Joy Tivy

In October 2013, I was presented with the Joy Tivy Education medal by the Royal Scottish Geographical Society. Which was nice :)

It's awarded for exemplary, outstanding and inspirational teaching, educational policy or work in formal and informal educational arenas.

For International Women's Day, I thought I'd mention who Joy Tivy was, as until I did a bit of reading when I heard I was going to receice the medal, as I hadn't been aware of her work previously.

Wikipedia is one of the few sources of information about Joy.

Joy Tivy was born in Ireland in 1924 and she commenced studies at in Dublin in 1942 where she studied geography as her primary subject. She excelled as an undergraduate most notably scoring highest in highly competitive exams in 1944, which granted her status as a Scholar. She graduated with first class honours in 1946 and after a brief period of teaching at the University of Leeds she accepted a position at the University of Edinburgh where she completed her doctorate. In 1956 she moved to the University of Glasgow where we stayed for the rest of her career (she retired in 1989).  She was the second female to be awarded at professorship at the University of Glasgow in 1976  and was head of the Department of Geography and Topographic Science.

The RSGS has established a medal in her honour: The Joy Tivy Education Medal which is awarded annually for “In recognition of an outstanding contribution to geographical education”. She was actively involved in the Scottish Field Studies Association, with 10 years as chairperson and served as the editor of Scottish Geographical Magazine for a decade.



She sadly died in 1995.

Many readers who've been teaching a while will also be familiar with the book here perhaps. I certainly made use of it for many years, and had forgotten that it was co-written by Joy Tivy.






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