Geographer Dr Don Funnell has retired after 38 years at Sussex. He joined the University in 1970, following teaching and research at Makerere University in Uganda.
During the 1970s and '80s Don spent several years on secondment in Eastern and Southern Africa, focussing on issues of rural development.
An economic geographer, his prime interest has been in developing countries, with research areas including irrigation, mountains, and the use of satellite imagery and GIS in geographic research.
In 2003 he became director of the interdisciplinary Development Studies programmes in the newly created School of Social Science and Cultural Studies.
An active field researcher, Don regularly took part in annual field classes and was a member of the first pioneering trips to Africa in the early 1980s. He also helped to lead field classes to Kenya, The Gambia and Thailand.
Many generations of Geography students will best remember Don on these trips, dressed in his somewhat untidy 'field gear', leading them over irrigation channels and flooded fields or across boulder-strewn slopes.