Professor Kelvyn Jones, from the School of Geographical Sciences, has received two prestigious awards in a single week. He has become a Fellow of the Learned Society of Wales, only the third geographer to be so honoured, and has received the Murchison Award from the Royal Geographical Society.

The Learned Society of Wales exists to ‘celebrate, recognise, preserve, protect and encourage excellence in all of the scholarly disciplines’ Fellowship open to Welsh nationals and residents who have a demonstrable record of excellence and achievement in any of the academic disciplines or who, being members of the professions, the arts, industry, commerce or public service, have made a distinguished contribution to the world of learning. Election requires nomination by an existing Fellow and the support in a ballot of at least 70 per cent of Fellows.

Sir John Cadogan, the society’s president said: ‘We have once again elected a further very strong cohort of new Fellows; the Society’s continuing focus on excellence and achievement will ensure that its Fellowship will represent the very best of which Wales is capable in the major academic disciplines.’

The prestigious Murchison Award is for publications judged to have contributed most to geographical science in preceding recent years. In Professor Jones’s award was for articles that have led to a ‘the advancement of quantitative social science in general and geography in particular’. Professor Jones accepted his award at the Royal Geographical Society's annual general meeting on 3 June. Among the other medal winners was Bristol student Will Rosser, who won the Alfred Steers Prize for the best undergraduate dissertation nationally in 2012.