Governing Body

The Geographical Association has a number of Committees and Special Interest Groups that provide advice and guidance to the whole organisation.

View full list of Phase Committees and Special Interest Groups.

The Governing Body has overall responsibility for the Association and its current and future well-being. Its role includes the prudent stewardship of financial resources on behalf of the Association, in accordance with current law and its charitable aims.

Governing Body is chaired by the Chair of Trustees.

GA President 2022–23

Alastair Owens began his year as President on 1 September 2022. Alastair is currently Professor of Historical Geography at Queen Mary University of London, where he has worked for much of his career. At Queen Mary, Alastair teaches a range of human geography topics at all levels in the curriculum, including a specialist third year module on Victorian London. He was a previous winner of the university’s Drapers’ Award for Excellence in Teaching. He has undertaken a number of leadership roles across his career including as a Deputy Dean for Education in the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, and he recently completed a term as Head of Geography.

Alastair researches and writes about the historical geographies of Britain since 1800 and over his career has won of £2 million in research funding to support a range of projects working with colleagues within and beyond Geography. His current projects focus on the Church of England’s response to the crisis of the inner city in Britain from the 1970s to the 1990s, and major collaborative study of people’s experiences of domestic life during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Alastair has championed approaches to collaboration in geography and much of his own research has involved collaboration with non-academic partners, particularly museums and community organisations. This has resulted wide-ranging outputs – some of which have won awards – for public audiences, including exhibitions, walking tours, TV and radio programmes, films and learning resources for schools. Outside his ‘day job’ Alastair is a Trustee at the Ragged School Museum in East London and Senior Vice Chair of the Corporation at Sir George Monoux Sixth Form College in Walthamstow.

Alastair has worked with the Geographical Association for a number of years, particularly since his involvement in the reform of the A level geography qualification in the middle of the last decade, where he was associated with developing the ‘changing places’ theme. With Simon Oakes and Emma Rawlings-Smith, he co-authored a book titled Changing Places for the Geographical Association’s Top Spec series. He also works with the PTI (Prince’s Teaching Institute), contributing to development programmes for newly-qualified Geography teachers.

You can follow Alastair on Twitter via @AlastairHackney, where he tweets about geography, food, London, museums, heritage and many other random things.

The Governing Body for 2022–23 is:

Chair of Trustees: Olwen Lintern-Smyth
President: Alastair Owens
Vice President: Denise Freeman
Immediate Past President: Alan Parkinson
Named Trustee, Honorary Treasurer: Bob Digby
Named Trustee: Paula Richardson
Named Trustee: Richard Hatwood
Elected Member: Hina Robinson
Elected Member: Daniel Cowling
Elected Member: Anthony Barlow
Co-option: Sue Holden
Co-option: Alan Brock
Co-option: James Esson
Co-option: Lawrence Bates

Education Group

The role of the Education Group is to uphold the education policies of the GA, and support its strategic plans for high-quality geographical education, offering support and guidance to the Governing Body on priorities for the educational work of the Association.

Education Group creates Communication Boards, Phase Committees, Special Interest Groups and other groupings for specific purposes.