The Lord Mayor of Sheffield Magid Magid will be coming to the University to deliver a talk on behalf of GeogSoc next month. The talk will take place on Monday the 19th of November at 19:00 in Lecture Theatre 4 of the Arts Tower.
Spanning geography, politics and Sheffield, the Magid Magid will discuss his incredible journey, from arriving in the UK as a child refugee, to becoming the Lord Mayor of Sheffield, as well as discussing a range of current and local events, from Climate Change through to the Cathedral Archer Project.
The President of GeogSoc, Jake Verity, said of the event:
“We decided as a Committee that we wanted to get some really good guest speakers into the department this year, and tried to compile a list of potential people who could come. Our Charities Officer Steph Lake came up with the bright spark of getting Magid in, so I emailed him and he decided to get involved!”
Jake is certain that the Lord Mayor is the perfect fit for a GeogSoc event. “He’s a Green Party councillor which means that his environmental perspective would benefit our BSc students, but given the fact he’s obviously the Lord Mayor of Sheffield; he’s the perfect fit for our BA Students and Political Geographers.”
The event is free, but ticketed due to the inevitable high level of demand. Pre-release tickets, reserved for staff and students of the Department of Geography, were snapped up the day they became available.
Jake says they expected the event to do well, but he has still been surprised by the response. “With his popularity amongst students at the University of Sheffield, it made him the perfect guest speaker. Regardless of this, the unprecedented levels of interest which saw us sell out 50 of our first 100 pre-release tickets in the first 3 minutes they were on sale was something we never imagined, but hopefully a great sign of things to come.”
This isn’t the first time the Lord Mayor has worked with the Department of Geography. In September, he officially opened the National Food Service series of talks, ran by Dr Megan Blake as part of Festival of the Mind.
The guest lecture with Magid Magid isn’t the only thing GeogSoc have coming up, with other events already in the pipeline. “I don’t want to give too much away but we’re going to be doing things bigger, better and more ambitious than ever in terms of events,” Jake says. “And also we’ve already agreed terms with some other really high-profile guest speakers already for later in the year. A great year for GeogSoc and the Geography Department beckons!”