DARG Undergraduate Development Dissertation Workshop- March 21st 2015
Call for Papers ‘Family geographies, care and relationality’ paper session. Young People, Borders & Well-Being
Call for abstracts: The Third University of Leeds Researchers in Development Network (RiDNet) conference
Call for abstracts: The Third University of Leeds Researchers in Development Network (RiDNet) conference will be taking place on the 12th November 2014. The theme of this year’s conference is ‘Does Research Make a Difference in Development? Bridging the gaps between research, policy and practice’ and we are very excited to open up the Calls for Abstracts (attached) to all PhD students and early career researchers across the UK. Deadline for submission for presentation and poster abstracts is 31st August 2014.
Report on DARG-sponsored meeting on The Caribbean Region: Adaptation and Resilience to Global Change by Duncan McGregor and David Barker
Committee Elections – DARG needs you!
Developing Areas Research Group AGM
DARG PG Travel Award
This year’s prize winner is Felicity Butler (RHUL), for her research in Northern Nicaragua on Including Unpaid Labour in Community Fair Trade Products. Congratulations to her: this year’s competition saw a very high-quality list of applications.
One year lectureship in Development Geography
Professor Rob Potter (1950-2014)
As many members may already know, Rob Potter, Professor Emeritus at the University of Reading, and a leading academic in the areas of urban and development geographies, has died. Rob was an active member of DARG, serving on its committee, and co-editing The Contemporary Caribbean (Pearson/Prentice-Hall, 2004) within the Group’s series of regional geography books. Previously Professor of Geography and Head of Department (1994-1999) at Royal Holloway, University of London, he joined Reading in 2003 and later became Head of the School of Human and Environmental Sciences. An elected Academician of the Academy of Social Sciences, Rob was awarded the higher doctorate degree of DSc by the University of Reading for his contributions to the fields of geographies of development and urban geography, with particular reference to Caribbean development studies.
Rob had a long and distinguished research career, with more than 30 books and monographs and over 250 journal articles and book chapters, and was founding editor of the journal Progress in Development Studies from 2001. He also supervised over 30 PhD students, and was in constant demand as PhD examiner, journal manuscript referee and as external assessor for senior appointments both in the UK and overseas. He particularly enjoyed being in the field, whether on undergraduate fieldtrips or in the Caribbean. He had over 30 years’ research association with the Eastern Caribbean, researching principally on urbanisation, housing and planning, but also on, among others, tourism, gender, returning migrants and human aspects of environmental hazard. Rob always insisted on publishing not only in ‘high impact’ international journals, but also in Caribbean journals and other locally-accessible outlets. Even during his illness, he continued working on the third edition of the Companion to Development Studies, which arrived just two days before he passed away. This last publication was a fitting tribute to his contribution to scholarship in, and of, developing countries.
Rob was always very supportive of junior colleagues and especially of women in academia. He maintained high moral standards and was a person with great integrity. He was very fond of his text books and worked very hard in getting them published and they were very successful. He privately and bravely battled with cancer since 2009. He will be greatly missed. If anyone is wishing to make a donation in memory of Rob can do so by sending a cheque made payable to either ‘The Pilgrims Hospice’ Canterbury or the Royal Free Trustees Grant (311) “The Quiet Cancer Appeal” at the Royal Free Hospital, London.
(with thanks to the RGS and Vandana Desai)