Alumni

T H E A L U M N I N E W S L E T T E R O F T H E D E P A R T M E N T O F G E O G R A P H Y

LANDMARKIssue number 3 Winter / Spring 2009

Department of Geography

Welcome Contents

THE ALUMNI NEWSLETTER OF THE DEPARTMENT OF GEOGRAPHY

LANDMARKDowning PlaceCambridgeCB2 3EN01223 333399www.geog.cam.ac.uk

Editor: Alison HarveyGraphic design & production: James YouldenCover picture: Haut Glacier d’Arolla 1956

Welcome to the third edition of “Landmark”, the alumni newsletter of the Department of Geography at Cambridge. This issue pays particular attention to fieldwork in the department, both past and present, and provides a striking sense of the extent to which the content and location of departmental field trips have changed. Whenever you graduated we hope that through the newsletter you will gain a sense of how we are developing and how we remember ourselves.

Above all the newsletter provides you with a means of sustaining contact with us and those who have graduated from the department over at least the last 80 years.

Professor Richard Smith

Departmental Field TripsTim Bayliss-Smith

Page 1 Issue number 3 Winter / Spring 2009

For those of us in the Department whose recollections extend back to the 1960s, the current annual round of field trips that the De-partment organises represents an

extraordinary revolution in scale, destination and educational purpose. In the Swinging Sixties the average undergraduate would have had the option of one or two day trips organised by lecturers, perhaps to visit Cambridgeshire villages with Jean Mitchell, Breckland heaths with Bruce Sparks, or the Norfolk coast with Dick Grove. However these coach excursions were entirely voluntary and their main attraction was recreational. How else would an undergraduate from the majority male population encounter one of those rare birds from Newnham, Girton or New Hall, without cycling far out of town and being subject to strict rules that resulted in all college gates being shut at 10 p.m.?

In addition there was the mass exercise for all first-year students in the Gog Magog Hills, using plane tables and prismatic compasses for making maps. If you wanted more fieldwork you organised it yourself, either individually for your Part II dissertations (the Regional Essay as it was then called), or in groups that called themselves ‘expeditions’. A student expedition travelling overland to Turkey in an ex-army truck or land rover was thought to be (and often was) very adventurous. The prohibitive cost of flying meant that any destination outside Europe, especially in the remote and mystical Tropics, was almost out of the question.

In addition we heard stories about an older tradition of residential field trips organised by the department. In the 1930s and again in the

early 1950s, according to legend, groups of undergraduates had travelled to Pembrokeshire with Clifford Darby or to Scolt Head Island with Alfred Steers. These trips seemed to have had an almost military flavour, involving long journeys on steam trains, cooking on open fires, and everyone living in army-surplus bell tents. Long before the quantitative revolution of the 1960s these field weeks seem to have lapsed, and it was not until 1974 that my Head of Department asked me if I could revive the tradition by organising a residential field trip to some UK destination in the Easter vacation. ‘Where do you think we should go?’, I asked Professor Darby. ‘Oh it doesn’t really matter, what about Dorset – Thomas Hardy country’, he suggested.

I shared responsibility for that week with Michael Young (cartographer) and we took about fifteen students. In those free and easy days, before the onset of risk assessment and Health & Safety, we hardly bothered to count them. We occupied a rather run-down hotel on the seafront at Weymouth, deserted and out-of-season. It was cold, indeed one day it snowed. In the evenings we carried our pints of Dorset ale from the local pub into the hotel’s derelict Steak Bar to draw up our coastal cliff sections, to crunch quantitative data on primitive calculators, or to collate the 19th century records of births and deaths accessed in the County Record Office in Dorchester. This was the first of the organised departmental field trips in the modern era.

The tradition of an Easter field week grew in the late 1970s and 1980s. David Stoddart began to take groups to the Norfolk coast to measure tidal flows in salt marsh creeks. In 1981 he and I took over the Hut on Scolt Head Island for two weeks, and with the help of a constant turnover of undergraduates we completed a new map of the

island’s geomorphology, resuming the work that Steers, Grove, Peter Haggett (as a student) and many others had pioneered in previous decades. Mark Billinge quickly recognised the changing economics of charter flights, and he organised the first of many Easter vaca-tion trips to Crete. Billinge reported that Crete was seriously tough, one day it had snowed in the mountains, he said, but we didn’t really believe him. About the same time Alan Baker started to take small groups to France for work in historical geography, and Bob Bennett began to visit the Algarve in Portugal. One by one the UK destinations fell away and all the staff began to plan their vacation trips using the Thompson Holidays brochure.

Left: ‘Dick Chorley and fellow geographers do some fieldwork - 1960’s style’.

These overseas field trips became a compulsory part of the Part IB Tripos in 1994. In that year all students went for a week to the Loire Valley (Alan Baker, Phil Howell), the Algarve (Robin Glasscock, Keith Richards), Crete (Mark Billinge, Tom Spencer), or the Netherlands (Michael Chisholm, Andrew Cliff, Stuart Lane), and their projects were assessed. Malta, the Aeolian Islands, Arolla in the Alps, Iceland and Berlin soon joined a long list of rotating destinations. In 2008-09, despite increasing budgetary problems, the department will transport all second years for a strenuous week of fieldwork in the Algarve, Arolla, Dublin, Mallorca or Morocco.

Research training is the new fieldwork agenda: we believe the novel landscapes and cultures to which we expose our students fully justify the large investment of departmental resources. By travel-ling to the Atlas Mountains we have at last broken the bounds of Europe itself, a step into the Third World that hopefully will not be just temporary. The geographer S.W. Wooldridge famously argued in 1951 that “the human geography of Somerset is more interesting and in many ways more significant than that of, say, Somaliland”, but after their experiences in the department I don’t think many of our students would agree.

1 Departmental Field Trips.2 Department News. StaffProfileby Dr Andy Tucker.3 Arrivals. Department Alumni Exhibition4 Arolla Then and Now by Dr Ian Willis.5-6 Geography Field Trips: Days out! by Prof Philip Gibbard. Notes from a muddy lab by Dr Steve Boreham.6 Comparative Colonialism Workshop by Dr David Nally and Dr Steve Taylor.7 Changing Doner Landscapes: Indias Foreign Aid to Africa by Dr Emma Mawdsley.8 Current Research: Turning Green into Gold by Iain Evans. Quaternary Research by Karolina Leszczynska.9 Sub-Zero Teachers by Ruth Hollinger Newnham Geographers Reunion. by Angela Cameron10 What do geographers do after they graduate: Enid Ryall 1941-44. A letter by John I Stansbury 1947-50.11 Supporting the future of Geography: Friends of Geography at Cambridge

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StaffProfile Dr Andy Tucker University Lecturer and Fellow Commoner Jesus College

Andy is one of our newest lecturers, covering for Dr Gerry Kearns who is on

sabbatical leave for a year. However, Andy is no newcomer to the department as he achieved his BA and his doctorate here and then went on to work as an ESRC postdoctoral fellow for a year. We are very happy to still have him around.

Andy lectures on the historical geography of the AIDS pandemic. His research focuses on the construction of queer sexualities and has of late started to benefit from a critical engagement with post-colonial studies, critical race theory and development. A key strand of his work explores the way sexualities, and specifically the social and political visibility of same-sex desires, have been understood and contested among communities with different racial histories in sub-Saharan Africa. His work has led to the recent publication of his book Queer Visibilities: Space, Identity and Interaction in Cape Town (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell). The new Gen-der Studies Centre (see above) recently hosted an event ‘In Conversation…with Andy Tucker’ to discuss his work and his new publication.

September 2008 saw the approval in the Department of Geography of a new

MPhil in Gender Studies and the launch of the Gender Studies Centre, which is funded by Jessica and Peter Frankopan of the Staples Trust. Having secured formal University approval, the MPhil in Interdisciplinary Gender Studies is due to start in the academic year 2009-2010. As of September 2008 twenty-two different departments across the University have committed themselves to contributing teaching to the MPhil. A new Director of the Gender Studies Centre, Dr. Jude Browne, has been appointed to lead on both the new Centre activities and MPhil course.

About the CentreThe University of Cambridge Centre for Gender Studies is a multi-disciplinary centre within the Department of Geography. The Centre’s network of world-class experts from a wide range of fields ena-bles it to facilitate outstanding teaching and research on gender analysis of human society.Spanning a number of critical topics from across the disciplines, from global development and environ-mental change to today’s extraordinary biomedical advances, the aim of the Centre is to increase our capacity for rigorous gender analysis and to promote awareness of its relevance in historic, economic, politi-cal, social and scientific contexts. The Centre runs high profile symposia, public lectures and research seminars, as well as a new multi-disciplinary MPhil and a new distinguished Visiting Professorship Scheme. The Centre also has an unparalleled record of eminent speakers on gender including Nobel Prize

winners Amartya Sen and Shirin Ebadi; academics such as Judith Butler, Onora O’Neill, Conor Gearty, and Carol Gilligan; writers and activists such as Larry Kramer, Nawal el Saadawi, Tariq Ali and Helena Kennedy and scientific pioneers such as Carl Djerassi and Simon Baron-Cohen. See our ‘Events Archive’ for many more.

What is meant by Gender?“Gender” is not a synonym for “women” or “feminism”. It is a concept that refers to the diverse understanding and experiences of all human beings irrespective of their identities or circumstances and is crucial to the analysis of every society.

The Centre’s new MPhil in Multi-disciplinary Gender Studies is currently admitting students for the academic year starting in October 2009. Its aim is to train future generations of academics, social entrepre-neurs, public and private sector officials and business leaders to understand and analyze the multifarious ways in which gender analysis moulds contemporary social, political and economic life.

We are committed to teaching people the skills needed to identify, measure and analyze the gender component of their environment and learn how to cultivate solutions to some of the most pressing global issues facing our societies today.

Centre for Gender Studies

Department News

The Cambridge University Department of Geography was pleased to be ranked firstjointlywiththeDepartmentsof

Geography at the Universities of Bristol, Durham and Oxford in the

2008 RAE Assessment Exercise. The percentages of research assessed were 30% at 4*, 40% at 3*, 25% at 2*

and 5% at 1*. There were 49 Units of Assessment submitted in Geography

and Environmental Studies across UK institutions.

The * rating works as follows:4* Quality that is world-leading in terms of

originality, significance and rigour3* Quality that is internationally excellent in terms

of originality, significance and rigour but which nonetheless falls short of the highest

standards of excellence2* Quality that is recognised internationally in

terms of originality, significance and rigour1* Quality that is recognised nationally in terms

of originality, significance and rigour

John PilkingtonTrinity Hall, 1968–1971

The Department of Geography was delighted to host along with the Cambridge Branch of the Geographical Association,

a talk by one of our more high profile alumni, John Pilkington (on Wednesday 22nd October 2008).

The talk was very well attended with around 60 to 70 people and many stayed behind to chat with the explorer, broadcaster and travel writer.The focus of John’s talk ‘The Heart of the Sahara’ was the cover story for our previous newsletter, documenting his experiences when he joined the camel caravans to make the 700-kilometre journey from Mali’s Taoudenni salt mines to Timbuktu.

We are grateful to John for providing such an interesting and inspiring evening.

Ruth HollingerSidney Sussex 1996 – 1999

After her time here as a geography student, Ruth worked for Pricewaterhouse Coopers and completed an

MPhil in Leadership for Sustainable Development.

In December 2007 - January 2008 she had the opportunity to participate in the Fuchs Foundation Teachers Expedition to Antarctica. Ruth has now moved into teaching and we invited her to talk to our undergraduate students as part of our Teaching Careers Talks. We are extremely grateful to Ruth for taking the time to come along and share her experiences.

You can read more about the expedition Ruth participated in on page 9 of this newsletter.

Department Talks

For more information about Johns talk please visit:

http://www.geog.cam.ac.uk/alumni/talks/2/

2009 ExhibitionThis year we are going to have two main talks here in the Department. You will be able to book for these talks via the Alumni Office, whose brochure will be sent out to you soon. We will not have any tours but we will have another exhibition. Once again we would like to display the biog-raphies of past alumni and if you would like to contribute please do contact us (ac373@cam.ac.uk). Another part of the forthcoming 2009 exhibition will focus on the Centenary of Scott’s ascension of Mount Erebus, which has been recreated by Pro-fessor Clive Oppenheimer, our resident Volcanolo-gist, and a particular research project in Ecuador by Dr Sarah Radcliffe. In the meantime, please see below the talks that we have planned and which will take place on Saturday 26th September in the Department of Geography between 1.30pm and 3pm. We hope to see you there!

The Changing Face of Geography

The research and teaching interests of geography are constantly changing and are particularly closely directed towards major issues that confront soci-ety’s engagement with some of the largest social and environmental problems of the contemporary world. The two lectures that will be given by members of Geography reflect the department’s engagement with population ageing and climatic change.

Professor Richard Smith Head of Geography Department and Professor of Historical Demography and Geography.

‘Sustaining elderly populations in the past, present and future: Some geographical observations’

Professor Smith as well as being Head of department directs the Cambridge group for the History of Population and Social Structure, which is an interdisciplinary research group concerned with measuring and understanding demographic changes over long sweeps of time. His talk will show both how past and present populations have coped with the care of their elderly and consider some of the future problems likely to arise as approximately a quarter of humanity will exceed the age of 65.

Dr Michael Herzog University Lecturer in the Department of Geography.

‘Complexity of the climate system - or the challenge of

modelling across the scales’

Michael Herzog joined the Department of Geography from the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory in Princeton, USA in 2007. His work focuses on one of the biggest challenges in climatic research and involves the understanding of the role of clouds and aerosol particles in determining the climate system.

Department Alumni ExhibitionThe Department of Geography participated for the first time in the University’s Alumni Weekend in September 2008. Professor Bill Adams, as Moran Professor of Conservation and Development, pro-vided a department lecture on ‘The Political Ecology of Conservation’ and the department held an exhibi-tion in the Small Lecture Theatre on Friday 26th September 2008. The exhibition opened with a talk from the Head of Department, Professor Richard Smith on ‘‘The historical and contemporary human Geography of ageing populations’ and from Professor Phil Gibbard ‘‘Is Britain an Island?’ We also held department tours of the laboratories and the library.

As a first time event for us, we felt the day was successful meeting various alumni who had come up for the weekend, although one very valiant alumnus drove from Wales for the day only and whose efforts we really appreciated. Everyone really enjoyed the exhibition, which included dis-plays of photographs from the Geographical Club from the years 1920 to 1938 and a particular tribute display to William Vaughan Lewis (1907- 1961).

We also provided small biographies on many alum-ni who had kindly sent us photographs and memo-ries to share, and these went as far back as 1939. We also provided a display of our postgraduate students’ research as well as a focus on field trips in the department as they are both today and as they were as far back as in the forties. We are very grateful to everyone who contributed to the exhibition and to all those who came along on the day. We do hope that they found it reward-ing and will come along to our next event.

ArrivalsDr Jude BrowneFrankopan Director of the University of Cambridge Centre for Gender Studies and Fellow of Kings College

As well as running the new Centre for Gender Studies, Jude also teaches in the new MPhil in Gender Studies in the Department of Geography. Her research interests include gender, sex segregation, political and social theories of equality, social dialogue, modern economies and capabilities, social and human rights. You can find out more about Jude’s work at: http://www.geog.cam.ac.uk/people/browne/

Dr Andrew TuckerTemporary University Lecturer and Fellow Commoner of Jesus College

Andy gained his BA, MPhil and PhD here in the Department of Geography.

He then worked for a year as an ESRC Postdoctoral Research Fellow. He has recently published his first book ‘Queer Visibilities: Space, Identity and Interaction in Cape Town’ (see page 2 of this newsletter for further details). You can find more information about Andy and his research at http://www.geog.cam.ac.uk/people/a.tucker/

Dr Tim VorleyTemporary University Lecturer and Fellow of Churchill College

Tim is currently covering for Professor Martin for three years. He was previ-

ously at the Said Business School at Oxford and has a PhD in Economic Geography and an MSc in Human Geography. You can find further details on Tim and his research at http://www.geog.cam.ac.uk/people/vorley/

Mrs Lesley Dixon is the Centre Administrator for Gender Studies. Prior to joining the Depart-ment of Geography, Lesley worked as a self-employed technical writer and company administrator. She now has

responsibility for the administration of the Centre for Gender Studies, and is involved in organising the Centre’s public events. For more information on the Centre’s forthcoming events, visit: www.gender.cam.ac.uk

Mr Richard Hill Mr Richard Hill joins the Department as our Accounts Office Manager from the University’s Wolfson Brain Imaging Centre/ Neurosurgery Department. Richard graduated from Goldsmiths

College, University of London in 1999 with a BSc. (Hons) 2:1 in Psychology, and later began retraining in Accounts with an MIAB from the Open University. Since being with the University he has been taking AAT (accounting) exams leading to MAAT qualifica-tion, which he will complete this year.

Miss Fiona Scoble Miss Fiona Scoble is the new Assistant to the Department Administrator. Fiona works part time in the Department and part time as Editorial Assistant at Local Secrets magazine.

Ms Bethan Jones Joins us as Research Grants Administrator

Mrs Sally Knock Joins us as a Senior Accounts Clerk

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Physical Geography and the Importance of FieldworkDr Ian Willis

Geography comes alive in the field. Doing fieldwork is one of the things setting Geography apart from other related disciplines such as Economics, History and Physics. Unfortunately, children in UK schools are increasingly put off Geography because it is seen as “dull”, and this is likely because schools are cutting back on field trips for financial reasons or due to safety concerns. Here in Cambridge, we are not immune to these creeping trends. Although, we hope, our students continue to find our syllabus engaging and relevant, we have, for financial reasons, had to end the specialist field trips that ran each summer for students between their second and third years. In 1985, Keith Richards and Martin Sharp first took such a trip for students specialising in Physical Geography to southern Norway where they studied the hydrology and movement of the glacier Midtdalsbreen.

I first got involved with Departmental field trips as a PhD student when Keith, Martin and I ran another trip to Midtdalsbreen in 1987. Two of the things that people who went on those trips will remember are that it rains a lot in Norway, and that it is very difficult to dry clothes, boots and field equipment when you’re living in two person tents and the sun rarely shines. These points did not escape Keith, Martin and me either, which is why in subsequent years we switched destination to sunny Arolla, Switzerland.

The Arolla trips ran from 1989 through to the mid 1990s and the people who went on those trips will recall ferrying food and equipment from the village of Arolla (2000m) to the campsite (2500m), and spending two weeks working on Haut Glacier d’Arolla helping to measure glacier thickness (with ground penetrating radar), glacier velocity (using a total station), glacier melt (using dowels drilled into the glacier) and a tape measure (for not all field work is high-tech). Also proglacial stream water, suspended sediment and bedload fluxes, and, of course, the infamous dye-tracing experiments.

The Norway and Swiss Trips were different to “conventional” undergraduate field trips because students acted as field assistants to major research projects. Students learnt by actually doing real geographical research. So as well as discovering how glaciers, rivers and various pieces of equip-ment worked (or in the case of the equipment often did not work), they also learnt generic research skills such as the importance of good methodological design, the value of accurate repeated measurements, the need to keep good notes and copy up data each evening, the benefits of preliminary data analysis in the field, teamwork, and so on. In return for being taught all this, Keith, Martin and I (together with other researchers and PhD

students) obtained many valuable data sets that were written up and published in the form of over 100 journal articles and book chapters.

By 2000 research at Haut Glacier d’Arolla came to a natural end and the associated specialist undergraduate field trips died too. But in 2006, the Arolla field trips were resurrected in a differ-ent form. For the last 3 years, the department has taken around 25 students each September for a week’s “conventional” physical geography field trip. Gone are the tents, the camp cooking, the direct link to departmental research, and Keith throwing his flaming trousers into a moulin at the end of each trip; instead we stay in a hotel in the village of Arolla and students venture out each day to undertake guided data collection on the Bas Glacier d’Arolla, its proglacial stream and the surrounding slopes and vegetation. Students learn everything they did during the earlier trips, but the data are written up by students as assessed projects, and will not necessarily make it into international journals.

One of the by-products of undertaking fieldwork in the same place over the last two decades has been the ability to see the effects of climate change, (as shown in the two photos of Haut Glacier d’Arolla below). We have been able to quantify the mass loss of this glacier from various ground based and airborne surveys. Since we first visited the glacier in 1989, the front has retreated ~ 300m, the surface has dropped by an average of ~22m, and ~ 80 million m3 of ice has been lost.

Global warming and climate change are causing large changes to the Earth’s surface. Despite the importance of remote sensing and of numerical modelling, there is a need more than ever for field data to be used along side satellite data and computer models to both quantify recent changes, and help predict the future. It is vitally important that today’s geographers are equipped with the range of skills that can only be learnt by doing fieldwork.

Below: View of Haut Glacier d’Arolla in 1978 (bottom left) and 2007 (bottom right).

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Arolla Then & Now

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compile a report of their findings for assessment as part of their final examinations. Courses like this provide an essential pre-requisite for students planning to undertake practical scientific research for their final-year dissertations.

A similar style of practical excursion for collec-tion of material for later analysis is that for the Part II Quaternary Environments’ students. This excursion led by Dr Steve Boreham takes students to Holme Fen, near Peterborough. In this case the students are shown the particular nature of Fenland environment and especially how to go about the practical task of collecting sediment cores. Again, these sediments are later investigated in the laboratory and the results are reported as a component of the final examination.

A different type of excursion is typified by the second of those for the Part II Quaternary course. This involves a day during which we show the students sediments typical of the East Anglian Pleistocene glacial and interglacial sequence. On this trip we visit the massive coastal cliffs at several sites in north-east Norfolk. These cliffs expose a cornucopia of detail that allow the students to see the evidence for the profound climate changes that characterise the last 2 million years. These excursions, together with several others, combine to offer the undergraduates a chance to see first-hand the elements that combine to form the fabric of the landscape and, at the same time, appreciate the rich geomorphological heritage of our island.

When asked whether they find such trips of value, their response is almost invariably positive. Indeed it is very obvious that they consistently thor-oughly enjoy being outside, and seeing the natural environment in a situation where they are both told what they can see, and at the same time are able to ask questions. In the relaxed group setting in the field where everyone feels at ease, if they do say something ‘silly’ as they might see it, the informal situation means that faulty thinking or just plain messing around will usually pass with a smile and an explanation.

Without doubt fieldwork is fundamental to suc-cess in a thorough understanding in virtually all sub-disciplines of the Geosciences, and in the edu-cation of our undergraduates it is indispensable. Do you remember those days out …?

Funding For Field TripsThe department of Geography runs severalfieldtripseachyear,providingstudents with a calcuable learning expe-rience, sadly funds are running low and unlike the Colleges the Department is very under-funded. If you would like to financiallysupportustoensureweareabletocontinuerunningourfieldtripswe would welcome your help.Please email: alumni@geog.cam.ac.uk

Notes From A Muddy Lab: The Physical Geography Laboratories& Field Equipment ServiceDr Steve Boreham

Above: Chris Rolfe (Senior Research Technician) carrying out analyses using a high-power stereo microscope in the department’s Graduate Microscope Room.

Perhaps one of the things that surprises first year undergraduates and visitors to the department is the size and extent of the laboratories and associated facilities. Much of the lower ground floor in the main Geography Department and a similarly-sized area in the neighbouring William Hardy Building contain a diverse range of teaching and research laboratories. Not that all the laboratories are ‘muddy’ of course, but some have to be. The Soils and Sediments Laboratory provides a space where water, soil and sediment collected in the field, can be examined, measured, and sampled for further analyses. This room also contains the department’s Tilting Flume, an eight-metre long artificial river channel, which is used to investigate river flow and sediment transport. On public open days, I have used the flume to demonstrate tsunami waves, erosion and deposition around river-bed obstructions and the effect of flooding a model Lego village! Adjoining the Soils and Sediments Laboratory is the Furnace Room, where the decomposition of materials heated to temperatures up to 1000ºC can be measured. Nearby, the Malvern Room houses a Malvern Instruments laser particle sizer capable of analyzing the sand, silt and clay content of a sample in less than a minute, and equipment that can determine the magnetic properties and precise digital colour of soils and sediments. Also close by is the Environmental Chemistry Laboratory where water, soil and sediment is prepared for chemical characterization employing a variety of techniques, including analysis using a state-of-the-art ICP (inductively coupled plasma) machine housed in the Instrument Room.

Although it may seem that I have an obsession with understanding the physical and chemical characteristics of water, soil and sediment, there are still some more exciting ways to ‘look-inside’ earth materials to unlock the hidden worlds that they contain. One of these techniques is pollen analysis or palynology. Amazingly, pollen grains

Days out!Professor Phillip Gibbard

Remember when you were a student..? Can you recall those long days of lectures, supervisions and library study of dusty books? Then perhaps you’ll smile when

you think of the relief that came when it was time for fieldwork. Many of you will remember fondly perhaps those residential trips to sunny, Mediter-ranean spots, if you were lucky, or for the older members, shivering on a wind-swept heath or mountain side while the professor attempted to explain the origin of some landform that you could barely see through the mist, will be more familiar! Yes, we can recall these excursions but mostly you will have probably put them to the back of your mind as time has made them a distant memory.

Those excursions of several days duration are not the only travels we now make with student parties. On several occasions through the Tripos, groups leave the safety of the Downing Site to experi-ence the natural environment in the raw, in the field for day trips. Although seeing things in their ‘natural habitat’, as it were, is essential for all, it is the physical geographers who are obliged to go, because the outdoors is the home of physical and biological processes and their products.In the field landforms, coastal erosion and deposi-tion, soil evolution, weathering, river activity, glacial deposits, water and the plants and animals can all be seen within an hour or two’s drive from Cambridge. Their scale, inter-relationships and structure can only really be appreciated and as-sessed in place, and so it is to them we must go if we are to get to grips with understanding natural environmental evolution and indeed the impact of we humans have upon it. For the physical geographical courses, we organise several single-day excursions. Needless to say these excursions are an integral element of the teaching and indeed are intensive both in mental as well as physical terms. For example, for the Part 1b students, a popular option course over the last few years has been the Sediment Description project. For this Drs Tom Spencer, Iris Möller and Steve Boreham take the students to East Mersea Island, south of Colchester in Essex. Here, the Cumore Grove Country Park offers a convenient and pleasant site where low cliffs of Pleistocene sands and gravels, at least 300,000 years old, back onto an extensive clay-floored beach platform. This locality allows the students to get to grips with recording vertical exposures of sediments together with the materials on the beach and foreshore beyond. Here they collect samples for analysis in the laboratory during follow-up practi-cal sessions, and they survey the cliff and beach profile. The aim of these tasks is that the students

Geography Field Trips

faced when dealing with supposedly deviant populations. James Duncan (Cambridge) examined the Ceylonese prison system and the emerging conflict between minimal dietary requirements (defined in relation to Europe) and the need to retain the (colonial) prison as a site of deterrence and reform. David Nally (Cambridge) showed how English Poor Law principles were later embedded within colonial famine policies in the nineteenth century. Whereas English welfare claimants faced strict eligibility requirements, in the colonies the principles of deterrence, regulation and correction developed an increasingly sinister edge as famine relief became a means to ‘improve’ colonial populations in Ireland and India. The papers were followed by lengthy roundtable discussion on the pitfalls and opportunities of comparative approaches to empire.

The Department of Geography, Emmanuel and Fitzwilliam College generously supported the workshop. Over 10 universities were represented with close to 40 participants. A second workshop developing these ideas is planned for the future.

Workshop organisers: Dr David Nally (left)Steve Taylor (Ph.DStudent, right).

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Above: Geography PhD student Dan Friess using the department’s Leica High Definition laser Scanner (also known as ground-based LiDAR) at his fieldsite at Frieston Shore, Lincolnshire.

produced by plants that grew thousands of years ago may be preserved intact within deposits laid down at the time. The highly-skilled process of extracting pollen from unpromising-looking mud takes place in the Pollen Preparation Room, where a sequence of chemical and physical treatments remove the unwanted parts of the sediment,

leaving behind a ‘residue’ containing pollen grains. Once mounted on a microscope slide, the ‘residue’ can be examined using a high-power stereo microscope in one of the department’s microscope rooms, and the pollen grains counted and identified, taking advantage of the extensive pollen reference collection, housed in the R. G. West Laboratory in the William Hardy Building.The application of all these techniques to physical geography is diverse and includes, ancient landscape reconstruction and understanding climate change, glaciology, coastal management, geoarchaeology, vulcanology, geo-chemistry and forensic science. Many of these techniques are

taught to students in the New Teaching Laboratory as part of undergraduate and graduate courses. Often the starting point for these courses is a field excursion to collect samples and data that will later be processed in the department. For some people, a field trip is what geography is really all about. The department’s Field Equipment Service provides support for teaching and research excur-sions. Some of these trips are to local destinations such as Wicken Fen, the North Norfolk coast and Hayley Wood, but many are to more distant places such as the Algarve, the Mediterranean region,

and the Arolla glacier in Switzerland. Apart from the more mundane items of equipment usually associated with physical geography fieldwork such as tape measures, compasses and stopwatches, the Field Equipment Service also has the very latest field apparatus. Modern survey techniques involv-ing Total Stations, dGPS and high-definition laser scanning (HDS) are combined with data-logging, aerial spectrometry, ground penetrating radar (GPR) and a variety of powered augers to provide a robust suite of research and teaching tools.

It is the combination of these field and laboratory techniques with remote sensing, modelling and GIS that constitutes modern physical geography.

Dr Steve Boreham is a geologist, ecologist and forensic palynologist.

The Laboratory and Field Equipment Service team includes Dr Steve Boreham, Adrian Hayes (Senior Technical Officer) and Chris Rolfe (Senior Research Technician).

Workshop presentations fell into three broad categories. A number of papers examined the historical use of comparisons between different places and practices. David Lambert (Royal Holloway), for example, presented a range of re-gional maps, climate data and statistics relating to productivity to show how comparative techniques were used to justify and contest slavery. Drawing connections and comparisons highlighted the differences between free and slave labour across the Atlantic making debate and resistance possible. This theme was developed by Zoe Laidlaw (Royal Holloway), who compared the decision-making practices of colonial bureaucrats. Where colonies had once been governed through the minutiae of accumulated statistics, through ‘colonial tours’ officials were able to draw conscious comparisons with practices in other parts of empire and develop more nuanced techniques of government. Sarah Radcliffe (Cambridge) argued that compara-tive histories and geographies have largely ignored Latin American colonial experiences. This, she suggested, is a significant omission, but one that also highlights the challenges of working in and between different linguistic cultures.

A second group of papers examined how specific colonial settings moulded more generic colonial policies. Two papers, the first by Stephen Legg (Nottingham) and the second by Philip Howell (Cambridge), explored the regulation of prostitu-tion. Focusing on India, Legg’s paper tracked the shift in policy from the segregation of sex-workers to the subsequent suppression of brothels. The development of state-specific policies was found to have developed from measures first developed in Rangoon. Howell examined the connections between British Mediterranean islands, such as Corfu, and mainland Europe. Far from being peripheral colonial locations, these were sites of innovation and refinement which would later inspire practices across the British empire.

A final set of papers explored the contradictions between European liberal ideals and the challenges

Comparative Colonialisms: An Interdisciplinary Workshop9th January 2009

This interdisciplinary workshop aimed to draw scholars into a conversation about empire from a comparative perspective. There is much to be learnt from different colonial histories and geographies about the governance of other peoples, places and resources. An exploration of different spatial and temporal scales, for example, offers the chance to review our understanding of colonial policies and practices not only in the past, but also in relation to the present. Arguably some of the more pressing issues today — including the militarisation of space, the dilemmas of humanitar-ian assistance, gross asymmetries in trade and violent ‘resource wars’ — have a long historical geography that is at least partly reflected in the rise and fall of different empires.

Their recipients, in the meantime, mostly welcome the growing aid flows from China, India and elsewhere – although this has its critics too.

Over the last year I have been leading a wider project looking at contemporary India-East Africa relations. While India’s trade, investment, devel-opmental and diplomatic relations are growing significantly with different African countries, most policy-makers and analysts are consumed by their interest in China. The aim of this project, a collaboration between the British Association of South Asian Studies and the British Institute in Eastern Africa, was to examine in more detail India’s quieter, but growing role in Africa. Amongst the various projects we have supported (from biofuels to Bollywood!), my own has focussed on evaluating India’s aid programme to Kenya.

Traditionally India has focussed its aid efforts not on flows of finance, but on technical training and professional interac-tion. India has supported

studentships in Indian colleges and universities, and training in a wide variety of areas, from agriculture to accountancy. One of India’s major projects at present, which is being pursued through state investment, private sector involvement, and supported by aid, is massive Internet network provision. Increasingly, India is also offering lines of credit – although like the western donors it criticises, some of these are tied to the purchase of Indian goods and services. India’s aid rhetoric is that of mutual benefit and cooperation rather than that of donor-recipient, and it still refers back to the Nehruvian ideals of third world solidarity, even if strategic self-interest cannot be discounted.

How are the ‘traditional’ donors to Kenya responding? Frankly, India is not on the radar – it is all about China. As in other areas of scrutiny of Asia’s deepening relationships with different African countries, India is slipping along more qui-etly in China’s shadow. Indian aid to Kenya hardly compares to that of China or other donors, but it is a part of India’s wider economic and geopolitical strategy for Africa. By unpicking its elements, impacts and discourses, we aim to tease out the less spectacular but perhaps just as important trends and patterns in a rapidly changing world.

Dr Emma MawdsleyUniversity Lecturer and Fellow of Newnham College. Human Geographer with a particular interest in the politics of environment and development

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Above: 10 months ago: Ugandan President Yoweru Kaguta Museveni (L) shakes hands with Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh prior to a meeting at Hyderabad House in New Delhi on April 10, 2008. Museveni is in India for a two day state visit which comes at the conclusion of the first India-Africa Forum Summit in the Indian capital. The two day meeting, attended by leaders of 14 African countries and regional economic groupings, identified food security, high oil prices and climate change as top concerns in a joint declaration as India and Africa pledged to work as partners to solve economic and development challenges.

India has had an official overseas aid programme since 1964. China has been an aid donor since the early 1950s. A number of Arab states have consistently been amongst the more generous donors, both in absolute and relative terms. These are not the images of aid and development that most of the public have when they think about donors. But even western policy-makers and academics (including geographers!) have only relatively recently woken up to the long-standing development aid activities of the ‘non-traditional’ donors (i.e. countries who are not members of the OECD’s Development Assistance Committee). What has changed is the surging interest in ‘China’s rise’, and more generally the growing

attention being paid to the ‘BRICs’ (Brazil, Russia, India and China), to use the Goldman Sachs term. Global power is shifting eastwards, and aid flows are one part of

this changing terrain. Multilateral and bilateral development agencies are now working on various ways of drawing these ‘non-traditional donors’

(NTDs) into their practices and agreements – something

the NTDs are reluctant to do given the institutionally chaotic and politically discredited nature of much of the official (western)

aid architecture; the rhetoric of South-South solidarity; and the instrumental value

of aid in pursuit of their own national interests.

Changing Donor Landscapes: India’s Foreign Aid to AfricaDr Emma Mawdsley

QuaternaryResearchKarolina Leszczynska is in her 2nd year of study supervised by Professor Phil Gibbard

Following my adventure with physical geography and geoecology at the University of Lodz in Poland, I am now

experiencing the bright and dark sides of the Quaternary research, having just started my second year of PhD research in the Quaternary Palaeoenvironments Group in Geography.

My PhD project concerns the Middle Pleistocene (Anglian 420-480 ka BP) deposits of sand and gravel and the Tertiary London Clay bedrock ridge in the Danbury-Tiptree area in Essex, between Chelmsford and Colchester. The aim of the current project is to develop a model for the origin and evolution of the regional landscape in this area, which remains controversial in spite of a series of investigations over the last 150 years. My aim is to establish the relation between the evolution of the Danbury-Tiptree sands and gravels and regional drainage pattern, especially evolution of the pre-diversion Thames River. Understanding the evolution of the area not only assists interpretation of the origin of the ridge form but will clarify the Pleistocene stratigraphy of the East Anglia.

Field data collection is fundamental to this research. Beside traditional methods, such as sections description and logging, more innovative

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is a story of the chicken and the egg, being brave, and cracking open the shell first to see where our chick has come from, and where it may be going.

My research examines the renewable energy sector in the UK, under the umbrella of a new wave of ‘clean technologies’, as a novel perspective into industrial change and innovative technology. Importantly, emerging industries such as renewable energy provide the platform for future economic growth. From a geographer’s perspective, one of the most notable features of this industry is that it appears to cluster spatially. As a result, there is great academic and policy interest in identifying, tracking and explaining emerging technologies and industries.

Our current ideas of emerging industries amount to hagiographic examples such as biotechnology, nanotechnology and dot-com firms that have char-acterised the contemporary industrial histories of successful locations such as Cambridge and Silicon Valley. Although consequential, our understanding of these locations is based on mostly established industries and hence it is extremely difficult to unravel what precursors shaped and characterised the development of these industries. To break into the complex, trans-scalar life cycle, I have begun at genesis.

One major challenge that has stolen my attention of late is the way in which we understand the complex business environment in real terms. What this means requires an engagement with influences from multiple scales and over real-time. This has led me to engage with a so-called

‘evolutionary’ perspective. In this, I can start to examine how firms emerge and develop and are subject to the principles of variation, selection and inheritance. For instance, how clusters with many closely related technologies, potentially inherited from a shared industrial or corporate history, can essentially compete and co-operate with each other, which enhances their ability to survive. The fundamental question therefore is; do certain loca-tions have more ability to adapt to this complex environment and provide firms with the resources they need? This may take many different forms, but from my research to date, it is apparent that the UK government is currently not doing enough to support an innovative, fledgling industry that would enable us to have a secure and sufficient energy source for the foreseeable future.

For the time being, unravelling a method of captur-ing this dynamic and spatially diverse industry is my sole focus, but by the end of my PhD, my aim is that this will represent a new wave of pragmatic research that will co-evolve with a new wave of technology that appears to be sweeping before us. Hopefully I’ll be done in time to see that the chick came from a golden egg!

Iain Evans is in his second year of study and is supervised by Prof. Ron Martin. To find out more about Iain’s work and that of the Spaces of Economy and Society Research Cluster

See; www.geog.cam.ac.uk/people/i.evanswww.geog.cam.ac.uk/research/ses

Turning Green into GoldIain Evans

In a time of economic uncertainty, the focus of many is turning towards (re) building our economy on a solid footing. Gone are the excesses of the 1980’s and booms of the 1990’s, and replacing these is a realisation that future businesses need to be sustainable. Not only in terms of environmental impact, but also economically. This

techniques are used such as ground penetrating radar (GPR) and differential global positioning system (d-GPS). Various laboratory analyses of the sand and gravel deposits are undertaken in the Physical Geography Laboratories in Geography. Chronology is established on the basis of the optically stimulated luminescence (OSL) dating in cooperation with the dating laboratory GADAM Centre in Poland. Field and laboratory methods are accompanied by desk based analysis of the satellite data – a very new and detailed Next Map data provided by the British Geological Survey.

Last term, I intermitted from my PhD to complete an internship with Tarmac. During that period I worked as a research geologist in the Stanway Quarry, Colchester (Tarmac). Having access to resources provided by Tarmac, such as data, laboratories and modelling software as well as field exposures, I defined the internal architecture of the sand and gravel deposits within the Stanway Quarry and established the model of the palaeogeographical evolution of the area. The outcomes of the project not only helped to plan directions of expansion of the quarry and predict scale and rate of change of the reservoir of sand and gravel deposits which are being exploited in the quarry, but also contributed to the general model of the evolution of the Danbury-Tiptree area – the main topic of my PhD research project.

The internship gave me a unique opportunity to gain experience of work outside the University, but also to test the scientific methods in industrial environment and bring the Quaternary science into real life. As a result a strong relationship has been established between Quaternary Palaeoenvi-ronments Group and the Tarmac company.

The picture below presents the main outcome of my research in the Stanway Quarry area.

Figure 1: Palaeoenvironmental model of the proximal fan dominated by gravel-bed streams (after Zielinski and van Loon 2000) overlain on the aerial photo of the Stanway Quarry, Colchester (Tarmac)

Current Post graduate Research in Geography

Ruth HollingerSidney Sussex1996 - 1999

How often have you found yourself staring at an atlas for hours on end, dreaming about visiting a particular place, imagining what it will be like, longing to go there and see it for yourself? Antarctica

was one of those places that had always captured my imagination and I thought I would only ever dream of going.

However, as a secondary school Geography teacher I was fortunate to be selected to take part in the Fuchs Foundation Antarctic Expedition 2007. The expedition marked the 50th anniversary of the first crossing of Antarctica by Sir Vivian Fuchs in 1957/58, himself a graduate of St John’s College, Cambridge where he read natural sciences. I was one of four geography and science teachers selected from hundreds of hopefuls. The aim?... to encourage more young people to take an interest in geography and science.

The challenge began in April 2006 when I was first selected. Over the next 18 months I had to plan a research project, somehow get my mind and body ready to spend a month on the highest, coldest and windiest continent on earth, raise £10 000, and hold down a full time teaching job.I teamed up with Andy Hodson at Sheffield University Department of Geography for my research into the distribution and characteristics of cryoconite holes. These are dark patches which are formed by sediment on the surface of a glacier absorbing solar radiation, warming, and melting into the ice. A second part of my research was measuring the ecological footprint of the expedition which involved documenting everything

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from the number of air miles we travelled to the weight of all the waste we generated during the expedition.

After trialling the science on the Jostedalsbreen Glacier in Norway in August 2007 we set off for Antarctica, via Punta Arenas in Chile. My fear of flying wasn’t helped by the Ilyushin aircraft that transported us to Patriot Hills in Antarctica as it took rather a long time to come to a standstill on the blue ice runway. Once there we pitched our tents (our home for the next 42 days) and ventured out into the vast wilderness.

During my time on the ice I gained an appreciation of the difficulty of conducting scientific research in such a cold environment. All the physical training paid off as we hauled our sledges between field sites but measuring and recording data while wearing huge gloves was at times problematic and frustrating! For me the most rewarding aspect of the expedition was the contact we had with schoolchildren. Technology allowed us to update the expedition website and our personal blogs each day with text and photos. Students were able to email us questions and I even got to speak to my students on the satellite phone.

I strongly encourage my students to visit places and see things for themselves. Somehow, those who do, develop a much greater understanding of the physical and human processes than those who do not have first-hand experience. I feel I have benefited immensely from having this first-hand experience and hopefully I can pass on my passion and enthusiasm for Geography to my students. Since I returned from Antarctica I have talked to many individuals and groups, sharing with them my personal experiences, the highs and the lows. Somehow, talking from personal experience makes them listen more intently and ask more pertinent questions about a globally significant place. The expedition raised lots of ethical questions about should people even visit Antarctica, given my research into the ecological footprint of the

expedition. It is my hope that both adults and children will consider these big issues and see the impact their daily choices have on a continent thousands of miles away. If they do, it is more likely that Antarctica will be left for future genera-tions to enjoy, rather than something they have to dream about and imagine from an atlas.

Ruth received the Ray y Gildea Jr Award from the Royal Geographical Society (in association with IBG) to support her in her research. The expedition was sup-ported by the Scott Polar Research Institute. For further information about the expedition including science reports and teaching resources visit: www.fuchsfoundation.org.uk.

Angela Cameron Newnham 1954 – 1957

On 23rd September 2007, the Sunday of the Alumni Weekend, the seven Newnham Geogra-phers who had all graduated in 1957, met for a noisy lunch at The Garden House, together with spouses, partners and friends including Geogra-phers from other colleges. There had been other reunions at intervals over the previous fifty years so in most cases it was not a shock to meet up again - we did recognise each other!

We were sorry there was not an opportunity in the Alumni Weekend programme to visit the Ge-ography Department, in our day presided over by Professor Steers, but I was delighted subsequently to receive a copy of the first issue of Landmark.

I have memories of fieldwork expeditions to Scotland (with Bruce Sparks) and Norway (with Vaughan Lewis). Newnham Geographer Freshers had trips round wool churches with Miss Mitchell in her open Morris Minor but sadly I have no photos of those visits. Other memories are of the newly founded Explorers and Travellers Club.

Sub-Zero Teachers

Newnham Geographers Golden Reunion

Newnham Geographers; Matriculated 1954, graduated 1957. (Maiden names in brackets) The Garden House, 23rd September 2008

Rosemary Jones (Paul), Felicity Crawley (Bateman), Lady Adrian (Lucy Caroe), Angela Cameron (Twyford), Elizabeth Flint (Clowser), Brenda Hopkin (Clayson),

Jane McDougall (Biggs)

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Enid RyallNewnham 1941 – 1944

Applying for Cambridge in 1941It was my Headmistress at the Government school I went to in the U.K., Kingston-upon-Hull in East Yorkshire, who persuaded my parents and myself that I should apply for Cambridge ---- so off I went by train in March 1941 for the interviews and various written papers. On that journey I met Margaret (now Jones but I cannot recall her maiden name; she was also going up to Cambridge hoping to read science) - we were both fortunate and have kept in touch ever since. Indeed our paths crossed in the 1950’s when she and her husband came to Rhodesia as missionaries (they had previously spent a long time in China - he was a Methodist priest) and for some time she taught Biology at Arundel School where I taught Geography.

In those days one had to pass the Latin ‘Little Go’(?) and also have some proficiency in either French or German in order to read original papers by people such as Vidal de la Blache (?) and We-gener. I had a very sketchy knowledge of French. One had also to do a three-hour practical exam in one of the sciences - I did it in Chemistry in the Cavendish (?) laboratory where Rutherford had split the atom --- what a thrill!!!!! Then there was an interview with Miss Jean Mitchell the Direc-tor of Studies at Newnham --- she showed me a survey instrument, which I had never seen before asking me to tell her how it worked. I was floored and started to make excuses - our school buildings were being shared by another school, bombed out from the centre of town, and we only had half day school, etc., etc. Miss M. just put up her hand to stop me and said, “ I am not interested in what you know Miss Gibbons but how you use what you know - now see what you can work out about this instrument “. Apparently I managed to get something right and was offered a place at Newnham and came to love and admire Miss M. ---- she was a marvellous teacher and a wonderful inspiration to us all as she battled with ill health for much of our time there. By the way I have often used the first part of her words in dealing with pupils in my teaching career - very wise words.

After CambridgeAfter gaining a teaching diploma at Oxford I taught in the U.K. for three years and then came out to South Africa in 1948 to a post in Johannesburg; got married; moved to Rhodesia and taught for 11 years there before returning to S.A. to be Head at St. Cyprian’s for 18 years. I then worked for a short time in the Cape Town University Library (having studied for the Higher Diploma in Librarian-ship through Unisa) before going to take charge of a small school in the Transkei for six years -- finally retiring at the age of 71. I thoroughly agree with Tony Burton that the “polymath of knowledge and an understanding of the complexities of life” gained at

the Geography Department undoubtedly helped in my professional career and still enrich my life. I shall never cease to be thankful that I was given the privilege of studying at the Cambridge Univer-sity Department of Geography.

Shortly after arriving in South Africa to teach at Rodean school in Johannesburg in July 1948 a Geophysical Conference was held in the town and Deb (Prof. Frank Debenham) was one of the delegates and through him I was invited to many of their activities and functions. I was privileged also to meet many famous people---- Dr Leakey, Philip Tobias and Eric Rosenthal being the ones I recall most clearly.

From a letter by John I Stansbury 1947 – 1950

I was offered a place in Geography under dear Prof Deb. As an aspirant Junior School teacher, it proved to be an excellent course.

I was then thrilled to discover that the author of a whodunit I had recently bought, ‘The Cambridge Murders’ by Dilwyn Rees, was none other than my tutor, Dr Glyn Daniel. I still have the book; it is a great read, particularly for Johnians. Glyn was in many ways the hero of his own book.

I thoroughly enjoyed any fieldwork, particlarly the fortnight spent under Benny Farmer in Swansea and the Welsh coal valleys (I still have my notebooks!). The real highlight was the many weeks in the Jotunheim mountains in Norway, with Jean Clark the Leader, in a study of Glacial movement. I was the bloke who made a bit of a hash of the plane-tabling. I still have many of the photos, particularly of Jean as she was nearly killed by a huge rock sliding into her pit; and another when,

roped together on our way across a small glacier, whoops! And Jean disappeared in a snow-covered crevasse! On another occasion three of us, again roped together, slid down a corrie glacier, ice-axes digging-in furiously, only to stop a few feet short of the bergschrund!

It was Benny (Farmer) who persuaded me to become the first President of the Samuel Purchas Society and a couple of years ago I made a special trip to attend the 50th Anniversary Dinner; the 1st Secretary was also there. What a wonderful occasion.

My first twenty years of teaching were in junior schools, so Geography played its part. But in Zimbabwe when I switched to senior schools, Geographers were three-a-penny – so I did a quick swap to mathematics, and spent much of the next thirty years working to ‘O’ level with the slowest streams; a most rewarding period and well worth the effort.

Now as an 83 year old wrinkly the pacemaker ticks away merrily, in tune with the wife’s ditto, in our lovely granny flat in leafy Bergvliet (South Af-rica), just a few kilometres from where I was born.

Note: Since the start of this alumni

project, Enid Ryall and John Stansbury

have found they only live a short

distance from each other and with a

little help from our alumni co-ordinator,

they have become good friends, sharing

many past memories.

Our Websitewww.geog.cam.ac.uk/alumni

The Department of Geography hopes that its alumni will be able

to benefit from this website and our Newsletter.

If you have any interesting stories, facts or history that you

think would be of interest please do contact us.

What Do Geographers Do After They Graduate

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Friends of Geography at Cambridge (FGC)Supporting the Future of Geography

Despite recently receiving top-rated assessments for our teaching and research the financial circumstances of the department are far from healthy. We strain to maintain our library acquisitions and laboratory facilities and the funding of fieldwork, particularly for our students is increasingly difficult to underwrite.

We would be very grateful for any financial assistance that past students of the department might be able to provide. There are several areas for which we have a particular need for financial assistance from our alumni. We desperately need help to build up and maintain the alumni network that has so recently been established. It costs us approximately £2500 to produce one mail out of a hard copy of our newsletter and to dispatch it to all who are on our database.

We have attempted to send the newsletter by email but this only reaches 30 per cent of alumni whose whereabouts we know. We would rather reach all of you than just a minority.

If you would be interested in helping to sponsor our alumni project, which we hope to develop further, we would be grateful for any contribu-tion that you feel able to make. As a sponsor of the project we would also welcome any reactions, ideas and other commitments that you might like to make, in addition to financial help.

If you are interested, please contact our

alumni co-ordinator, Alison Harvey

on 01223 333393 or ac373@cam.ac.uk

and she will be very happy to advise you further.

Alumni

T H E A L U M N I N E W S L E T T E R O F T H E D E P A R T M E N T O F G E O G R A P H Y

LANDMARKIssue number 3 Winter / Spring 2009

Department of Geography