Geography’s Complex Circle of concern
Gail Davies delivers John Murdoch Memorial Lecture in Cardiff
A ‘map mouse’ by the artist Helen Scalway
On 12th June, Dr Gail Davies was invited to give the John Murdoch Memorial Lecture at The School of City and Regional Planning, Cardiff University. Its title was, Geography's Complex Circle of Concern: Reflections on Ethics, Care and Experimental Lives.
In 2003, Jon Murdoch had made a passionate call for geographers working on ethics, animals and food production to be attentive to both knowledge generation and compassion in ways similar to the ethical attention already paid to laboratory animals (Geoforum, Vol. 34, 287-9). In her lecture Gail returned to questions raised about laboratory animals relating to the geographies of ethics and care, the increasingly global scope of the biological sciences and the ever more complex interweaving of experimental human and animal lives.
Jon Murdoch worked in UCL Geography early in his career when in 1988 he came to work for four years with Richard Munton on the ESRC funded programme, The Social and Economic Restructuring of Rural Britain. Jon moved to a lectureship in the University of Cardiff School of City and Regional Planning in 1995, and became Professor of Environmental Planning in 2001. He was a gifted scholar who published extensively, tragically dying in the prime of his career in 2005.
