RGS members bemoan awfully small adventure

FELLOWS at the Royal Geographical Society waited with bated breath at the news that their beloved expeditions — an annual, society-funded adventure — would be returning after 20 years. The event was once the highlight of the societ y’s calendar, and many were itching to get going. Would a ticket to the wilds of Peru be required? A boat to Antarctica? Alas, their hearts sank when Migrants on the Margins, a geopolitical project, was announced.

Cue complaints that Dr Rita Gardner, the RGS’s director since 1996, hasn’t got the point. The annual expedition was scrapped back then and in its stead were improved grants for researchers on smaller projects. The move towards human geography has caused lively debates over the intervening 20 years. Fellows, who pay £104 for annual membership, had hoped this new inhouse expedition might mark the return to the good old days. But studying migrants wasn’t what they had in mind.

“Whi l e d o u b t l e s s a wor t hy a n d valuable exercise,” explorer and Fellow Robin Hanbury-Tenison sighed, “it is not clear if any actual field work will be undertaken, and it is not what I would call an expedition in the RGS tradition, let alone exploration in any sense.”

A long-standing fellow, who has made significant benevolent donations to the society, grouched: “It’s nothing to do with nostalgia. Since the RGS merged with the Institute of British Geographers 20 years ago, that has caused a change to the ethos and the nature of the society as it was intended.”

The RGS has yet to come back with a comment, presumably because many of them are still on their own annual August expeditions to the South of France.