Emeritus Fellow Ron Martin awarded RGS Victoria Medal

Congratulations from everyone at St Catharine's to Emeritus Fellow Professor Ron Martin (1974), who has been awarded the 2016 Victoria Medal from the Royal Geographical Society (RGS), and to St Catharine's geographer Joanna Debens (2001), who receives an RGS Ordnance Survey award, for excellence in geographical education at the secondary level.

Ron receives the Victoria Medal for outstanding contributions to economic geography, especially with respect to advances in regional economic development theory. The medal was introduced in 1902, in honour of Queen Victoria, who had been the Society's Patron, to be awarded to a geographer of any nationality considered to have made contributions of outstanding merit in his or her field. There have only been four other Cambridge recipients since that time, and only one other St Catharine's geographer, Professor Alfred Steers, in 1960. (Emeritus Fellow Dr David Keeble (1964) also received the RGS Patron's Medal in 2002.)

Ron joined St Catharine's as a Research Fellow in 1974, when he was also appointed as an Assistant Lecturer in the University Department of Geography. He was made a University Lecturer in 1979, a Reader in 1998, and a Professor in 2000, and became an Emeritus Fellow of St Catharine's in 2015. He was also elected President of the Regional Studies Association in 2015, succeeding the late Professor Sir Peter Hall (1950), another St Catharine's geographer. 

Both Ron and Jo will receive their awards at a ceremony at the RGS on 6 June. You can read the full list of RGS medals and awards on the RGS website.