An Interview with Alex Jeffrey Interviewed by Kia Taylor-Powell

What is your favourite aspect of the role as Undergraduate Director?

It’s fantastic to have a sense of overview of the tripos. It’s great to confront with students some of the challenges that we face and think about the big questions that shape the tripos. Like any geography teaching programme, it’s shaped by the world that we live in. Great challenges that the world faces are reflected in the tripos teaching. This is something I really relish.

What are your plans for undergraduate geography studies at Cambridge?

It can be covered by the phrase, a healthy and welcoming tripos that is relevant to the world in which we live. It’s a privilege to follow on from Harriet and the work that she did on the tripos. I don’t envisage, at the moment, revolution, but more thinking through what opportunities exist and how to make sure that the struggle is inclusive, and the workload is healthy and manageable. It shouldn’t be a test of endurance but something that everyone can engage in. The welcoming part is thinking about accessibility. One aspect that drew me to Cambridge was the college system. The college system allows us to think about admissions and how we manage admissions, and how we reach out to communities that haven’t historically participated as much in the tripos. How can this be encouraged and developed through direct action, policies, and initiatives. I’ve been really struck by the good work that is going on, as well as the opportunities that Cambridge has as a wealthy and historic institution to innovate and take risks, thinking about what more can be done.

What has been the biggest challenge you have faced in academia?

I think the biggest challenge that anyone faces working in a research-intensive university is balancing between different parts of the role. One contradictory force that exists within our role is that we are expected to produce world leading research whilst also teaching on undergraduate and postgraduate programmes and taking on roles like director of the undergraduate programme. Balancing all of that can be difficult when they have different timelines and pressure points.

More importantly they have the same pressure points and things can all happen at once. Just as students have an essay crisis, I can promise that never ends for academics as well.

Why geography as opposed to any other discipline?

I would encourage all students to push back when they are told that their dissertation isn’t geography. Geography is everywhere. A lot of the work I do is located within the edges of other disciplines like criminology, legal studies, or international relations. The easy response is that geography is a discipline which is comfortable with interdisciplinarity. It is happy to accommodate different paradigms, positions, methodologies, and approaches. That’s on account of the diversity of topics and issues we see within the geographical disciplines. It is comfortable with its lack of rigidity, focus, and interdisciplinarity which is attractive to me, it’s a good thing.

Geography itself is an interesting and exciting place to be intellectually. It is a discipline that’s always been interested in the world, going out, experiencing and understanding the world around us. We see this in the way that geography as a discipline is embracing and thinking about feminist methodologies, decolonial perspectives, the breadth of approaches to situating knowledge. It is thinking about where the ideas come from and how those ideas are privileged over others, with what consequences. That’s attractive to me because it is at the forefront of understanding how processes occur in the world around us. I’ve always been drawn to that theoretical breadth, political ambition, and the desire for empiricism. It’s gaining understanding from people’s own world view, rather than speculating, sitting at our desks.

Do you think there is a difference between humans and nature?

No. I do think that separation has been profoundly problematic to how the environment has been treated, understood, and conceptualised. The way the world is organised and arranged is anthropocentric, but that illusory separation has contributed to a lot of the challenges that we face today. The responsibility for and entanglement with many of these ecological issues has been denied.

What is your biggest achievement outside of academia?

Undoubtedly my kids! I’ve got two kids; Rufus, who’s 14, and Clemens, who is 11 and they’re brilliant. It’s my family. I’m married to my wife, Laura, and that’s the achievement, that’s really what it’s all about. I can’t think of anything more or above that!

If you had to live on one meal for the rest of your life, what would it be?

Putting sustainability to one side for a moment, there’s a recipe by Rick Stein called Lemongrass Plaice. It is white fish with a lemongrass and coriander sauce with coconut rice. It is unbelievably good. If anyone ever makes it they will see his other dishes because it is incredible.

If you had a free weekend to go anywhere in the whole world (money no object), where would you go and what would you do?

I would go to Shropshire. We would go walking as a family in the Shropshire Hills, maybe the Long Mind or church Stretton. We would have some nice pub lunches, and I quite enjoy running, so I would do some running as well. It’s somewhere from my childhood that whenever I return to it gives me a good feeling, and a good perspective on life.

What is a fun fact about you that not many people know or expect?

I’ve got a metal hip… Be careful around corners in Cambridge on your bike.

What is one thing you think that (tripos) geographers need to hear today?

Stay excited about geography and do not lose your own distinctive approach. One of my worries about the tripos is that there’s an imagination that there’s one way of doing it. There isn’t one way of doing it, what we want is people’s distinct and diverse approach - their novelty. That’s what got you excited about geography, so to retain it would be my advice.

Could you give us a cultural recommendation? This could be anything from a book, film, song to an experience.

The book that had a huge impression on me is called The Site of Death by T.J. Clark, the art critic and art historian. It’s a brilliant book of looking at two paintings. He visited the same art gallery for a year and looked at two paintings by Nicholas Poussin. Carefully he thinks about what these paintings are doing to him, and it is an exploration of his own change. It is a reflection and exploration of what these pictures are trying to show, the artistic style and the actual representation of what is in the pictures. The reason it had an effect on me is that it’s not only an exploration of art and representation, but of the methods –how do we see the world and how does the world see us. I have recommended it ever since. It’s unusual, not the standard geographical book. environment and development.