Hi, I’m Elsbeth and I describe myself variously as a social
scientist, children’s geographer, Africanist or development geographer
depending on who I’m talking to. And that’s just at work – I juggle various
identities in the rest of my life too. I joined the Department of Geography, Environment
and Earth Sciences at Hull in summer 2013 as a Lecturer in Human Geography. Hard
to believe it’s already been almost a year! As a geographer, I have special interests
in Africa having had the opportunity to work there on and off thoughout my
career since a gap year in Kenya in 1987 straight after my A-levels. My expertise
in children/youth geographies and feminist/gender geographies emerged later but
can probably be traced back to doing babysitting as a teenager and early
exposure to feminist ideas. In my research I embrace qualitative, participatory
and quantitative research methods. So how did I get here?
Well, I began with my first degree (BSc Hons) in Geography at
Durham University (1990) where I thrived in an all-women’s college (Trevelyan,
now sadly mixed but still with intriguing hexagonal architecture).
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Durham Cathedral – awesome to be a student living in a
village with a Norman cathedral in the middle used as the University’s
gathering place for matriculations and graduations
The Durham years included a year studying as an ERASMUS
student at Tübingen University, Germany, and an independent research project in
Kenya on peri-urban land-use transformations back where I’d volunteered in an
orphanage on a former sisal/cattle estate now a resettlement zone. My doctorate
(Oxford University 2002) focused on the work of rural Hausa women in Northern
Nigeria using feminist theories of empowerment applied to socio-spatial
mobilities and inequalities. It was quite a cultural shift being a graduate
student and working in West Africa. To be honest without a Masters degree as a
stepping stone it was a bit of a struggle and I always advise students now to
do a Masters before a PhD as it gives you time and training to be a better
researcher. After five years wrestling with my doctorate in Oxford and Nigeria
it was time to get a job. After 25 applications and 5 interviews I landed 2 job
offers, turned the first one down and ended up as a Lecturer in Development
Studies (within Geography) at Keele University. I was there for a decade after
that (1995-2005). The best bits were leading regular undergraduate fieldtrips
to Kenya and developing research on young people’s caregiving work within the
AIDS pandemic in Southern Africa. I also undertook an MA in Teaching and
Learning in Higher Education (Keele University 2006) – it was fun learning to
teach alongside lots of other young new lecturers from across the university.
The splendid Keele Hall – where I
once enjoyed sherry at a round table on gender issues hosed by the then
Vice Chancellor Prof Janet Finch
Then prior to moving to Hull I
spent more than nine years living in Malawi engaged in a mix of research and
consultancy that gave me chances to work on a variety of projects including a
year as social research officer in Malawi’s leading theatre for development NGO
called Nanzikambe Arts. Now that was even more fun – working with drumming going
on outside my window, attending performances, being involved in the trials and
tribulations of an expatriate-established NGO going through change to being
wholly Malawian-led. My major research engagements in Malawi involved managing the in-country component
of three large multi-country, inter-institutional and inter-disciplinary
ESRC-DFID research grants focussed variously on children/youth, transport,
mobility, mobile phones, food security and AIDS. There’s more detail
about my research projects on my web page http://www2.hull.ac.uk/science/gees/staff/robson.aspx
. While in Malawi I also had the chance to leading the occasional fieldcourse
for UK geography undergraduates to Africa.
Royal Holloway University of London students and
guides at end of a fieldcourse in Malawi, 2013
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I’m trying to maintain my strong
ties with Malawi and strengthening connections between Hull and Malawi. So already
I have three PhD students starting research in October 2014 on colonial
childhoods and caregiving youth in Malawi. A departmental Malawi fieldcourse is
being revived to a field studies centre in the Likhubula Valley at the base of
Mount Mulanje with a batch of third years heading off there in September this
year. Other courses I teach include Children’s Geographies for final year students
and Geographies of Development for first years. For the World Cities course
I’ve also enjoyed preparing a couple of lectures on Nairobi in Kenya where I
spent my gap year in 1985/6 and have visited many times in the intervening
decades.
For the last year or so in my
last lecturing post at Keele I was the only woman academic staff member in the
School of Geography and Earth Sciences. So it’s nice to join a department in
Hull with a better gender balance and current focus on responding to the lack
of women in senior positions through the University’s engagement with Athena
Swan and Aurora initiatives to promote greater gender equity in higher
education. Things have changed a lot from when I was an undergraduate when
there were only four female professors of geography in the whole of the UK. Now
there are single departments with more than half a dozen female
professors……….ours is not one of them L
So there are still glass ceilings in academia for women but if we don’t tackle
them they won’t crack. There are probably less stressful and easier jobs in the
world than being an academic but there’s still plenty of flexibility, academic
stimulation if you like reading and ideas and finding out. Oh and still a few
battles to fight as well.
