PROFESSOR WILLIAM BIRCH
1925–2009

Born in Crowthorne, Berkshire, on 24 November 1925, Bill Birch was of the generation whose education was interrupted by the Second World War. Leaving Ranelagh School in Bracknell in 1943, he enrolled as an officer in the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve, involved in patrolling the Western Approaches until 1946. After demobilisation he attended his home university at Reading, graduating with a first class BA degree in geography in 1949. He was then appointed as a departmental Demonstrator, starting the research that led to his PhD, awarded in 1957. Bill was appointed as an assistant lecturer in the Department of Geography at the University of Bristol in 1950 (the year when he and Mary were married), being later promoted to lecturer. During his decade there, he captained both Bristol Hockey Club and the Gloucestershire County XI, and was assistant leader of a British schools' expedition to northern British Columbia. As was the norm then, the undergraduate curriculum was dominated by regional geography, and Bill had two regional courses to teach as well as two practical courses – while completing his PhD. It was the period before the ‘revolution’ that, in one of his former colleague's words, led to theory taking the place of memory. But Bill was aware that approaches to research and teaching were changing in the discipline, mainly across the Atlantic, and he tried to incorporate some of the new ways of thinking in his lectures. That awareness was also evident in Bill's research. Some of it was ‘traditional’ regional economic geography. He chose the Isle of Man for his BA dissertation (students at Reading then, as at some other departments, had to write about an area of a particular size, and the Isle of Man met the criterion), and extended that work for his PhD. The choice of the Isle of Man reflected not only its size and particular economic issues but also Bill's interest in motor-cycling, which was his and Mary's chosen transport mode for some years. The two weeks of the Tourist Trophy races held on the island's roads formed a major event in the national sporting calendar then (as well as the subject of a George Formby film!), and attracted many visitors to the island. He assembled a great deal of material on the changing economy, stimulated by the expanding tourist industry; the results were initially published in the Geographical Journal (December 1958), and later in a monograph The Isle of Man: a study in economic geography published by Cambridge University Press (1964). As part of this research, Bill conducted detailed field studies of farms and farming through sample surveys, having decided that the available parish data were unsuited to defining type-of-farming regions. This raised issues of spatial sampling designs related to both the underlying topography and farm size, on which he consulted leading statisticians before publishing papers in the IBG Transactions (1954) and Economic Geography (1960). A later paper in a commemorative volume for Dudley Stamp (1968) identified (especially rural) land-use studies as a central geographical theme, but argued that classification and description had predominated within the discipline over explanation. The latter called for increased quantitative research within a systems framework for the analysis of static patterns alongside documented historical research for studies of long-term change. Advised and encouraged by R.O. Buchanan and Dudley Stamp, Bill spent the academic year 1960–61 at the home of Economic Geography, the Graduate School of Geography at Clark University, and decided to stay there as a Full Professor. In 1961 he had attended and been stimulated by one of the Summer Institutes at Northwestern University that were seminal in the spread of quantitative methods through the discipline in North America. He initiated research on changing farming systems in the Connecticut Valley – especially those involved with tobacco production – consequent on competition for land on the urban fringe. That research had hardly started, however (only one essay appeared), and he had just taken up the editorship of Economic Geography when he moved again. In 1963, Bill was appointed Professor and Chairman of the Department of Geography at the University of Toronto. With strong support from the Dean's office, including substantial new money, he set about rebuilding the department to reflect in part the quantitative and theoretical revolutions then sweeping through North American geography; other fields – such as physical and historical geography – were also expanded. He made a number of new appointments including Leslie Curry, Yi-Fu Tuan and several graduates who had worked with Brian Berry at the University of Chicago. Having established the foundations for change and success at Toronto, Bill wished to return to Britain and in 1967 accepted an invitation to become Professor and Head of Department at Leeds. The department was at a low ebb after problems under a previous head, and the university had considered its closure. Advice from senior members of the discipline – notably Charles Fisher and Michael Wise – persuaded them otherwise, and Bill was appointed to rebuild. As at Toronto, he did this by promoting the ‘new geography’ and convinced the university to make a number of key appointments – including Mike Kirkby and Alan Wilson as professors. Bill's own research was a low priority, and although involved in projects on land and water resource planning he published little: the projected book on A geography of farming systems never appeared. Bill was active for the discipline outside the university, serving as vice chairman of the SSRC's Geography and Planning Committee, for example. In 1974, he was elected vice president of the IBG (having served on the Council in the year before his departure for Clark); he had also been secretary of the British Association's Section E in the mid 1950s. By the time he gave his IBG presidential address in 1977, Bill had made his last career move – to be director of Bristol Polytechnic. He had an abiding interest in higher education's role in the changed situation of a much larger percentage of school leavers entering degree programmes, and he addressed this theme in that address ‘On excellence and problem solving in geography’ (Transactions 1977). Whereas some had followed Kingsley Amis's dictum that ‘more means worse’, Bill argued that ‘more required different’– tertiary education should respond to its new markets without threatening excellence. He identified three types of excellence – academic, creative, and professional – and argued that geographers should pay greater attention to the third, with a focus on problem-solving that met ‘the needs of the students rather than those of the discipline’. His suggested structure for such an approach was firmly set in a systems framework (for which his enthusiasm was shown in a book series he edited on Contemporary problems in geography for Oxford University Press). This structure would involve providing an education in generic skills, focusing on problems that have ‘relevance beyond the facts and the places studied’ (his emphases): the key themes were spatial differentiation, spatial order, spatial co-variation, spatial integration and spatial change. Bill argued that this approach would ensure that research and teaching in higher education reflected ‘the needs of a complex and technologically advanced society, not simply traditional classically derived assumptions about strictly academic excellence’. Invited to become director of Bristol Polytechnic – a decision to move that was not taken lightly – from 1975 until 1986 he put his ideas into action on a wider stage, overseeing considerable growth, restructuring and curriculum change in an institution where preparing students for employment was a central element of its mission, while at the same time promoting a research ethos. He continued to advance the cause of problem-based learning, asserting (his term) in 1986 that it is ‘the most effective means of developing the general qualities of mind of the student, to securing an integration of academic and operational approaches to higher education and to instilling a high level of motivation and a capacity for active learning’ (Studies in Higher Education). In 1984 Bill received a Department of Education grant to study and report on the relationship between higher education and industry in Europe, Japan and North America. By 1986 – after he had chaired the Committee of Directors of Polytechnics and served on the National Advisory Body for Local Authority Higher Education – he felt he had completed his task at Bristol Polytechnic (which became the University of the West of England a few years later) and retired. He then held visiting positions at the University of London's Institute of Education and the University of Bristol's Graduate School of Education, where he addressed wider issues regarding the future of British higher education. His views were crystallised in his 1988 book The challenge to higher education: reconciling responsibilities to scholarship and to society (Open University Press). He argued for an integrated system, which partly emerged after 1992 but without the clear distinction between types of institution that he favoured. For him, it should be built on a recognition that universities are a public service based on a broad conception of the academic ethic, and in which problem-based learning is a central focus. This required a new form of academic leadership and a rethink of academic staff responsibilities and rewards. Bill Birch was one of those geographers whose careers straddled a major period of disciplinary change and whose main contribution was to promote the ‘new’ as a leader and administrator rather than through his own research (in Peter Haggett's words, following R. L. Stevenson, Bill sought and achieved success through ‘looking for the best in others and giving them the best we have’). He installed the foundations and initial superstructures for the re-creation of two major centres of geographical education at Toronto and Leeds, showing commitment to a clear strategic vision and the confidence to press and win the case for change on both his colleagues and university administrators. Those centres have grown and prospered further, during which time Bill made significant contributions to the management and restructuring of British higher education. Bill died on 12 June 2009 and is survived by his wife Mary, a daughter, a son and grandchildren. In his retirement he was involved with community projects and actions, discovered a talent for hand-built pottery and continued his life-long love of sailing with his family and friends.

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