Suzanne Daveau

Suzanne Daveau studied at Faculty of Arts of Paris. The recorded working language is French and Portuguese. The field of work recorded is geography, climatology and photography. João de Barros is recorded as an influence. Employment is recorded with Université Cheikh Anta Diop, University of Lisbon and Marie and Louis Pasteur University. Distinctions recorded are Knight of the National Order of Merit, honorary doctor of the University of Lisbon, honorary doctorate of the University of Coimbra and honorary doctorate of the University of Porto.

• Name — Suzanne Daveau • Birth Name — Suzanne Blanche Daveau • Born — 13 July 1925 • Birthplace — Paris, France • Occupation — Geographer • Known for — Work on the geography of Portugal • Awards — Grand Officer of the Military Order of Saint James of the Sword Knight of the Senegalese Order of Merit

Daveau was born in Paris on 13 July 1925, the daughter of Henri Louis Daveau, a pharmacist, and Denise Robert, and the grand-niece of the botanist Jules Alexandre Daveau. She has described herself as being "a little above working class" as her family ran a business in a working class district of Argenteuil. Her mother loved to travel and they spent their holidays in the Jura region of France. From an early age she became a keen photographer, liking to photograph the glaciers in the Jura region. She received a school scholarship from Paris between 1937 and 1941. During the Occupation of France by the Germans in World War II, she continued to study at a high school. She had hoped to train as a teacher, but teacher training colleges were abolished by the Vichy regime for being politically biased. In 1945 she became a teacher at Pantin. Her interest in geography began because, in her early days as a primary teacher, the only day off she had to attend courses at university was on a Thursday, and this was the day of geography courses. Her interest in the topic grew with the realisation that geography would give her the opportunity for fieldwork and travel. In 1947, she graduated in geography from the Faculty of Arts of the University of Paris. Given her good results, her supervisor, Georges Chabot, recommended that she take the competitive examination for the agrégation (a qualification for teaching geography). In 1949. she was one of the first people to be awarded the agrégation for geography with a dissertation entitled Un pays de côte: la bordure sud-est du Pays d'Othe (A coastal country: the southeastern edge of the Pays d'Othe). She would go on to receive a PhD from the same university in 1957 with a main thesis on Les Régions Frontalières de la Montagne Jurassienne: Étude de Géographie humaine (The Border Regions of the Jura Mountains: A Study in Human Geography) and a supplementary thesis on Recherches Morphologiques sur la Région de Bandiagara, after fieldwork in Senegal. This work is considered pioneering in that it focused, for the first time, on the study of a border from a human perspective. It emphasized the demographic, economic, and landscape discontinuities separating the Swiss and French Jura regions. Daveau was the second woman to obtain a doctorate in geography in France, after Jacqueline Beaujeu-Garnier.

In 1949, Daveau taught geography and history in high schools in Gap, then in Lons-le-Saunier. In 1952 and 1953 she taught in Lille. She then started to teach courses at universities such as the University of Besançon and the University of Reims. From 1953 to 1957 she was a researcher at the Centre National de La Recherche Scientifique (National Centre for Scientific Research - CNRS). Like many other French women of her generation, she joined newly established so-called colonial universities, moving to Senegal to become a lecturer and help set up the University of Dakar in 1957, serving as a full professor from 1960 to 1964. Returning to the CNRS she headed a study in the Southwest Sahara (1964–1966). She studied the natural and agricultural environments of Mauritania, conducting the first geographical studies on the cliffs of the Adrar Plateau, the Assaba Region, and the Tagant Plateau, all in Mauretania and contributed to archaeological research of the ruins of Aoudaghost, together with Jean Devisse and Denise Robert, as well as other archaeological sites. In 1960, she met the Portuguese geographer Orlando Ribeiro at the International Congress of Geography held in Stockholm. They married in 1965. Returning to France, she taught at the University of Reims in 1967 and 1968 and carried out research funded by the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation. Their marriage marked the beginning of a long-standing scientific collaboration and led her to focus her research on Portugal.

From 1970 to 1993, Daveau was a visiting professor at the Faculty of Arts at the University of Lisbon, also spending a year as professor of regional geography at the Faculty of Arts of the University of Porto (1977–1978). She introduced the teaching of thematic cartography, which had not previously existed in Portugal. She made several trips to what were then Portuguese colonies, including the Cape Verde Islands, Portuguese Angola, and Portuguese Mozambique.