Institute Of British Geographers Research Articles

Conversations in geography: Journeying through four decades of history and philosophy of geography in the United Kingdom

This article offers a critical appraisal of institutionalised knowledge production and exchange on the history and philosophy of geography in the United Kingdom. We examine broad epistemic trends over 41 years (1981–2021) through an analysis of annual conference sessions and special events convened by the History and Philosophy of Geography Research Group (HPGRG) of the Royal Geographical Society with the Institute of British Geographers (RGS-IBG). We show how organisational, sociocultural, and epistemic changes were coproduced, as expressed by three significant findings. Organisationally, the group emerged through shared philosophical interests of two early career geographers at Queen's University of Belfast in 1981 and received new impetus through its strategic plan 1995–1997, which inspired long-term research collaborations. Socioculturally, the group's activities contributed to national traditions of geographical thought and praxis in masculinist academic environments, with instances of internationalisation, increasing feminisation, and organisational cooperation. Epistemically, the group's events in the 1980s shaped contextualist, constructivist, and critical approaches, and coproduced new cultural geography, but the emphasis shifted from historically sensitive biographical, institutional, and geopolitical studies of geographical knowledges, via critical, postcolonial, and feminist geographies of knowledge-making practices in the 1990s, to more-than-human and more-than-representational geographies in the early twenty-first century.

History and philosophy of geography: Looking back and looking forward

This introduction to the special issue Reflections on Histories and Philosophies of Geography discusses the context and content of nineteen articles written to mark the fortieth anniversary of the History and Philosophy of Geography Research Group (HPGRG) of the Royal Geographical Society with the Institute of British Geographers (RGS-IBG). The group was founded in 1981, two years after the early career researchers who set up the group, Richard T. Harrison and David N. Livingstone, published jointly their first critical interventions in support of human geography's paradigmatic shift away from positivism, based on an early form of social constructivist argumentation. We argue that the subsequent proliferation of epistemic pluralism, which is discussed in the contributions to this special issue and has characterised the activities organised by the HPGRG, exemplifies the considerable value of three historiographical practices: first, engaging with the history and philosophy of geography collectively in one research group; second, situating methodologies within the history and philosophy of geography; and third, critically interrogating the discipline's evolving geographical knowledges, professional practices, and material cultures from different authorial positionalities.

Possibilities of population thinking: Histories and futures of Population Geography through reflections on 50 years of the Royal Geographical Society (with Institute of British Geographers) Population Geography Research Group

AbstractReflecting critically on 50 years of the Royal Geographical Society (with Institute of British Geographers) (RGS‐IBG) Population Geography Research Group (PopGRG), and drawing on interviews with leading population geographers of the British Isles, this paper identifies defining features of Population Geography that attest to its longevity: personal connections and material production; fluidity and adaptability over time and through interdisciplinary contexts; and utility, vitality and relevance of the subdiscipline. We argue that continuation of care, material production and nimbleness can sustain the subdiscipline in the context of ongoing neoliberalisation across Higher Education. To remain vital, Population Geography must also decolonise and promote ‘population thinking’ to more boldly and critically attend to contemporary global challenges.

Afterword: Method, voice and politics in the history and philosophy of geography

This commentary reviews the papers in the special issue on the history of the History and Philosophy of Geography Research Group, part of the Royal Geographical Society (with the Institute of British Geographers). It outlines three main themes: methodological approaches in history and philosophy of geography; the need to consider history and philosophy of geography together; and critical approaches and politics. It draws attention to the important work that HPGRG has done during its four decades of existence. It argues for enduring resonances in the history and philosophy of geography around peace, biographies and invisible labour.

How geographic thought happens: The autobiography of a mutable mobile

This article approaches the history of geographic thought through a partial autobiography that covers the last 40 years – a period that corresponds with the existence of the History and Philosophy of Geography Research Group of the Royal Geographical Society (with the Institute of British Geographers). The paper is informed by both memory and a personal archive of material from the mid to late 1980s. The autobiographical material is linked to the places that the author passed through and the ways these places, and the assemblage of people in them, influenced the author's development of ideas around place, mobility and knowledge. In this sense, this is an account of how theory, scholarship and the scholars that produce them arise in networked ways through connections that are embedded in place but are often from elsewhere, traveling through.

John Roundell Palmer, fourth Earl of Selborne. 24 March 1940—12 February 2021

Occasionally, the Royal Society confers a fellowship on individuals not because of distinction in any one branch of science but rather for their contribution to science as a whole. Among that select group of Fellows was John Roundell Palmer, fourth Earl of Selborne GBE DL FRS, who was elected in 1991. A member of the House of Lords for nearly 50 years, a primary focus for his work was the interface between science and technology on the one hand, and policy and legislation on the other. He was elected Chair of the House of Lords Select Committee on Science and Technology twice, being involved in some of the defining issues in the science agenda over those times. His involvement in the horticultural and agriculture business of his family's estate in Hampshire made him aware of how science research could be of great benefit to the agricultural sector and society at large. His interest led to his becoming the chair of the Agricultural Research Council (ARC), where his ability to achieve a consensus between people with diverse views enabled complex projects to progress. He joined the House of Lords in 1971 as a hereditary peer. In addition, he used his skills and wide-ranging interests to engage with a range of bodies across different sectors. He was at different times: President of the Royal Geographical Society (with Institute of British Geographers (IBG)); Chair of the Advisory Board of the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology; Chancellor of the University of Southampton; Chair of Trustees, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew; Master of the Mercers’ Company; member of the Board of Lloyds Bank plc; Chair of Living with Environmental Change; Chair of the Foundation for Science and Technology; and chair or adviser to many other organizations. His contribution to the dialogue between science policy and society was recognized by the award of KBE in 1987 and GBE in 2011.

Presidential address and record of the Royal Geographical Society (with IBG) AGM 2023

AbstractIn the Society's AGM, the President of the Royal Geographical Society (with the Institute of British Geographers) Nigel Clifford offered some thoughts on the current state of geography and the Society. In particular he reflected on the fact that it is a great time for geography and to be a geographer, on the health of the Society, and offered some thank yous and reflections on his upcoming final year.

Presidential Address1 and record of the Royal Geographical Society (with IBG) AGM 2022

AbstractIn the Society's 191st Annual General M, the President of the Royal Geographical Society (with the Institute of British Geographers) Nigel Clifford offered some thoughts on the value of geography today and presented his ambitions for his presidency of the society. In particular, he reflected on the skills that geography provides for all industries and workplaces, and the need to make the Society both more representative of the wider community, and more agile so that it can respond to, and remain relevant within, the changing world that surrounds us.

The global transformation of geomorphology

AbstractThis chapter reviews the various developments in geomorphology in terms of institutions, journals, textbooks, research stations, etc. Among the institutions discussed are the Binghamton Geomorphology Symposium, the Geological Society of America Quaternary Geology and Geomorphology Division, the Association of American Geographers Geomorphology Specialty Group, the British Geomorphological Research Group, the IGU Commission on Measurements, Theory and Application in Geomorphology (COMTAG), the International Association of Geomorphologists, the European Geosciences Union (EGU), the American Geophysical Union (AGU), the International Quaternary Association, and the International Conference on Aeolian Research. Many countries established their own national bodies. A number of new journals appeared, includingCatena,Earth Surface Processes and Landforms,Géomorphologie, andGeomorphology. In addition, during the closing decades of the twentieth century there was a proliferation of textbooks in geomorphology. One development was that geomorphological research was promoted by the establishment of research stations. These permitted long-term monitoring and provided bases for sustained investigations. The study of fluvial processes was much encouraged in the United States at USDA Forest Service research basins (known as ‘watersheds’ in the USA) such as the Hubbard Brook Experimental Forest (New Hampshire), Coweeta Hydrologic Laboratory (North Carolina) and the H.J. Andrews Experimental Forest (Oregon). The Royal Geographical Society (with the Institute of British Geographers) organized ambitious research projects in collaboration with host nations. Various US government departments supported much geomorphological research in various parts of the world. Some European countries fostered overseas geomorphological research and created missions. Notable was the work of ORSTOM (Office de la Recherche Scientifique et Technique Outre-mer) in former francophone colonies. In the post-war years, and as independence approached and then occurred, new universities were established in Africa. These employed expatriate geomorphologists and also trained up a new generation of indigenous scholars. The decades since the 1960s have been a period of space exploration and the development of remote sensing. This has had important implications for geomorphology. The period also saw the onset of the digital age and the beginning of the World Wide Web's influence on teaching and research. Applied research became increasingly important. A major cause for international and cross-disciplinary co-operation during the period was the emergence of geoarchaeology. Finally, since the 1950s, an increasing number of women have made important contributions to the discipline.

The Geography and Education Research Group and school geography: Problematics and possibilities

AbstractThe project facing the Royal Geographical Society with Institute of British Geographers (RGS‐IBG) Geography and Education Research Group (GeogEd), launched at the RGS‐IBG annual conference in August 2019, is for the research group to explore points of connection between geographies of education and the scholarship of geography education, with its focus on geography in education and its practice of attending to questions of curriculum, pedagogy, teaching, learning, and progression. The purposes and scope of GeogEd are described in detail elsewhere in this issue. Suffice to say here that this is a broad and ambitious endeavour and we join others in wishing the research group well. This paper aims to make a contribution by identifying, from the perspectives of the Geographical Association (GA) and the RGS‐IBG, some of the intersections between the work of GeogEd and geography in schools and by shedding some light on the opportunities and challenges ahead. It concludes with proposals for new initiatives for the group to pursue.

Presidential Address* and record of the Royal Geographical Society (with IBG) AGM 2021

In the Society’s second virtual AGM, the President of the Royal Geographical Society (with the Institute of British Geographers), The Rt. Hon. the Baroness Chalker of Wallasey, reflected on her final year in office and hopes for the future. She specifically noted the need for combined efforts to tackle climate change in ways that involve geographers and non‐geographers alike. The President also drew out some lessons from her own experiences, applying them to the COP26 conference in Glasgow (2021), as well as other global challenges that will require geography and geographers to play a key role.

“Archipelagic Rehearsals” – Attemptive Thinking Through Practicing Textual Artistic Research

The article is based on a lecture performance titled “Archipelagic Rehearsals – Abstract as Score” that was presented at the RGS-IBG conference, held jointly by the Royal Geographical Society and the Institute of British Geographers, in Cardiff in 2018. The presentation was an exploration of a possibility to practice, in Édouard Glissant’s terms, “archipelagic thinking” by presenting a lecture with interaction from the audience, as a lecture performance. That “archipelagic experiment” is continued in the article through an attempt to format the performance as an academic text. In turn, the text is an attempt to create new imaginaries and storytelling with Spanish slugs through participatory artistic experimental practice. The writing as artistic practice offers the potential for becoming and as such it is unpredictable in its outcome. The article starts with the author’s framing of Glissant’s poetics and attempts a feminist and more-than-human approach to present the event – the performance of the lecture and the story of the slug in footnotes that were an integral part of the lecture.

Presidential Address* and record of the Royal Geographical Society (with IBG) AGM 2020

In the Society’s first virtual AGM, the President of the Royal Geographical Society (with the Institute of British Geographers) The Rt. Hon. the Baroness Chalker of Wallasey reflected on three ambitions: to improve public health everywhere; to put nature conservation into all decision making as a fundamental requirement of sustainable development; and the central importance of clear communication.

Material memories of travel: the albums of a Victorian naval surgeon

This paper considers the visual archives of maritime scientific exploration, from coastal sketches to ethnographic observation. It focuses on seven albums of John Linton Palmer, a British naval surgeon who served in the Pacific in the 1850s and 1860s, which are today part of the collections of the Royal Geographical Society (with the Institute of British Geographers). Through their drawing, recording and collecting, naval surgeons like Linton Palmer played a significant role in the development of natural history and ethnography during the nineteenth century. The paper discusses the historical significance and potential contemporary uses of the Linton Palmer albums in the context of three forms of memory-making: firstly, the documentation of topographic, antiquarian, ethnographic, microscopic and other field observations by means of drawing; secondly, the assembling of such materials into personalised albums, part of a distinctive nineteenth-century naval tradition by which the experience of travel was re-collected (in the case of Linton Palmer within the scientific culture of late-Victorian Liverpool); and thirdly, the contemporary uses of such forms of visual heritage in a variety of contexts from family history to Indigenous land claims.

Spatial and temporal tourism considerations in liminal landscapes

Anthropogenic geographic studies in tourism should consider the liminality of the experience. Tourism by definition means a temporal and/or spatial movement takes place. How the tourist interacts and behaves during this transitory experience is a logical progression into human leisure behaviour. Several recent international gatherings of geographers provide the foundation to explore liminality in tourism and we build on those papers in this special issue. The papers are varied in geographies, yet have a central theoretical basis in all things liminal. Invited papers in this special issue are founded on the research presented at two international geography conferences in sessions devoted to tourism. The American Association of Geographers meeting in Boston, Massachusetts in 2017 and the Royal Geographic Society with the Institute of British Geographers in Cardiff, Wales in 2018 gathered geographers from around the world to study this theme. The following papers give the most comprehensive geographic review in tourism to date and we encourage additional dialogue.

Presidential Address and record of the Royal Geographical Society (with IBG) AGM 2019

In her first Address as President of the Royal Geographical Society (with the Institute of British Geographers), The Rt. Hon. the Baroness Chalker of Wallasey reflected on the importance of supporting rural communities in the developing world, through education and sustainable employment opportunities, alongside animal and habitat conservation efforts.

The Case of Poland: Encouraging Human Geography through Lesbian Studies

What follows is a direct transcription of the conference paper that I gave during the very prestigious Annual International Conference 2018 of the Royal Geographical Society (with the Institute of British Geographers). It took place at the Cardiff University, Wales, UK, on 28-31 of August, 2018. I gave this presentation within the very same panel session that I organised together with Kath Browne from the Maynooth University in Dublin, Ireland, and Catherine J. Nash from the Brock University in Canada. Our session, which I was also honoured to chair, was titled Engaging Contemporary Sexual-Gendered Realities: Geographies of Feminisms, Sexualities, and Beyond. Five presentations were part of the panel, including mine. The 20-minute paper was fortified with a Power-Point presentation, which, of course, is irrelevant to the purposes of the transcription herein. Even though I have decided to keep the title of this transcription in compliance with the title of that presentation, its potential and meaning is much greater. Thinking of a proper academic article that I could develop based on that paper, I would probably make it a point to emphasise the significance of the intersections between sociology and geography, and how they affect my local ambitions to introduce (into the Polish academia) geographies of sexualities on the one hand and interdisciplinary lesbian studies on the other. The paper presented below reflects on the implications of this experience and stance of mine.

John Innes Clarke OBE, 7 January 1929–3 May 2018

John wrote the first English language book devoted exclusively to Population Geography (1965), setting the agenda for a generation with a focus on “how distribution, composition, migrations and growth of populations are related to spatial variations in the nature of places.” It sold over 100,000 copies and was translated into Arabic, Malay, Orissa and Spanish. His later papers developed themes of scale, population growth, sex ratio, migration and the relation between population and environment. John enjoyed travel and visited 83 countries in all. His research covered many countries in the Middle East, North Africa and West Africa and he had many PhD students from those countries. He edited numerous volumes, often involving international collaboration as he chaired the International Geographical Union (IGU) Commission on Population Geography (from 1980 to 1988) and established a Commission on Population and the Environment within the International Union for the Scientific Study of Population (IUSSP), chairing from 1990 to 1995. From 1990 to 1993 John chaired the International Social Science Council (ISSC) Working Group on Population Data and Global Environmental Change. His low-budget Sierra Leone in Maps (1966) established a much-copied format, and he also edited the innovative laser-printed grid-square atlas People in Britain (1976). In Durham, John established the Census Research Unit, with Dewdney, Rhind, Evans and Visvalingam, initially from 1973 to 1976, but with publications continuing to 1986. After a spell as Acting Principal of Trevelyan College, in 1981 he succeeded his teacher and mentor Bill Fisher (see The Geographical Journal, 1985, 151, pp. 148–149) as Head of the Geography Department. Unlike his predecessor, he served a three-year term and was anticipating the reward of a double sabbatical, but instead was persuaded to accept the appointment as Pro-Vice-Chancellor (PVC) and “Sub-warden” of Durham University. The 196 committee meetings he attended or chaired in 1985 led him to propose a restructuring of PVC duties, with greater division of labour, which was accepted. John was also Director of Development, but had the misfortune to occupy these positions of responsibility during the Thatcher years of cuts in university budgets. John was very active in the Geographical Association, the Institute of British Geographers and the Royal Geographical Society. He was a member of the research committee of the RGS from 1974 to 1981, chaired the RGS Jordan Badia research and development programme from 1991 to 1997, represented the RGS on the British National Committee for Geography from 1976 to 1981, and served as Vice President of the RGS to 1995; he was awarded the Victoria Medal of the RGS in 1991. John was also a member of the Social Science Research Council's Human Geography Committee from 1970 to 1977. He also made a number of radio broadcasts, and was Durham President of the Association of University Teachers between 1975 and 1978. After a second term as PVC of the University of Durham, John retired in 1990 at the early age of 60 and applied his energies to important roles in County Durham. He chaired the Durham and North Durham Health Authorities (1990–1996) and served as Deputy Lieutenant of County Durham: in 2003 he was awarded an OBE for services to the community in County Durham, recognising work for the University, the Health Authority, the National Lottery charity and the County Durham Foundation. John was happily married to Dorothy (known affectionately as Dig by friends and family) from 1955 until her death in 2008, and is survived by their three daughters, and grandchildren. Dig's serious illness in her last 10 years was the saddest episode in a devoted husband's life. Throughout his long and active life John Clarke was above all a very pleasant, likeable and helpful person. He had great influence on population geography and the study of the Middle East and North Africa. John made tremendous contributions to the University and County of Durham. His advice was always welcome, and he remained cheerful and good company to the end, when it was hard for him to bear a steady loss of memory. John was very sociable, an academic leader, an approachable colleague and an influential teacher, and he is missed for all of those qualities.

Stigma and the doomed-to-fail school careers of young people from disadvantaged neighbourhoods

ABSTRACTThe paper contributes to ‘geographies of education’ (Holloway, S., and H. Jöns. 2012. “Geographies of Education and Learning.” Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 37 (4): 482–488), as it presents the typical school careers of students stigmatized in educational institutions because of their disadvantaged neighbourhoods. Drawing on qualitative research with male residents of one disadvantaged neighbourhood in Łódź (Poland), I identify their typical careers as ‘doomed-to-fail school careers’. The paper has three aims. First, it highlights the significance of stigma-based spatially embedded school practices on the educational failure and low-paid employment of students from disadvantaged neighbourhoods. Second, it uncovers forms of school control over stigmatized students and the students’ resistance to these. Finally, I argue that Erving Goffman’s theory of stigma in human geography (Goffman, E. 1963. Stigma. Notes on Management of Spoiled Identity. Englewood Cliff, NJ: Prentice Hall) offers a unique language to describe and explain the spatially embedded educational experiences of marginalized students.

Evolution versus entrenchment: Debating the impact of digitization, democratization and diffusion in the global fashion industry

Abstract In the report The State of Fashion 2017, written by Business of Fashion and the McKinsey Institute (2016), industry executives used three words to describe the current state of the fashion industry: uncertain, changing and challenging. Indeed, the fashion industry is undergoing dramatic transformations, from digitization and the rise of ‘see now, buy now’ fashions, to brands redefining the function and timing of fashion weeks, and increasing levels of global integration and competition (Crewe 2017). As such, the fashion industry has been recognized as a valuable lens through which to explore significant and ongoing changes to the production, curation and consumption of goods, services, and experiences (Brydges et al. 2014; Brydges 2017; D’Ovidio 2015; Hracs et al. 2013; Lavanga 2018; McRobbie 2016; Pratt et al. 2012). Drawing inspiration from this stream of scholarship, we organized four sessions titled Trending Now: The Changing Geographies of Fashion in the Digital Age at the Royal Geographical Society and Institute of British Geographers (RGS-IBG) conference in London, 30 August – 1 September 2017. In these sessions, researchers and practitioners from a wide range of locations and disciplines – including fashion studies, media studies, cultural economics, business and geography – came together to share research related to the structures, labour dynamics, spaces, value propositions and practices of the contemporary fashion industry. While a range of issues were discussed, the sessions were connected by an overarching theme. Namely, the extent to which power in the fashion industry is expanding or consolidating. While there is a prominent discourse that states that structures, systems and spaces within the global fashion industry have been (and will continue to be) disrupted by new actors, technologies, practices and cities, we collectively questioned whether the fashion industry has really entered an era of democratization, or if established power structures remain entrenched. Through empirical case studies from a variety of geographic contexts – from India to Italy – about different actors and activities within the industry, each presentation contributed new evidence and perspectives to this debate. The discussion below distils some of the key themes that emerged.