Award of Institute of Australian Geographers' Australia-International Medal: Harold Chilingworth Brookfield

Recently, the Institute of Australian Geographers honoured a geographer whose academic career has spanned over half a century and produced a remarkable intellectual legacy.

Harold Brookfield completed a PhD thesis in 1950 at the London School of Economics and Political Science, University of London, on post‐eighteenth century urban development in coastal Sussex. His long, diverse and distinguished academic career commenced with a period as assistant lecturer in Geography at Birkbeck College at the University of London, from 1948–1952. A nearly three year period as lecturer in charge of the Department of Geography at the University of Natal in Durban, South Africa, followed. Experiences in South Africa and Mauritius during this time stimulated what was to become an abiding interest in development and social justice issues. In 1955, Brookfield moved to the University of New England in Armidale; subsequent positions were held at the Australian National University (ANU), as Professor at both Pennsylvania State University and McGill University in Canada, and as Chair of Geography at the University of Melbourne. He also served as a Fellow at the Institute of Development Studies, University of Sussex, and as a team leader of the UNESCO Man and the Biosphere Programme in Fiji.