Robin Medforth-Mills

Background

Medforth-Mills was the son of Cyril Mills and Nora Medforth.

Education

After being educated at South Holderness County Secondary School, near Preston, where in 1960 he was Head Boy, he went to University. Medforth-Mills graduated with a Bachelor degree, subsequently obtained a Doctor of Philosophy degree, and later became a professor of geography at Durham University.

Career

The family lived at Flass Hall, Esh Winning, Durham. In addition to being professor of geography in Durham University at various periods in his life, he also worked for the United Nations system, serving as a United Nations expert in a manpower project implemented by the International Labour Organization in Sudan in the mid-1970s, in United Nations International Children's Emergency Fund in its fund-raising office in Geneva in the early 1990s, and later in its humanitarian operations in northern Iraq, in the mid-1990s after the first Gulf War. He was later posted with United Nations International Children's Emergency Fund again in Geneva, and also briefly in New York in the late 1990s.

Achievements

• Foreign several years after the fall of the Ceauşescu regime, he was involved in efforts to bring humanitarian aid to institutionalized orphans and other destitute people in Romania, and was a founder-member of the North-East Relief Fund for Romania, set up with Princess Elena of Romania, and the then-Lord Mayor of Newcastle, Terry Cooney, and Harry Charrington.