News

David Harvey elected Honorary Fellow of St John’s College

It was announced on 23 January 2012 that David Harvey has been elected an Honorary Fellow of St John’s College, Cambridge. David Harvey is currently Distinguished Professor of Anthropology at the City University of New York (CUNY), but his first degree was from Cambridge.

He matriculated in 1954 at St John’s College and continued to a Ph.D degree in 1961 – an historical geography of the Kentish hop industry. From Cambridge he moved to Bristol and then, in 1969, to Johns Hopkins University in USA. He was Halford Mackinder Professor of Geography at Oxford from 1973-87.

His most recent book The Enigma of Capital (2010) places the current financial crisis into the wider context of the history of capitalism, which Harvey regards as having achieved world domination through intrinsically amoral and lawless practices.

His various books, which include Limits to Capital (1982), The Condition of Postmodernity (1989) and The New Imperialism (2003), have been translated into at least fifteen languages.

Volcano exhibitions

Volcanoes: beauty and menace, an exhibition of photographs of volcanoes and major volcanic eruptions, their hazards and consequences, is running weekdays until 5th April 2012. Venue: PandIS, New Museums Site.

Another exhibition, Frozen Volcano, ran from January 1st - February 4th 2012.

Dr Clive Oppenheimer also gave a talk on 3rd February, 'Monitoring volcanic gas emissions: from innovation to operational application'.

Talk: Is the future of food GM?

As part of the Festival of Ideas, the Faculty of Law played host to a fascinating talk on the future of GM crops.

Guest speakers Dr. David Nally (University of Cambridge, Geography), Professor Sir David Baulcombe (University of Cambridge, Botany), and Dr. Jack Stilgoe (University of Exeter, Science Policy) shared their different perspectives on this highly complicated, multi-disciplinary issue. The session was ably chaired by Dr Robert Doubleday (also from the Department of Geography). Read more ...

A Closer Look at Famine - Why do famines still plague us?

David Nally and Gerry Kearns have published an article in the latest Chronicle of Higher Education on the geopolitics and history of subsistence crises. Read more (access available until 23rd October).

Confronting homophobia in South Africa

Member of the Department, Dr Andrew Tucker is the Deputy Director of the Centre for Gender Studies in the Department of Geography. His research focuses on understanding the diverse ways in which same-sex desire can become visible in different communities in Africa and explores ways of servicing often marginalised groups with health services.

Dr Tucker champions a direct approach to challenging the homophobia that destroys so many lives in South Africa. He has helped to set up a hard-hitting healthcare campaign that encourages a radical change in attitudes within the country's most deprived communities. Read more…

Scientists raise concerns regarding erroneous reporting of Greenland ice cover

Scientists from the Scott Polar Research Institute (SPRI), part of the Department of Geography, have raised concerns regarding what they believe are erroneous claims of a 15% decrease in the permanent ice cover of Greenland in just 12 years.

Recent awards received by members of the Department

Professor Susan Owens has been elected a Fellow of the British Academy at its Annual General Meeting on 21 July 2011. Professor Owens is Professor of Environment and Policy, Head of the Department of Geography, and a Professorial Fellow of Newnham College. Her research lies in the field of environmental governance, with particular interests in land use, environment and sustainability, and in the role of knowledge, ideas and expertise in policy formation and change. She is currently a member of the Research Committee of ESRC, the Council of the Royal Geographical Society and the Advisory Group for the Royal Society's Science Policy Centre; previously, she has served on the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution and a number of other public bodies. She was appointed an OBE in 1998. Read more …
Dr Laurent Frideres has won the Economic Geography Research Group (EGRG) prize for the best PhD thesis in economic geography, Spatial Industrial Clustering and Competitive Advantage: Comparing Firms Inside and Outside Industry Clusters.
Recent undergraduate student, David Duhig of St Catharine's College, has won First Prize in the RGS Climate Change Research Group dissertation award. The title of David's winning dissertation is The response of Haut Glacier d'Arolla, Switzerland to climate change computed using a coupled mass balance ice flow model.

Whose fault is famine? What the world failed to learn from 1840s Ireland

A new book by a Cambridge University academic revisits one of the worst famines in recorded history. The Irish Famine of the 1840s had terrible consequences: 1 million people died and several million left Ireland. Today the world is watching as millions in Africa face a similar fate: starvation in the midst of plenty. Dr David Nally's analysis of what happened in his native Ireland less than two centuries ago reveals some shocking parallels with what is happening in Africa. Read more…

The book was also picked up by the Huffington Post, where David has written a piece looking at the parallels between historical and contemporary famines.

Dr Nally appeared on 'Everyday Ethics', BBC Radio Ulster, Sunday 7 Aug 2011 [Listen (MP3 file)]. He was also interviewed by The Clare Champion, in an article Parallels in famine-stricken societies.

Cambridge Geography ranked best degree by the Guardian University Guide and the Complete University Guide

The Guardian University Guide has once again given top place to the Geography Degree at Cambridge for 2012. The Complete University Guide also placed Cambridge Geography top.

Our online course guide has full details on the Geography Degree at Cambridge.

Icelandic eruption

Clive Oppenheimer, Reader in Volcanology and Remote Sensing in the Department, was on the BBC Today programme on 25th May 2011 talking about the Icelandic eruption. You can listen to the programme online. He also writes in the Guardian on the subject.

Georgina Sawyer and Evgenia Ilyinskaya, also from the Department, are currently making their way to Iceland to monitor the ash plume.

Clive will be at the forthcoming Hay Festival to talk about his new book Eruptions That Shook The World.

The national census

Members of The Cambridge Group for the History of Population and Social Structure, part of the Department, have been undertaking research on the census over the last 200 years:

The national census of 2011 and 1801: a world of difference and this Anglia News report
What is your job title? Cabbage gelder, cut throat of pigs, man trap? and this Radio 4: Today programme

Greenland's glaciers double in speed

The contribution of Greenland to global sea level change and the mapping of previously unknown basins and mountains beneath the Antarctic Ice Sheet are highlighted in a new film released by Cambridge University this morning.

Cambridge University glaciologist Professor Julian Dowdeswell has spent three years of his life in the polar regions.

As Director of the Scott Polar Research Institute (part of the Department of Geography) at the University of Cambridge, this film follows him to Greenland and the Antarctic as his research reveals the challenges we all face from climate change.

Rex Walford

Staff in the Department were shocked and saddened to learn of the tragic death of Rex Walford OBE, in a boating accident on the River Thames on January 2nd 2011. Rex was well known to many staff through his work as a University Lecturer in Geography and Education (in the Faculty of Education, University of Cambridge), as a past Vice President and council member of the Royal Geographical Society, and as past President of the Geographical Association, including his long-standing association with local branch of the GA. He will be remembered for his wit, wisdom and endless curiosity for all things geographical; his loss to education geography is incomparable. A full appreciation of Rex's contributions to geography, and more widely to the arts, can be found at

Centre for Gender Studies - Public Forum in association with The Guardian Newspaper and kindly supported by Cambridge University Press

The Centre for Gender Studies in association with The Guardian Newspaper, kindly supported by Cambridge University Press, hosts 3 major international events in London. World class experts engage directly with the public on topics of gender and radical bio-medical advances of the 21st Century. What can the latest scientific advances tell us about gender, what will be possible in the future and why does it matter? More details ...

Adrian Hayes

The Department regrets to report the death of Adrian Hayes on 13 August 2010. Adrian's funeral will take place on Thursday 26 August at 1.00pm at the Arbory Trust Woodland Burial Ground at Barton Glebe, near Cambridge. Adrian's family requests that no flowers are sent for the funeral. Adrian's family wishes it to be known that his friends and colleagues are very welcome to attend the funeral.

Professor Philip Gibbard awarded honorary doctorate degree

Philip Gibbard

On 28 May 2010 Professor Philip Gibbard of the Department of Geography was awarded an honorary doctorate degree (PhD honoris causa) by the University of Helsinki. This is the highest honour the University can bestow.

Phil was one of twelve distinguished persons from science, culture and society who received the degree of honorary doctor at the University of Helsinki, Faculty of Philosophy conferment ceremony.

The citation read: "Philip L. Gibbard (b. 1949) from the University of Cambridge is one of the most widely known researchers of ice-age geology, and in recent years he has had particular success in developing a geological timescale. Professor Gibbard has exceptionally wide professional networks and a profound command of his field. He has been involved in close co-operation with the University of Helsinki, and has been a significant background figure in the Finnish community of Quaternary researchers for over thirty years".

The Anthropocene: a new Epoch of geological time caused by humans?

In 2002 the chemist Paul Crutzen suggested that we are now living in a new geological interval of time that is dominated by human activities. He termed this the Anthropocene. Since then the term has been widely but informally quoted by a range of earth and environmental scientists, has attracted much public attention, and has been the focus of suggestions that it be formally incorporated into the Geological Time Scale. A recent article (Jan Zalasiewicz, Mark Williams, Will Steffen & Paul Crutzen 2010 The New World of the Anthropocene Environ. Sci. Technol., 44, 2228–2231) examining the nature, scale and status of the Anthropocene as a potential new geological epoch has appeared highlighting key themes such as the effects of anthropogenic influence on global change (e.g. sea level rise, ice sheet stability, ocean acidification, biodiversity) and how this will be reflected in a distinctive geological record. The proposal of the term Anthropocene is controversial has and has triggered comment in various places, including National Geographic News on 6th April 2010, which includes a quote from Professor Phil Gibbard of the Department.

The New World of the Anthropocene
Jan Zalasiewicz, Mark Williams, Will Steffen, Paul Crutzen
Environ. Sci. Technol., 2010, 44 (7), pp 2228–2231
Publication Date (Web): February 25, 2010 (Viewpoint)
doi:10.1021/es903118j

Indigenous Development in the Andes: Culture, Power, and Transnationalism

Book cover

Sarah Radcliffe's new book, Indigenous Development in the Andes: Culture, Power, and Transnationalism has now been published by Duke University Press.

The book is a nuanced examination of the complexities involved in designing and executing "culturally appropriate" development agendas, and it illuminate a web of relations among indigenous villagers, social movement leaders, government officials, NGO workers, and staff of multilateral agencies such as the World Bank. Indigenous Development in the Andes offers a comprehensive analysis of the diverse consequences of neoliberal development, and it underscores crucial questions about globalization, governance, cultural identity, and social movements.

The book can be ordered from Duke University Press.

Britain's island heritage: reconstructing half a million years of history

The latest instalment of a 20-year study to understand how Britain became an island completes a tale of megafloods and super-rivers.

Deep below the Bay of Biscay, where the English Channel meets the Atlantic Ocean, layers of sediment hold precious information about how Britain came to be separated from mainland Europe. Until recently, the clues had remained hidden, off limits owing to the impracticalities and cost of obtaining long-piston core samples and high-resolution acoustic data in this area. However, thanks to an Anglo-French collaboration between Professor Phil Gibbard, who leads the Quaternary Palaeoenvironments Group in the Department, and PhD student Sam Toucanne and his colleagues from the University of Bordeaux, the seabed has now yielded its secrets. In doing so, it provides the final instalment in a story that has been unfolding for two decades, since Professor Gibbard first began his detailed palaeogeographic and paleoenvironmental reconstructions of the southern North Sea. Read more ...

This work has recently been featured in The Independent, The Telegraph, The Daily Mail, and others.

End of an era: new ruling decides the boundaries of Earth's history

After decades of debate and four years of investigation an international body of earth scientists, led by Cambridge Professor Phil Gibbard, has formally agreed to move the boundary dates for the prehistoric Quaternary Period by 800,000 years. Read more ...

Open Days for prospective Undergraduates -
Thursday 2nd & Friday 3rd July 2009

The Department is running Open Days on Thursday 2nd & Friday 3rd July 2009.

Quaternary definition led by Cambridge Geography Professor

The International Commission on Stratigraphy (ICS) has elected to formally define the base of the Quaternary at 2.6 million years before present, and also to lower the base of the Pleistocene — an epoch that encompasses the most recent glaciations — from its historical position at 1.8 million years to 2.6 million years ago. The decision, finalised on 21 May, will now be passed to the executive committee of the International Union of Geological Sciences (IUGS) for ratification, which is expected shortly.

The vote shifts an 800,000-year slice, formerly part of the Pliocene Epoch, into the Pleistocene. "It's kind of a land grab," says Philip Gibbard, a geologist at the University of Cambridge, UK, who has fought for the redefinition since 2001. "But we see it as just putting straight a mistake that was made 25–30 years ago. "In 1985, the beginning of the Pleistocene was defined at 1.8 million years ago, calibrated to an outcropping of marine strata in southern Italy. But some geologists have long felt that was a localised, arbitrary boundary that did not reflect worldwide changes — and argued instead for the 2.6-million-year mark, when the entire planet cooled".

The term Quaternary was adopted in the early 1800s, when geologists divvied up fossil records of Earth's history into four periods: the Primary, Secondary, Tertiary and Quaternary. The first two terms were discarded long ago, and although Tertiary is still sometimes used, in recent decades some geologists came to consider the Quaternary an outmoded relic. In2004, a major publication left the Quaternary out of the ICS timescale altogether, making it vulnerable to extinction from scientific nomenclature. In place of the Quaternary, it extended the prior 'Neogene', which began 23 million years ago, up to the present. The Quaternary community went into open revolt but now peace reigns, as the term is safely defined for the first time in its history.

Cambridge Geography ranked best degree by The Independent and the Education Guardian

The Education Guardian University Guide 2010 has once again given top place to the Geography Degree at Cambridge. The Independent's Complete University guide also placed Cambridge Geography top.

EducationGuardian.co.uk's guide to universities and colleges claims to be the most comprehensive source of information on UK higher education. The tables use a range of criteria.

Professor Richard Smith, Head of Department, said:

We are pleased to report that we have once again appeared as the top UK university Department of Geography in the Independent's Complete University Guide published on 30 April 2009 and the Guardian's list of top Universities for teaching Geography published 12 May 2009.