Nora MacMunn

Nora Eileen MacMunn (1875 – 1967) was a British geography educator. She was the second woman to hold an academic position at the University of Oxford, where she taught for almost thirty years, and was unusual in being a militant women's suffrage campaigner there. As well as teaching her own students, she published educational material for geography curricula.

Education MacMunn was born in 1875 in Chelsea, the third daughter of army doctor John Alexander MacMunn and his wife Charlotte, née Mathias. In 1896 the family moved to St Leonards, Sussex.

Having been educated privately, she studied with the Society of Home Students, Oxford. She passed a Final Honour School examination in modern history in 1903, and gained a Diploma in Geography in 1904.

Career In 1906, MacMunn was appointed Demonstrator in Oxford's School of Geography by A.J. Herbertson in response to the increasing demand for certificate and diploma courses. MacMunn's work involved assisting with seminars, practical classes and excursions. She also gave her first lectures in 1909.

In the 1920s, her teaching roles expanded into lecturing, with appointments as Assistant Lecturer in geography in 1922 and Lecturer in regional geography in 1924. She began supervising graduate students in 1933. As well as teaching practical classes, she gave lectures covering historical geography and a wide range of regional geographies from across the world. Having assisted Herbertson with his project to produce a regional geography of Europe, MacMunn and Geraldine Coster used his outline to write Europe: A Regional Geography, which was published in 1922 as a comprehensive teaching text for older students.

Later life In 1935, MacMunn retired from her Oxford posts. In her later life, she lived with pioneering lawyer Ivy Williams and retired missionary Alice Rylance.

She died at Eastbourne in 1967.