John Barkham obituary

Other lives: Ecologist and influential lecturer at the School of Environmental Sciences, University of East Anglia

My dad, John Barkham, who has died aged 82, was an inspirational teacher of ecology and a lifelong naturalist. As the first ecologist to join the new University of East Anglia in 1969, he taught students over three decades in the pioneering School of Environmental Sciences.

After studying the person-centred theories of Carl Rogers, whom he visited in California, John experimented with bold new teaching techniques, one year informing baffled students that they would design their own syllabus and teach themselves.

Although he reined in some radicalism, his kindness, distinctive knitwear, non-hierarchical attitude and sensitivity towards his students’ wider needs was appreciated by hundreds of students and staff alike. From 1996, he turned his interpersonal skills to assessing university teaching for the Quality Assurance Agency (QAA).

Born to Bridget (nee Mahon) and Evelyn Barkham in Taunton, Somerset, John, like many wartime babies, grew up not knowing his father. When Evelyn returned from military service, he and Bridget divorced, and decided it would be best for Evelyn not to “disrupt” the lives of John and his elder brother, Julian. John was 12 when he next saw his father. He was 20 when Evelyn took his own life.

John also struggled with being dispatched to board at Windlesham House prep school in West Sussex from the age of nine, then at Lord Weymouth’s school, Warminster. The natural world was a solace, and he roamed the west country lanes, fields and copses, acquiring deep knowledge of birds and plants.

Although troubled by depression, he thrived academically, becoming the first geographer in three years to obtain a first at Birmingham University, in 1963. Following a doctorate studying the flora of Cotswolds beechwoods – where he met Suzanne Ratcliffe, whom he married in 1967 – John joined the Brathay field studies centre in the Lake District.

On moving to rural Norfolk to work at UEA, he became (the voluntary) chair of Norfolk Wildlife Trust, where he oversaw innovations such as changing its outdated name from Norfolk Naturalists’ Trust.

He and Suzanne divorced in 1993 and, after moving to Ashburton in Devon in 1999, John met a new partner, Barbara Rowland. In later life, he served on the conservation committee of the national charity Butterfly Conservation, championed a woodland co-operative, and helped turn pasture into a hugely productive set of community allotments. Returning to Norfolk in 2023, he endured both Lewy body dementia and advanced prostate cancer with great positivity, continuing to marvel at the birds and butterflies he saw around him, even on the day of his death.

John is survived by Barbara, by two children, Henrietta and me, from his marriage to Suzanne, and by five grandchildren.