Dr Alan Baker

Dr Alan Baker, an historical geographer, was a University Lecturer in Geography from 1966 to 1999; he became an Official Fellow of Emmanuel in 1970. In the University of Cambridge, Alan was Head of the Department of Geography from 1989 to 1994. He became a Life Fellow of the College in 1999.

Biography

Born and schooled in Canterbury, Alan was the first member of his working-class family to go to university. He graduated in 1960 from University College London and in 1963 obtained a Ph.D. and was appointed to UCL's academic staff. In 1966, he moved to a Lectureship in the Department of Geography at Cambridge, in 1970 becoming a teaching Fellow at Emmanuel. He was appointed a Tutor in 1973 and was Senior Tutor from 1976 to 1986. While Senior Tutor, Alan led the college into opting out of the Cambridge Colleges' Entrance Examination and into relying instead on A-Level and similar public examination results, like other universities.  He also took a leading role in the 1970s in persuading the college's Governing Body to admit women as well as men. In the university, Alan was Head of the Department of Geography from 1989 to 1994. He became a Life Fellow in 1999. Alan was elected as a Liberal Democrat Cambridge City Councillor from 2002 to 2010 and chaired the Council's Planning Committee. Since retiring from his university post, Alan has been an active member of Cambridge's University of the Third Age (open to anyone over 50 years 'young'), organising a rambling group and lecturing on the historical geography of France.

Teaching

Alan has taught courses on the geography of Canada and of France during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. He has also contributed to a course on the methodologies of historical geography and on the theoretical and practical links between history and geography.

Research

Alan researches the social geography of France 1789-1914. He examines the extent to which the Revolutionary concept of fraternité was expressed in the creation of voluntary associations. He reconstructs and interprets their spatial distribution and diffusion through time. Alan's research was centred initially on the Loire Valley and published as a book in 1999; he then extended his study to the whole of France, resulting in his 2017 book Amateur Musical Societies and Sports Clubs in Provincial France, 1848-1914. In addition, Alan has explored the nature of historical geography in his 2003 book Geography and History: Bridging the Divide and in 2022 published The Personality of Paris: Landscape and Society in the Long-Nineteenth Century.