Janet Townsend obituary

My friend and former colleague Janet Townsend, who has died aged 79, was a pioneer in gender and development who achieved many firsts in her career. She initiated the first course on geography and gender to be taught in the UK, at Durham University in 1986; co-edited Geography of Gender in the Third World, the first book on the subject, in 1987; and was a member of the steering committee of the geography and gender commission of the International Geographical Union from 2004 to 2008.

Janet’s postdoctoral research in the 1970s was with pioneers seeking to settle the rainforests, and utilised quantitative survey methodology. From there, and coinciding with a shift towards critical, qualitative research in the discipline, she became a feminist geographer and worked primarily with women pioneers. The resultant collaborative monograph, Women’s Voices from the Rainforest (1995), was groundbreaking in challenging international development policy and advocating for the inclusion of local people in seeking solutions to environmental problems. Janet returned to Latin America, principally Colombia, Mexico and Brazil, for many years to undertake research, often involving arduous fieldwork. I first met her at a feminist geography conference session in the mid-1990s.

Janet was born in Denham, Buckinghamshire. Her father, Phillip Thompson, was a Lancashire millworker who qualified as a probation officer, and her mother, Irene (nee Davies), a classics teacher. Janet was educated at Wycombe high school before studying geography at the University of Oxford. After attaining a first-class degree, she undertook DPhil research on land and society in the Middle Magdalena Valley in Colombia and, in 1970, was appointed to a lectureship in geography at Durham University to teach about, and conduct research into, Latin America. At Durham she met Alan Townsend, a fellow lecturer in geography, and they married in December 1971.

During her long, continuous service at Durham University, Janet was an assiduous member of the teaching staff who inspired a generation of feminist and development geographers. According to the Royal Geographical Society, which awarded her the Edward Heath prize in 2005 for geographical research in women and development, “Janet’s work, including around issues of poverty, power, self-empowerment and anti-trafficking … will serve the needs of many, including the geographical community, now and long into the future”. She retired from Durham in 2004 and took up an honorary part-time research position in geography at Newcastle University until her full retirement in 2012.

Janet was equally active in charity work and her local community, and was respected as chair of Willington Labour party in County Durham.

She is survived by Alan.