presented by Andrew Linnell. The thirdgroup will be the awards celebrating education andwider public understanding of geography. These willbe presented by Dr John Shears.

The awards will be interspersed with short videos.First we will see some of the wonderful photo-

graphy of our Cherry Kearton Medal and Awardrecipient. At the AGM today, the Society’s new FieldResearch Programme was announced and oursecond video allows us to learn a little about thisprogramme. Finally, the last clip will outline thedevelopments taking place in the GeographicalMagazine.

Each of the medal winners will give a shortacceptance. At the end, the recipient of the MurchisonAward, Professor John Dearing, will give a speech onbehalf of all those recognised.

Before we begin, I would just like to thank the manystaff who have helped to organise this event, and inparticular Rachel Langley and Emma Neave in theDirector’s Office. I also want to thank all the RGS-IBGstaff for their efforts over the last year. As the AnnualReview has shown it was another good year for theSociety and this in no small measure was down totheir hard work and dedication.

Her Majesty the Queen has approved the awards ofour two highest honours – the two Gold Medals ofequal standing. This year the Founder’s Medal isawarded to Professor Geoffrey Boulton and thePatron’s Medal to Hans Rosling.

Founder’s Medal

First the Founder’s Medal awarded to ProfessorGeoffrey Boulton.

Within the field of glacial science, ProfessorGeoffrey Boulton is one of the most influential

bs_bs_banner

The Geographical Journal, Vol. 180, No. 3, September 2014, pp. 281–288, doi: 10.1111/geoj.12106

The information, practices and views in this article are those of the author(s) and do notnecessarily reflect the opinion of the Royal Geographical Society (with IBG).

© 2014 Royal Geographical Society (with the Institute of British Geographers).

practitioners of his generation, having contributedto ‘paradigm shifts’ in our understanding of glacialsediments; quantitative theories of erosion anddeposition; and innovative theories for the develop-ment of ice sheets.

His citation record and numerous awards reflectthis, but what is even more telling is that it is rare tofind a published paper on these topics, or a readinglist for any course on cold climate geomorphology,that do not cite his work. Current generations followand test concepts set out by Geoffrey Boulton. Evenin retirement he is still pushing frontiers: usinggeophysics beneath an Antarctic ice stream to observethe process of drumlin formation.

Geoffrey has held numerous influential appoint-ments as scientific advisor in Westminster, the ScottishParliament and Europe; and served as Chair of theRoyal Society Science Policy Centre and as VicePrincipal at the University of Edinburgh. His awardsare equally numerous and include an OBE, FRSE andFRS.

Professor Boulton is recognised today with theFounder’s Medal for his contributions spanning fivedecades in the development and promotion ofglaciology.

Professor Geoffrey Boulton’s acceptance speech

President, Fellows of the Society, I am deeplyhonoured and absolutely delighted to receive thismedal, although I am bewildered to find my namealongside those of earlier recipients of a gold medal,whose discoveries have contributed so much tounderstanding the Earth. I was relieved however tofind that my path has crossed with many of them.Examples include Roderick Murchison (1871medallist) who initially funded the Regius Chair ofGeology at Edinburgh that I held for 20 years;Nordenskiöld (1869 medallist) who was the first tosail through the Northeast passage, the anniversary ofwhich was celebrated by a Swedish expedition in1980 in which I took part; John Murray (1895medallist), principal scientist on the ChallengerExpedition which laid the foundations for the scienceof oceanography, and who founded the marineresearch organisation which later became theScottish Association for Marine Science of whichI am the current President; and MiezyslawKlimaszewski (1978 medallist) with whom I shared abunk in a small trapper’s hut in northern Spitsbergen.It was a very small bunk, so I am glad that we did notshare it at the same time. He lay in it in 1938 and Iin 1968. I am also glad to see more recent names ofmany friends that I have worked with and learnedfrom.

Although many early medallists discovered newplaces and new peoples, that were at least new tothem, and new phenomena, the age of great discoveryhas not passed. It has evolved in purpose and process,

though the inspiration remains the same. The equi-valents of individuals such as Murchison, Norden-skiold and Murray are the large internationalgroupings that collaboratively unravelled the humangenome, that established the reality of plate tectonics,and that created our understanding of long-termclimate change. They live in a technologicallyinterconnected world in which collaboration comesabout naturally, so that when scientists speak of thingsthat ‘we’ have done, it need not only be the ‘we’ of theimmediate research team, but is often the ‘we’ of aninternational community that works together inaddressing global problems.

So what about the ‘we’ of which I have been a part.What have ‘we’ discovered? We discovered thatemerging theories about the form and flow of icesheets could be used to reconstruct former ice sheets.We discovered that ice sheet flow is massivelyenhanced when it flows over soft sediment rather thanhard rock, producing fast-flowing streams of ice thatare the critical determinants of ice sheet dynamics,their response to climate change and their impacton sea level. We discovered that past ice sheetshave fundamentally influenced modern groundwatersystems and their chemistry. And we discovered howsediment deformation and subglacial hydraulicscombine to generate the drumlins that dominateancient glacial landscapes. And in doing so, we havealso had a lot of fun!

But there is also a lesson in this potted history. Fortyyears ago, those of us that studied the climate systemhad long hair and very colourful socks. We wereregarded as irrelevant, but harmless. But serendipitousinvestment in our curiosity-based research revealedprocesses that have fundamental implications for thefuture of the planet and its inhabitants.

The modern explosion of data and information andtheir instantaneous communication are now creatingopportunities and challenges that make the opennessthat I have benefitted from seem backward andinadequate. Open sharing of data in unprecedentedways is changing the social dynamics of science, withthe potential to make science a truly public enterpriserather than one conducted behind closed laboratorydoors. Although some object to these changes,they should beware of naughty old Max Planck’scomment, that ‘science advances one funeral at atime’.

So if I could again be the 15 year old who caredfor little else than climbing mountains, the openingup of the modern world of science is one wheremy reincarnated self might have experienced evenmore stimulation and more fun than the originalversion, and I would certainly hope that he wouldsympathise with the way the original revelled inMark Twain’s sentiment that science gives ‘suchwholesale returns of conjecture for such triflinginvestment of fact’.

So, thank you RGS-IBG. Thank you very much.

282 RGS-IBG Medals and Awards ceremony 2014

The Geographical Journal 2014 180 281–288 doi: 10.1111/geoj.12106© 2014 Royal Geographical Society (with the Institute of British Geographers)

Patron’s Medal

Judith Rees: Now, the Patron’s medal which this yearis awarded to Hans Rosling for the contributions hiswork has made to the understanding of the worldthrough geographical data.

Co-founder of Gapminder, Hans Rosling ischanging the way very significant numbers of people,from academics to governments to NGOs, studentsand, importantly, the public access data. Throughanimated statistics and interactive graphics he helpspeople to understand how the world is changing. Hiswork epitomises the encouragement and promotion ofgeographical science, by a non-geographer.

Hans has become a world known public speaker onglobal trends. Regularly featured in the media, and atinternational meetings including the World EconomicForum, United Nations and TED conferences, he hasrevolutionised the way we look at data on worlddevelopment.

Gapminder has been particularly influential inschools. Working with teachers, in the UK andbeyond, Hans has showcased the potential of theGapminder programme to engage teachers andstudents alike, making clear the nature of unevendevelopment, to enable comparisons betweencountries, or the progress on development indicatorsthrough time.

It is my pleasure to invite Hans Rosling to receivethe Patron’s Medal for the encouragement and deve-lopment of the public understanding of geographicaldata and influencing decisionmakers across theworld.

Hans Rosling’s acceptance speech

The Patron’s medal is kindly awarded to me for myefforts to convey a fact-based world view. It istherefore most humbling to know that my impactremains very modest. Ignorance regarding basicglobal development trends is widespread as revealedby Gapminder’s web-based pilot-surveys among thepublic in Sweden, Norway, the UK and the USA.

The fact that the number of children below age 15in the world has stopped increasing is only known by6–11% of the public in these countries. That thepercentage of people experiencing extreme povertyhas been halved in the world over the last 20 yearsis known by 5–23%. That 80% of the childrenworldwide now get the basic vaccines is known byless than 20% in all the countries studied. It is ofspecial interest to note that the low proportions ofright answers emerged from multiple choice questionswith three widely different options. Had a group ofChimps been asked to pick an answer, 33% would getit right at random. In other words we are not facing alack of knowledge about the state of the world. Aknowledge rate far below random can only be

explained by ignorance based on preconceivedconcepts and decades of failure to respond to how theworld is changing.

In Gapminder’s educational material the world isdivided into four regions of similar size. We start bytelling that, of the now seven billion people in theworld, one billion people live in the Americas, onebillion in Europe, one billion in Africa and four billionin Asia. Fast population growth is projected to be overby the end of this century, when this happens therewill be no more billions of people in the Americas andEurope. But there will be four billion people in Africaand five billion in Asia. So of a total of around 11billion, 80% of the World population will be living inAsia and Africa. The centre of global trade will be theIndian Ocean and the Atlantic will become backwaters. London will for most people be seen as aremote, but (I am convinced) attractive touristdestination.

How do we know that the fast population growthwill come to an end in this century? Well in 1968when Anna and Paul Ehrlich wrote The PopulationBomb, each woman in the world had, on average, fivebabies. Today the world fertility rate has fallen to 2.5babies born per woman. But there is one importantvariation. About 80% of all people live in societieswhere two-child (or less) families are most common.However, for the 20% who continue to live in extremepoverty, a fertility rate of four to six is a prominentfeature. An end to extreme poverty can now beachieved within two to three decades. Provision ofcontraceptives to all women is one of the importantinterventions to end extreme poverty.

My impression is that the continued use of thedichotomous description of countries as developed ordeveloping is the main reason for our failure toupgrade general knowledge about the major globaltrends. So let us start to either divide the countries intogeographical regions or to use four or more groups forsocioeconomic development. In other words, the timehas come to convey a fact-based world view.

Medals awarded by the Society’s Council

Judith Rees: We now turn to the Victoria Medal, BuskMedal and Cherry Kearton Medal and Award,presented by the Society’s Council.

Victoria Medal

Professor Susan Smith is this year’s recipient of theVictoria Medal. Professor Susan Smith is known forher work in social geography and particularly housingmarkets.

Professor Susan Smith’s research has set agendas forthe study of race, crime, health and housing. It hashad a significant influence on geography, but alsosociology, economics and housing studies. Her work,which has been funded through a series of prestigious

RGS-IBG Medals and Awards ceremony 2014 283


awards, is characterised by theoretical sophisticationand empirical rigour. She has published more than 15books and 50 articles, including the recent seven-volume International Encyclopedia of Housing andHome, for which she is Editor in Chief.

Now Mistress of Girton College, Cambridge, Susanhas also made contributions to research management,strategy and assessment. Susan’s work has receivedwidespread recognition and awards; she is a Fellow ofthe British Academy. Her career to date has beencharacterised by huge energy and achievement,shaping human geography in the UK and wellbeyond.

I am very pleased to invite Professor Susan Smith toreceive the Victoria Medal for conspicuous merit inhuman geography.

Professor Susan Smith’s acceptance speech

It is a pleasure and a privilege to accept the VictoriaMedal, which this year is awarded for conspicuousmerit in research in human geography. I am parti-cularly honoured to embrace that mantle, havingfound inspiration throughout my career in humangeography’s attention to space, scale and interdi-sciplinarity. But, if there is a substantive thread thatruns through my work, it has to do with the affront ofinequality.

The equalising forces of civil rights, social contractsand welfare states were fading well before my earlyresearch exposing the racisms underpinning resi-dential segregation. Through the penetrating lens ofcritical social geography, emerging city structuresproved not to be the dying breath of old oppressionsbut rather the impetus for a new politics ofcontainment. Geography was as important as historyin testifying to this.

Spearheaded by the UK, a U-turn to inequalityprovided the backdrop for my later work on the healthselectivity of housing systems. This geographical takevalorised a then unpopular explanation for healthinequalities. Yet the myriad exclusions and expulsionsit implied still underpin the contrasting health profilesof owners and renters in tenure-divided societies, andof the neighbourhoods they occupy.

Human geography’s concern with the intricacies ofscale has inspired my more recent work on theuneven integration of housing, mortgage and financialmarkets. Here I have argued that home life – the art ofdwelling – forms a precarious interface betweenordinary economies and global financial flows. Thereare geographies of astonishing carelessness inscribedon these sites.

Importantly, however, these dislocations form newplatforms from which to resist the incivilities ofneoliberalism. I have always been energised by thelocation of human geography in a space betweendisciplines, where specialisms collide and paradigmsshift. In these ‘spaces of connectivity’, there are not

only accounts of the shape of the world today, but alsovisions for a better tomorrow.

For me, engaging with the anticipatory, indeed nor-mative, edge of human geography is our one hope ofchallenging the relentless inequality that my researchaddresses.

Finally, I note that all my work is delightfullycollaborative. I could not therefore accept this medalwithout acknowledging the important contributionthat colleagues, friends and family have made to mythinking over the years.

Busk Medal

Judith Rees: Professor Uma Kothari is recognisedwith the Busk Medal for her overseas research indevelopment and migration studies.

Professor Uma Kothari has established an inter-national reputation for critical geographical researchin development studies. Widely recognised as theleading geographer in this field she has examinedtopics ranging from informal sector production; togender and employment; to migration and diaspora,with fieldwork in India, Mauritius, Seychelles, Spainand more recently Australasia.

Her widely cited book Participation: the newtyranny? broke new ground. Uma has forgedinnovative agendas, drawing on fieldwork in diversesettings abroad, to make key interventions that haveshaped how geography as a discipline thinks aboutdevelopment issues.

It is my pleasure to invite Professor Uma Kotharito receive the Busk Medal for fieldwork in theunderstanding of global development.

Professor Uma Kothari’s acceptance speech

I feel immense pride and honour at receiving thisaward for my contribution to understandings of globaldevelopment and am enormously grateful to theSociety and to those who nominated me for thisrecognition.

I am passionate about geography, a disciplinewhich has thoroughly shaped my academicengagement. And, geography has also shaped mypersonal history. My parents migrated to Britain in the1950s. In 1956, during their annual leave, theybought a Morris Minor and travelled overland to Indiathrough Europe and Africa. They said they wanted toexplore the world and have an adventure. Thisenthusiasm to see and understand the world has had ahuge influence on me.

My interest in global development began early onand has remained the focus of my academic work forover 20 years. Much of this work examines thehistorical legacy of contemporary inequalities and thevaried strategies adopted by marginalised people todeal with these conditions. One significant strategy to



move out of poverty is transnational migration, whichhas been the focus of other research that exploresthe consequences of migration for the formation ofdiasporic identities, for those left behind, and for thesocieties through and to which migrants move. Interms of fieldwork, much of this has been carried outon small island states in the Indian Ocean.

More recently, I have begun to examine howpopular representations of global issues shape publicperceptions and motivations for charitable giving.Since the 1980s, there has been a vast proliferation ofcharity campaigns, musical movements, fair trademarketing and celebrity endorsements to supportdevelopment goals. Such practices are immenselypowerful in framing public opinion and my researchinvestigates their potential to forge new kinds oftransnational alliances and solidarity.

I have collaborated with many inspiring andmotivated individuals over the years and in acceptingthis medal, I would like to acknowledge theirinvaluable contributions to my work. In particular, theinimitable Professor Nina Laurie who has encouragedand supported me over the past 20 years and mycolleagues at the Institute for Development Policy andManagement, University of Manchester. I also want tothank my parents who believed travel to be the bestform of education and my sisters who continue toshare the journey; a warm embrace to my sons Jay andKim who from a young age travelled with me far andwide, gradually making sense of, and delighting in,the connections between different people and places;and finally, my partner Tim Edensor, also a passionateand committed geographer, who taught me to look allaround and not merely straight ahead.

Cherry Kearton Medal and Award

Judith Rees: The Cherry Kearton Medal and Award ispresented to the distinguished Danish photographerand film-maker, Jens Bjerre, for his photography ofpeoples across the world.

A Fellow of the Society since 1948, and now inhis 94th year, Jens’ lifetime work as an independentfilm-maker, photographer and anthropologist hassignificantly increased our knowledge of indigenoussocieties, especially in Africa and most poignantly ofthe Kalahari Bushmen. His celebrated and sensitivework, presented in numerous films and exhibitions,in five books and lectures worldwide, has alsodocumented societies that have experienced dramaticchanges, such as in China where he was one of thefew Europeans to gain access during the CulturalRevolution, and in India. Filming entirely on his own,his work has captured not just a record for posterity,but also the feelings of individuals, communities andsocieties, their ways of life, customs and ceremonialrites, during a critical period of change in the secondhalf of the twentieth century. His work provides alasting insight into the geographical and ethno-

graphical history of the peoples, places andenvironments in which he has worked and willbecome of even greater importance to the studies ofgeographers, anthropologists and other area specia-lists over the coming decades.

It is also with great pleasure that I thank him and hisFoundation for the generous donation to the Society,this past week, of his key films and photographs fromall four corners of the world. The Society is proud tobe the custodian of such an important collection, forposterity, and we will treasure it.

I now ask Jens Bjerre to come to the stage andreceive his award, after which some of his images willbe shown.

Jens Bjerre1

Thank you, GodYou created the EarthAnd let me travelAnd see it all:The oceans – the mountainsThe silent desert – the jungleThe stars – the moonThe wisdom in old eyesThe grace of animalsAnd you let me hear:The tales from old peopleThe song of birdsThe laughter of childrenI sensed the peaceIn the glow of setting sun.

The President: We shall now have a short interludein which we show a small selection of Jens Bjerre’simages.

Awards of the Society as recommended by Council

Scholarly Awards

Andrew Linnell: We now come to the ScholarlyAwards of the Society as recommended by theSociety’s Council. This year’s recipient of theMurchison Award for scholarly publications,Professor John Dearing, has been judged to havecontributed most to the understanding of environ-mental change.

For over 30 years, Professor John Dearing has beenstudying lake sediments to reconstruct environmentalchange. In particular, he has developed the use ofphysical and chemical analyses of lake deposits asreliable indicators of erosion processes, sedimentsources, hydrological events and atmosphericpollution. A key pioneer in the use of mineralmagnetic techniques, his work has shaped theapproaches used widely today. Having published arich body of more than 100 academic papers, his



work is notable not only because it is at the cuttingedge of the discipline, but also because these papershave influenced international programmes andphysical and social scientists alike.

It is with great pleasure that I ask Professor JohnDearing to receive the Murchison Award.

The Murchison Award is one of the most seniorAwards and Professor Dearing will return to the stageat the end of the awards ceremony to speak on behalfof all the award recipients.

The Back Award is presented to Professor DavidGibbs for his research contributing to thedevelopment of environmental and economic policy.

Professor David Gibbs’ research on sustainableregional and city economies in Europe, Asia andNorth America has been internationally influential forurban and regional policy. His work has that very rarequality in that its importance transcends academicdebate; it has made a substantial contribution tonumerous policy organisations, such as the OECD,the European Commission, the Centre for LocalEconomic Strategies and the Local GovernmentAssociation.

His publications span a range of top rankedgeographical journals, and those in other spheres,particularly energy and business, which illustrates thetruly interdisciplinary and collaborative nature of hiswork. David’s research has influenced scholars andpractitioners across a number of different subject andpolicy areas.

I now ask Professor David Gibbs to come to thestage and receive his award.

The Gill Memorial Award for potential shown instudies on gender relations is awarded to DrKatherine Brickell.

Dr Katherine Brickell’s work on gender relations inrapidly changing communities focuses primarily onCambodia, where she has established an innovativeprogramme of empirical research using participatorymethods, with excellent partnerships with academicsand NGOs. Still in the early stages of her career, she hasalready attained a strong record of research funding;published an impressive number of papers in leadingjournals which are shaping current thinking; and hascontributed to real debates with policymakers.

I am delighted to present Dr Katherine Brickellwith the Gill Memorial Award for the great poten-tial she has shown and on which she is alreadydelivering.

The Area Prize, which will be presented at theSociety’s Annual Conference in August, has beenawarded to Dr Thomas Birtchnell, University ofWollongong, Australia, for his paper ‘Fill the ships andwe shall fill the shops: the making of geographies ofmanufacturing’.

We will now have a short interlude to hear moreabout the Society’s new Field Research Programme –Migrants on the Margins. In an exciting newdevelopment for the Society, this field research

programme will study an issue of global importance –the migration of people to some of the world’s poorestand most vulnerable cities. These are some of the mostimportant and least studied migration patternsworldwide; their impacts are predicted to worsen aspopulation grows and the impacts of climate changeare increasingly felt.

The field project, which will run for three years,from 2015 to 2018, will focus on six rapidly growingcities in Africa and Asia. The interdisciplinary researchteam, working with international partners and theSociety, will study the impacts on the migrants and thecities, and how the migrants and cities might respond.

Awards for teaching and engaging the public

John Shears: Good evening. I am John Shears, theincoming Vice President for Expeditions andFieldwork.

I have the great pleasure of presenting the awardsthat celebrate excellence in the public understandingof geography, in teaching and learning, and in thosesupporting expeditions and fieldwork.

The Ness Award for popularising geography and theunderstanding of Britain is presented to Nick Crane.

Over many years Nick Crane’s prodigious, high-quality output has done an enormous amount toengage the British public with geography. Nick is oneof a handful of trained geographers to have a publicface on television, and a rare champion of geographyin that medium. Best known for the popular series‘Coast’, which first aired in 2005, and more recently,‘Town’, which is now in its third series, Nick has alsowritten and presented several other programmes. Hiscareer as an author has been just as prolific andsuccessful, with a string of books that range from thetales of his adventures in the remote corners of theworld in the 1980s and 1990s, to the epic north–southwalk across Britain and, more recently, a number ofsemi-biographical books on key figures in the historyof geography and exploration, including Mercator.

I am delighted to invite Nick Crane to accept hisaward.

The Taylor and Francis Award is presented to DrRichard Harris for excellence in the promotion andpractice of teaching quantitative methods.

Dr Richard Harris is author of the text Statistics forgeography and environmental science used widelyacross the UK and beyond. He is also principalinvestigator of two recent ESRC-funded projects and aNuffield Foundation Q-Steps initiative to supportundergraduate learning of quantitative methods,collaborating with colleagues across the UK. Thiswork makes connections between schools, univer-sities and employers. Richard has accomplishedthis alongside undertaking a rich body of researchinvestigating the application of spatial statistics andgeo-demographics. This promotion and practice ofquantitative methods in teaching and learning,



combined with his membership of bodies currentlyreviewing the curriculum in both schools anduniversities, means that Richard has and willinfluence many generations of geographers and thegeographical skills they will learn.

I am very pleased to invite Dr Richard Harris toaccept his award.

I would like to invite Neil Ackroyd, Acting DirectorGeneral and Chief Executive of the Ordnance Survey,to present this year’s two Ordnance Survey Awards.

Nick Ackroyd: Thank you, it is a great pleasure to behere. The two Ordnance Survey Awards are presentedto Dr Simon Oakes and Elizabeth Phipson forexcellence in geography education at secondarylevel.

Dr Simon Oakes’ thoughtful and academicapproach to teaching reaps huge rewards in hispupils. He epitomises the bridge between secondaryand higher education. His A Level students areencouraged to think holistically and critically aboutthe world, and he always helps them to see therelevance of the subject. In his wider support for theteaching community, Simon is well known and highlyrespected for sharing his knowledge through hisregular writing in A Level journals and in the teachingresources that he has prepared, including those for theSociety’s website ‘Geography in the News’. He alsosupports examining through his close links withEdexcel and the International Baccalaureate, and iscurrently Chief Examiner of the InternationalBaccalaureate geography syllabus.

Elizabeth Phipson is being recognised for hercapability and dedication to field teaching,specifically at the Field Studies Centre Blencathrawhere she is based, and more generally in supportingthe training for geography fieldwork across the FieldStudies Council as a whole. Elizabeth ensures thatgeography fieldwork remains relevant, innovative andchallenging, and has demonstrated a rare capability towork with groups from different backgrounds andwith different abilities on a weekly basis. Her fieldteaching is recognised as being knowledgeable,enthusiastic and innovative, as well as pedagogicallysound, as demonstrated by the level of demand for hercourses.

I welcome Dr Simon Oakes and Elizabeth Phipson toreceive this year’s Ordnance Survey Awards forexcellence in geography education at secondary level.

John Shears: The Geographical Award recognisesthose who provide excellent support for expe-ditions. This year it is awarded to Jamie Buchanan-Dunlop for supporting school students in learningfrom, and being inspired by, expeditions.

Jamie is being recognised for his company DigitalExplorer, which provides excellent geographical andcitizenship learning by creating collaborationsbetween scientists, explorers, teachers and pupils.This links the frontiers of field science live toclassrooms in schools, and supports that in many

different ways. These include creating engaging andcurriculum-relevant resources, organising schoolvisits from scientists and explorers, and practicaltraining sessions for teachers. By sharing the scientificinvestigations and the expedition journeys of a fewpeople with thousands of school children, Jamieopens up new worlds to inform and inspire youngpeople. His achievements are many and include livevideo conferences between Antarctica and the UKclassroom, the first remote satellite broadcasts from aUK youth expedition back to a classroom, andadvocacy for oceans in the National Curriculum. Iwould like to invite Jamie Buchanan-Dunlop toaccept his award.

This year the recipient of the Alfred SteersDissertation Prize for the best undergraduatedissertation submitted for a first geography degree isJonathan Collings, from the University of Manchester,for the study ‘Not so radical after all? “Walking to NewYork” as a psychogeographic experiment’.

I welcome Jonathan Collings to accept his award.As I leave the stage, the last of the video-clips this

evening will profile some new developments in theGeographical Magazine, which the Society will betrailing in the autumn with Young Geographers andoverseas Fellows and members. We plan to makeavailable the developments to the whole membershipin 2015.

Judith Rees: The last two awards are those ofHonorary Fellowship of the Society. These areawarded in recognition of outstanding service to theSociety and/or to the discipline of geography.

This year we have two recipients of HonoraryFellowship, Stephen Henwood and Michael Jackson.

Stephen Henwood joined the Society’s FinanceCommittee in June 2006 and has served as HonoraryTreasurer for six years, from June 2008 until today,when his term of office comes to an end.

His commitment of time has been extraordinary;not only to his Treasurer role, but also to associatedpositions on the Enterprise Board, Investment Sub-Committee, the Executive Committee and as a Trusteeon the Council.

But Stephen’s contribution has been so much morethan the time he has given. Effective chairmanship,wide business experience and acumen, judgement,and solid enthusiasm and support for the Society andall its work have been brought to bear with greateffect. Stephen has played a vital role in helping tosteer the Society through its challenging issues overthis period and in ensuring that a medium-term viewto financial management has been taken. He has donethis with good humour and sound judgement;Stephen has been a pleasure to work with.

Michael Jackson has given tremendous support totwo of the Society’s new public engagement projectsin the past five years. He has brought his airlineindustry expertise to bear in the early stages of the



development of the Hidden Journeys project and,more importantly, has been a lynchpin in thedevelopment of the Discovering Britain programme ofgeographical walks. Mike’s interest in walking and theoutdoors meant that he became one of the first, andmost productive, of the programme’s volunteersupporters. To date he has created more than tenwalks in eight counties, all of which have beenbeautifully researched. He has also developed atoolkit for other walk creators and, during the pastyear, has been mentoring new walk creators. He hassupported the staff team in advising how bestto embrace digital technology and developdemonstration ‘Apps’. Above all, his enthusiasm forthe project and the team has shone through.

I am delighted to invite Stephen Henwood andMichael Jackson on stage to receive their awards.

It is with great pleasure that I now ask ProfessorJohn Dearing to return to the stage and to respond onbehalf of all the Award winners.

Professor John Dearing’s acceptance speech

Madam President, Madam Director, ladies andgentlemen, I am very pleased to have the honour ofthanking the Royal Geographical Society (with IBG)on behalf of my fellow award winners. It’s a proudand memorable day for all of us.

The awards demonstrate the huge appeal andrelevance of geography today. At its roots, geographyis the means to learn about the workings of thephysical environment and global societies – soexcellence in teaching and communication are to behighly prized. At my north London grammar school,my most inspirational teacher was Mr Woods thegeography teacher, to whom I owe a great debt ofgratitude. But I was also strongly motivated by an Alevel residential visit to Preston Montford Study Centrenear Shrewsbury. It is therefore a great privilege to beable to share in these awards with three teachers –celebrating the energy and innovation that JamieBuchanan-Dunlop has brought not just to a singleschool but to large youth audiences; and the ability ofSimon Oakes to bring his research experience into theclassroom; and the work of Elizabeth Phipson in theField Studies Council bringing field teaching toanother generation of students.

In terms of communicating our subject, Jens Bjerre’slifetime activities of documenting and filmingtraditional societies will surely provide a legacy thatbecomes more valuable as time passes. To my mind,the sheer pleasure that Nick Crane’s TV programmesand books have brought would be worth an award onits own. But beyond the pleasure, he’s also fed thecuriosity of countless children and adults alike – soessential for raising the public awareness of our

natural landscapes. And in the awards to MichaelJackson and Stephen Henwood we see the continuityin the activities of our national geographicalinstitution that has provided a key focus for the subjectover 180 years.

Geography also provides the framework forresearching the knotty problems that the world facesin the twenty-first century. Jonathan Colling’sdissertation prize underscores the originality and skillthat typifies so many of our undergraduates inuniversities up and down the country. KatherineBrickell’s research in low-income countries shows theimportant links between geographical research andthe work of non-governmental organisations. AndRichard Harris’ contributions to quantitative researchmethods underline the range of techniques andmethods that geographers often have to use in order toconduct interdisciplinary research, exemplified inDavid Gibb’s research into the links between theenvironment and economics.

My own research also started by combiningtechniques and methods in ways that at the timeseemed quite odd. But magnetic measurements – oflake sediments – proved a good way to reconstruct thehistory of soil erosion. My recent research has usedthese long-term perspectives to address the problemof environmental degradation. We need to understandthe underlying dynamics of our modern systems if weare to manage them successfully. We need to be ableto answer questions like: ‘how can we judge whethercurrent trends of degradation will actually underminea society’s ability to continue to use the ecosystemsand resources that it depends upon?’. Working inplaces like Bangladesh and rural China forces one tograpple with the unprecedented speed of change, theenormous pressure on the natural environment andthe real risk of environmental or social collapse. Inthis context, it is truly humbling to receive theMurchison Award and to know that one’s peersbelieve that the research you do might make a smalldifference.

Finally, a big thank you to all our families, friendsand colleagues in the UK and elsewhere who haveprovided support for our work in so many differentways – and to reiterate our thanks to the RGS-IBG forthese awards.

Judith Rees: To conclude this event, I would like toadd my own personal congratulations to all therecipients of the RGS-IBG Medals and Awards for2014.

Note

1 On collecting his award, Jens Bjerre read a poem that he hadcomposed for the occasion.



working together to address global problems: royal geographical society (with ibg) medals and awards...

Documents