Dr Alan Baker

Photo of Dr Alan Baker

MA, PhD(Lond), DLitt(Lond), Chevalier dans l'Ordre des Palmes Académiques, Honorary Member of the Société Géographique de Paris, FBA.

Life Fellow

Dr Alan Baker has been a Fellow of the College since 1970 and is now a Life Fellow. Elected in 1970 as the college's first-ever teaching Fellow in Geography, Dr Baker was Director of Studies in Geography 1969-80 and 1996-2000. He became a Tutor in 1973 and was Senior Tutor from 1976 to 1986, during which period the college not only opted out of the Cambridge Colleges' Entrance Examination, to rely instead on A-level results in assessing candidates for admission, but also decided to admit women as well as men. He was Vice-Master from 1990 to 1994. Dr Baker is an historical geographer with a special interest in nineteenth-century France. In 1999 Cambridge University Press published his Fraternity among the French Peasantry: Sociability and Voluntary Associations in the Loire Valley, 1815-1914. Then in 2003 the CUP published his Geography and History: Bridging the Divide and in 2022 Bloomsbury Academic published his book The Personality of Paris: Landscape and Society in the Long-Nineteenth Century, In 1997 Dr Baker was honoured by the French Government as a Chevalier dans l'Ordre des Palmes Académiques for his 'services to French culture'. In 2009, with the approval of H. M. the Queen, the Royal Geographical Society awarded Dr Baker the Founder's Medal for his contributions in historical geography and in 2010 he was elected a Fellow of the British Academy.

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