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# Open Days for prospective Undergraduates - Thursday 4th & Friday 5th July 2013
16th May, 2013
Thinking of applying to Cambridge as an Undergraduate in Geography? Check out our prospectus and come to our open days:
- Open days - Thursday 4th & Friday 5th July 2013
- Undergraduate course guide
- Cambridge Geography ranked best degree by the Guardian University Guide and the Complete University Guide
# Professor Keith Richards awarded Founder's Medal of the Royal Geographical Society
13th May, 2013
Professor Keith Richards has been awarded the Founder's Medal of the Royal Geographical Society. This is one of the two Royal Medals awarded by the Society each year, as approved by HM The Queen. The Medal has been awarded to Keith 'for the encouragement and development of physical geography and fluvial geomorphology', and will be presented at the AGM on 3rd June.
# Climate change: can nature help us?
8th May, 2013
Flooding, landslides, crop failure, water shortages. Across the globe, the frequency with which humans are suffering the ill effects of climatic variability and extreme weather events is on the increase. Can natural environments be used effectively to help people adapt to the effects of climate change? The first systematic review of this question – facilitated by the Cambridge Conservation Initiative (CCI) Collaborative Fund for Conservation and involving three members of the Department of Geography – finds much evidence of their effectiveness.
# Kelby Hicks
25th April, 2013
Members of the Department of Geography have been saddened by the sudden and untimely death of Kelby Hicks, a volcanologist and PhD student in the Department. Our heartfelt sympathies go to his family and friends.
A memorial service was held in St Edmund's College chapel on Friday 26 April at 1.30pm.
# Archaeologists say that the 'Anthropocene' is here - but it began long ago
22nd April, 2013
Professor Phil Gibbard joined Bruce Smith from the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, USA, for a Science Live web chat discussion entitled 'Archaeologists say that the 'Anthropocene' is here - but it began long ago'. It took place on Thursday 25 April 2013 and can be watched on the Science website.
# Masters in Conservation Leadership students shine alongside Sir David Attenborough at CCI Conservation Campus launch
12th April, 2013
Students from the Masters in Conservation Leadership were privileged to attend an inspiring and insightful lecture by Sir David Attenborough in the University of Cambridge Senate House on 2nd April. The event was attended by over 400 guests from across the University and associated conservation organisations in and around Cambridge, to mark the official launch of the Cambridge Conservation Campus.
Four students gave short presentations about how the Masters will help shape their conservation careers, and what being a part of the Cambridge experience and CCI means to them. Following the lecture, all seventeen students attended a drinks reception at which they and invited guests, met Sir David in the company of the Vice-Chancellor Sir Leszek Borysiewicz and guest of honour HRH Duke of Edinburgh.
The Campus, due to be completed towards the end of 2015, will become the hub for the world's largest conservation cluster, the Cambridge Conservation Initiative (CCI). It will be an international centre of interdisciplinary collaboration and outreach that will transform research, learning and leadership, and policy and practice, for the benefit of biodiversity and humanity.
# Debating the right to food
8th April, 2013
Dr Bhaskar Vira and Dr David Nally have written a short piece for The Guardian Poverty Matters website, and for Al Jazeera, discussing the recent adoption of a National Food Security Bill by the Indian cabinet, and its implications for wider debates about the Right to Food, welfare and social security. These issues will be discussed at an event organised by Dr Vira and Dr Nally at King's Place in London, being held on Monday 8 April as part of the University Strategic Research Initiative on Global Food Security, at which particpants will debate issues relating to the Right to Food.
One of the participants in the London debate, Mr Harsh Mander, who is Special Commissioner on the Right to Food to the Indian Supreme Court, will be visiting the Department this week. He will participate in a research workshop on food security in India, on Tuesday, and deliver a public lecture in the Department entitled 'Inequality and Indifference: the Indian Story' at 11 am on Wednesday 10 April.
# Last letter of Captain Scott finally revealed in full - 101 years on
29th March, 2013
A letter written by the dying Captain Scott - one of only two remaining in private hands - can be revealed in full for the first time after being acquired by the Scott Polar Research Institute at the University of Cambridge.
# Gang labour in the UK on Radio 4, Thinking Allowed
26th March, 2013
Dr Kendra Strauss from the Department of Geography, University of Cambridge and Professor Ben Rogaly from the Department of Geography, University of Sussex will discuss labour exploitation on Radio 4's Thinking Allowed program on Wednesday March 27th, 4pm. The programme will include a discussion of Dr. Strauss's 2012 Antipode paper 'Unfree Again: Social Reproduction, Flexible Labour Markets and the Resurgence of Gang Labour in the UK'.
# The Geographical Unconscious: mapping the supernatural in current research
25th March, 2013
Polar Social Science and Humanities Workshop, 10th April 2013. Scott Polar Research Institute, 1.30-5.30pm.
Recent decades have witnessed the release of a multitude of studies looking at imaginative and spiritual geographies, maps and monsters, and the psychical landscape of the supernatural. Taken together, this corpus has acted to problematise any reductionist "breaks" which theorise a "decline of magic" (Keith Thomas) or "disenchantment of the world" (Max Weber) in modernity. During this period human geography has undertaken "affectual" and "emotional" turns, while researchers in cultural and literary studies have been working with the "supernatural turn" of the "uncanny nineties". Maintaining a broad field of vision, the theme of this workshop is the geographical unconscious. This meeting brings together contributions ranging from early modern studies to the Arctic humanities to examine and compare the political and cultural agencies at work.
We invite our contributors to present 20-25 minute papers which would set out their current approaches and subjects in an area currently at the centre of several critical developments in the humanities and social sciences. What is the relationship between particular places and their supernatural inhabitants? Can we speak of spirits of place? How do scientific travellers and explorers appeal to the world of dreams, memories, and desires in their practices? What role does haunting play in narratives of life and death? Can otherness ever be accurately mapped?
For more info and to RSVP contact Dr Shane McCorristine.