Linda McDowell facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Linda McDowell
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| Born | 1949 (age 75–76) |
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| Alma mater | Newnham College, Cambridge The Bartlett, University College London |
| Doctoral advisor | Peter Cowan |
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| Main interests | Geography |
| Notable ideas | Economic geography of work |
Linda Margaret McDowell (born 1949) is a British geographer and professor. She studies how people work and get jobs, especially focusing on different groups. From 2004 to 2016, she was a professor of Geography at the University of Oxford.
Her Early Life and Studies
Linda McDowell was born in 1949. She went to Newnham College, Cambridge for her first degree. Later, she studied at the Bartlett School of Planning at University College London.
She earned a master's degree there. She then worked on her PhD, which is a very high university degree. For her PhD, she studied how housing changed in London. Her supervisor, who helped her with her research, was Peter Cowan.
Exploring Work and Gender
Before finishing her PhD, Linda McDowell taught at the Open University. She later returned to the University of Cambridge, where she had studied before.
In 1999, she became a professor at the London School of Economics. After that, she moved to University College London. In 2004, she joined the University of Oxford as a professor.
Linda McDowell is an economic geographer. This means she studies how jobs and money are connected to places. She also describes herself as an ethnographer of work. An ethnographer studies people and cultures closely, often by living among them or observing them in their daily lives. In her case, she studies how people experience their jobs.
She was one of the first people to write about feminism in a geography journal called Society and Space. Feminism is about believing that all genders should have equal rights and opportunities.
Linda McDowell has written important books about work and gender.
- Her book Capital Culture: Gender at Work in the City looked at how gender played a role in the City of London's financial jobs.
- Gender, Place and Identity was an introduction to how gender and geography are connected.
- Redundant Masculinities explored how men's roles changed when jobs were lost.
These books have greatly helped the field of feminist geography. This area of study looks at how gender affects our understanding of places and how people use them. More recently, her research has focused on people who move to new countries for work since 1945.
Awards and Recognition
Linda McDowell's work has won many awards. The Royal Geographical Society gave her the Back Award and the Victoria Medal. These are important awards for geographers.
In 2008, she became a fellow of the British Academy. This is a group of leading experts in the humanities and social sciences. She is also a fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences.
She has also been an editor for two academic journals, Area and Antipode.
In 2016, she was made a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE). This is a special honor given by the British monarch. She received it for her important contributions to geography and higher education.
