Institutions and disciplinary fortunes: two moments in the history of UK geography in the 1960s I: geography in the ‘plateglass universities’

Abstract

Geography grew rapidly within British universities during the 1950s and 1960s. At the beginning of the latter decade, however, the discipline was excluded from most of the new universities established to meet expanding student demand. This first essay in a pair looks at why such an ostensibly successful discipline was not incorporated in the plans for those new institutions, focusing on the external view of geography at the time and on its lack of effective champions in the highest ‘corridors of power’, notably its learned societies.