John Cowin writes: Doreen Massey will be missed by her many grateful Open University students. A very warm and friendly person as well as a clear, direct speaker, she attracted large turnouts when she gave summer school guest lectures. I recall her making the point that throughout the bulk of history – and very much on a global scale – women overwhelmingly took on the more demanding tasks and received scant reward for their labour.
As a fellow northerner I recall my first meeting with her, at a summer school, when she saw me with a radio listening to the BBC football results, and made clear, in a very friendly encounter, her support for Liverpool, rather than for my own team, Manchester United. When I met her on a support rally for striking miners in London, she again teased me about my “alternative” Red persuasion.
The Rev Andrew Davey writes: Doreen Massey was gracious and generous with all fellow travellers. We first met at a book launch – I told her I had been using her OU programme on Mexico City with bishops who were trying to understand the theological implications of urbanisation and globalisation. She said she was “chuffed”, and that we should meet.
The result was a number of collaborations and seminars with church groups, and a significant influence on my writing. Her essay on Growing Up in Wythenshawe was a piece of narrative writing I have often commended to theology students. “The responsibility of being placed” was a phrase from her book about London, World City, which she examined in a lecture at St Peter’s, Walworth, for the 25th anniversary of the Faith in the City report.
Doreen was determined not to be mean with her time but would often phone to check out groups who had invited her. She was amused at the irony of her working with faith groups, and was not slow to point out if too much lazy thinking or metaphysics entered the argument.
