2024 GA Conference Resources Online

If you’ve never been to the Geographical Association's annual conference, it’s a wonderful two or three days of CPD in university facilities and, of course, outdoors. It’s also a great opportunity to network with colleagues from around the country and I’d highly recommend it.

I have been attending the GA, on and off, for more than twenty years and presented on a few occasions. Most memorably, I invited representatives of the Office for National Statistics (ONS) to talk to teachers and year 12s (‘future geographers’ at the conference) about how the census is designed. My intro was about the way in which we as geographers don’t question quantitative data enough. I focused on the issue of what is often termed ‘women’s work’ (childcare etc.) and how this isn't counted as being 'economically active' even in the census - a dig which, to be fair, they took in good part!

If you can’t get to the GA during the Easter holidays, which has been the case for me when full-time in the classroom, it’s worth knowing that many of the presenters share their resources on the GA website after the event. Even if you were there you can’t attend all of the sessions. So, fanfare, the 2024 Geography for Everyone conference materials are now online.

My first downloads this morning were:

• Brendan Conway’s excellent resources about how and why to teach about the Paris 2024 Olympics

• Fiona Sheriff’s session on facilitating inclusive fieldwork in an area of deprivation, which will strike a cord with all those who have taught about local ‘deprived neighbourhoods’, only to subsequently find some students in the class call it home

• David Alcock’s research into ideas of ‘human progress’ in secondary geography which chimes with me and the idea of hope in geography in schools.

Finally, a plug for a session I did get to in person: ‘Are you a fan? Expert insight into offshore wind in the UK’ by Marianne Anton, of the law firm Watson Farley & Williams, included so many great visual images that anyone teaching the Resource security A-level topic should go get them!

The GA’s 2025 Conference will be at Oxford Brookes University with the theme Connected Geographies. Want to get involved? You have until 31 August 2024 to propose a session for next year. More details are here.

Resources from previous GA Conferences are also still available here, including my co-authored sessions presenting with the ONS in 2018.

Freebies are great, aren't they? But we're lucky to have such an engaged and engaging subject association so don't forget to join the GA if you haven't already!

And finally, you can calculate the value of your own un-paid work with this handy ONS calculator.