
4 minute read
Memories of Mansfield and Geography: Pam Berry
This year we say farewell to Supernumerary Fellow in Geography, Dr Pam Berry. Here, recent graduate and Communications Assistant, Francesca Rigby (Geography, 2018), interviews Pam to find out more about her career. In addition, Pam’s long-time colleague and friend, Dr Tony Lemon (Emeritus Fellow, Geography), illustrates the many ways she has touched the lives of Mansfield’s students and staff through the years.
Pam has many happy recollections of teaching at Mansfield, and in typical Geography style, some of her best memories were made beyond the tutorial room. She recalls, for instance, a trip to the New Forest, where tutors and students were crossing a bog to gather data on the ecology of local plants. Pam remembers balancing on grassy tussock, whilst watching an unfortunate student in front of her sinking in up to her knees. Aside from the fieldwork, she also remembers enjoying her conversations with students at the 1887 Society winetastings organised by Tony Lemon.
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In 2015, Pam’s term as a tutor for students at both Mansfield and Regent’s Park came to an end. Her climate change and biodiversity research had led to more European travelling, and she found it increasingly difficult to make time for teaching and marking tutorial essays. The discipline was changing too – she recalls the challenges of integrating some of the newer, more abstruse human geographical terms into her physical and environmental geography teaching. So she stepped aside to make room for others to pick up the challenge.
Pam is grateful to Mansfield for enabling her to continue her membership of College, while she pursued her research. She speaks passionately about the contribution of nature-based solutions to worldwide challenges, highlighting measures as simple as establishing biodiverse gardens, which can address biodiversity loss, provide shade, slow water flow and much more. Nature alongside or instead of technology, Pam explains, is the way forward. The world today, she notes, is beginning to move away from a compartmentalised approach to environmental issues, towards thinking about how they can be addressed together as an integrated system. Stepping down from her position as Supernumerary Fellow, Pam is looking forward to having some spare time. Gardening gloves at the ready, she is keen to tend to her own biodiverse garden, which she explains needs some TLC. A true geographer at heart, she is eager to travel again, as well as taking long walks near her home. Pam is also a committed member of her local church community and is currently investigating the role of women in the church – once a researcher, always a researcher! We wish Pam all the best in her future projects, both professional and personal, as she begins her well-earned retirement.
Tony Lemon reflects on Pam Berry’s career
Pam completed her undergraduate and research degrees at Liverpool University before joining the Oxford School of Geography in 1978. Soon after she arrived, I invited her to be Mansfield’s College Lecturer in Physical Geography and we became College colleagues. Later, Pam became a Supernumerary Fellow. Little did either of us expect to remain colleagues for 32 years, until my retirement in 2010. We worked closely together over this period, and I couldn’t have asked for a better colleague and friend: always helpful and cooperative, calm and a source of wise counsel.
Pam is a biogeographer, interested in climate-change impacts on biodiversity and conservation and policy responses, but in College she took responsibility for all undergraduate teaching in Physical Geography. Outside tutorials, Pam always entered into the usually cohesive spirit of Mansfield’s geographers. She was very supportive of the geographers’ College society, the 1887 Society, and generations of returning geographers would enjoy meeting her at the annual dinners. She would entertain students to lunch at her home in Long Hanborough and we shared many happy occasions taking finalists out for Schools dinners in the Cotswolds. When Mansfield became responsible for geographers in colleges without Geography tutors, especially Exeter and Regent’s Park, Pam generously made time to teach their students too, helping to make all our students a single community of geographers. When Mansfield increased its Geography intake and I no longer felt able to act as Director of Studies for Regent’s geographers, Pam was the obvious choice for this role, and I know Regent’s Park valued her contribution as much as Mansfield continued to do.

In Pam’s early years at Mansfield, she was looking after her young sons, James and Simon, but as they grew up she focused more strongly on research. She joined the Environmental Change Unit (now Institute, ECI) in 1992, a year after its foundation and concentrated on climate-change impacts and adaptation, impacts of mitigation and adaptation measures on biodiversity, ecosystem services and environmental change, and the translation of science into policy through stakeholder engagement. She became a Deputy Programme Leader and had a distinguished career in the ECI, winning many research grants, publishing widely, contributing to project reports, participating in overseas conferences (highly organised again, ready to leave at short notice) and holding several editorial and advisory responsibilities. In 2019 she was appointed by DEFRA to help shape policy decisions relating to rural land use.
It was a happy moment indeed when Pam joined Mansfield, and I shall look back fondly on our time as colleagues. I can’t quite believe she is retiring (and shall find out, as we live only three miles apart), but wish her, on behalf of all her past students, a long and happy retirement.