Worldly Wednesday #2: 11.09.24 - a chat with Hermione

The second of my Worldly Wednesdays was a little more successful in terms of getting involved with supporting other geographers.

I was in early, and spent the morning with Hermione Miao. I first me her when she had travelled to study at UCL with Professor David Lambert and had become involved in the GeoCapabilities project, which I had also become part of. We had meetings in Manchester and Helsinki and a few other places.

Her thesis has a focus on teacher agency and curriculum making. She used to be a geography teacher herself before returning to higher education to pursue a doctorate degree. Hermione also actively advocates equity, diversity and inclusion in her research and practice. 

From February 2023, she started a Mapping Inspirational Women initiative as open educational resources for re-telling women's stories in maps, blogs, tweets and podcasts.

I enjoyed showing Hermione my school, and also the city of Ely. We were able to walk along the River Ouse, and attend a Cathedral service, and visit the historic Porta library with its spiral staircase as well as complete the video interviews that she needed for her project, and also see the historic parts of the school, and my classroom - where the magic happens (sometimes).

Good luck to Hermione for her next post, in a university in Shanghai which she starts shortly. She is continuing to explore funding opportunities for her work in international geography and we hope to collaborate on a project in the future, hopefully in conjunction with other international geographers.

If anyone else would like to come and have a chat in a similar way, please feel free to get in touch. I'm very happy to support colleagues or researchers who want half a day to talk about geography.

Thanks to Charlotte, school librarian for taking the photo - you can see the David Matless book I'm currently reading in the display on the wall behind us.