President

The President’s Jewel

Each year a person of standing in the county is invited to be Honorary President of The Devonshire Association.

A president’s year of office commences at the Annual General Meeting (held as part of the Annual DA Conference). The outgoing President chairs the AGM and invests the incoming President with the silver-and-enamel ‘President’s Jewel’, given to the Association in 1935 by Lady Radford. The new President then gives a talk on a Devon subject of his or her choosing, which is normally published as a keynote address in the forthcoming Transactions.

The President also conceives and organises the President’s one-day symposium assisted by the Executive Committee.

Current President 2020–2021

Clare Broom DL has a professional and academic background in nature conservation, planning and countryside management. She spent thirty years working as an academic in the University sector, and as Head of an Environmental Science Department lead a small agri-environment research team. She was Dean of Faculty at the University of Plymouth’s Seale Hayne campus and subsequently served as a Deputy Vice-Chancellor at the University. She has held DEFRA appointments on two of the Environment Agency’s Regional Flood and Coastal Committees. She has also worked as an environmental consultant.

Clare was a member of the National Trust’s Board of Trustees (2011–2017) and Chair of the Trust’s South West Regional Advisory Board and its predecessor (2006–2016). She served as an elected member of the Council of the National Trust for nine years until October 2018. She has been a Trustee of the Devon Wildlife Trust.

Clare lives in West Devon near Yelverton. Her family connections with Devon go back over two hundred years. She is a Deputy Lieutenant of Devon.

Due to the current restrictions on gatherings as a consequence of the Covid-19 pandemic, Clare Broom DL became the 159th President of the DA in absentia on Saturday 6th June 2020.

Coming President 2021-22

Dr Robin Wootton BSc, PhD, FLS, Hon FRES.

Robin Wootton taught biological sciences at Exeter University for four decades and is still an Honorary Research Fellow. A zoologist, entomologist, biomechanicist and occasional palaeontologist, he is an international authority on the mechanics and evolution of insect flight, now a hot topic in the development of insect-sized micro air vehicles. He is an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Entomological Society, having been its West Region Secretary, a Council member and a Vice President. He has also been President of the Amateur Entomologists Society. Locally, he has been a member the Board of Management of the St Loyes Foundation, and has long been active in the Devon and Exeter Institution, serving on the Executive and as a library volunteer.

Robin joined the Devonshire Association in the mid 1960s, encouraged by his Head of Department, who had co-founded the Entomology Section two decades earlier. He has served as the Section’s chairman and its secretary and also as chairman of the Literature and Art Section. He was the Association’s chairman from 2008 to 2013, in that time founding the Music Section and facilitating the foundation of the Industrial Archaeology Section. He has organised DA exhibitions on insect photography and Devon artists, and initiated the 2017 celebrations of historical and cultural links between Devon and Newfoundland. He has a keen amateur interest in the history of biology, and particularly in how Devonians, including prominent early DA members, reacted to the heretical scientific discoveries of the 19th century.

He is married to Pamela, equally active in the DA over many years. They have a son, a daughter and five grandchildren.

Former Presidents

Some details of our most recent presidents are here.

List of all our Presidents

Including the locations of the AGMs at which they were inaugurated.