Institute of British Geographers

Founding and Early Years

Geography was a very small discipline in U.K. universities in the 1930s. Few departments had been established in the 19th century, and the first full honors degree was not launched until 1917. By the end of the 1930s, virtually every university and university college had a small department—more than five permanent staff members was a rarity. Teaching loads were both heavy and broad, and research activity was not put at a premium. Nevertheless, several meetings—organized by a small group based in University of London colleges—determined that university geographers needed a separate society to organize meetings at which research discussions would predominate and to offer a publication outlet, hence the IBG's establishment. It held an annual residential conference (usually just after the New Year) from the start plus occasional field meetings, and in 1935, it launched its publication Transactions and Papers of the Institute of British Geographers.

Growth of the Organization

Until after World War II, the organization was small and its operations limited. Officers were elected, but the tradition of an annual presidential address was only instituted in 1948. More important, Transactions did not develop as a regular serial publishing refereed academic papers until 1946. Before that, it published only six separate monographs plus reports of the Institute's annual conferences. In 1959, the Institute organized the first of its international seminars—on applied geography—in Poland. These were used to promote international contacts, most of them with geographers in countries behind the Iron Curtain, although there were also series of Anglo/German and Indo/British seminars; after 1989, the range of countries widened, but the seminars became less necessary as international travel to major conferences became much easier.

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