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Department of Geography

Undergraduate study

Undergraduate study

Geography is one of the most exciting subjects to study at university. We live in an interdependent world caught up in chains of events which span the globe. We depend upon an increasingly fragile physical environment, whose complex interactions require sophisticated analysis and sensitive management.

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Postgraduate study

Postgraduate study

The Department has a large community of postgraduate students. Many are working for the PhD degree, awarded on the basis of individual research and requiring three years of full-time study. The Department of Geography also runs a range of Masters/MPhil courses.

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People in the Department

People in the Department

The Department’s staff publish regularly in hundreds of separate publications, and attract research funding from a wide variety of sources.

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Research groups

Research groups

Research in the Department of Geography, arranged across six Thematic Research Groups and two Institutes, covers a broad range of topics, approaches, and sites of study. Our expertise, individually and in collaboration, is both conceptual and applied.

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RGS podcast with Prof Alice Reid

8th March, 2024

 

The Royal Geographical Society has published a podcast featuring Professor Alice Reid, who talks about how fertility, mortality and health affected changes in the UK's population in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The RGS have also produced associated teaching materials for Key Stage 4.

AI for climate and nature

16th February, 2024

 

Drs Harry Owen and Emily Lines are part of a newly-funded AI@CAM project which aims to find new AI-driven approaches to tackle society's biggest challenges.

The new project, AI for climate and nature, will tackle the twin climate and biodiversity crises by developing AI approaches for bringing together a wide range of datasets and accelerating the collation of information.

This work will provide up to date, relevant and robust information for researchers and decision-makers working on climate and biodiversity conservation – opening up the possibility for more targeted and effective solutions to some of our world's most pressing climate and biodiversity challenges. This project is a collaboration between Cambridge Zero, Cambridge Conservation Initiative, Conservation Evidence, Institute for Computing for Climate Science, Conservation Research Institute, Centre for Landscape Regeneration, Cambridge Centre for Carbon Credits and Cambridge Centre for Earth Observation.

Staying put in an era of climate change: The geographies, legalities, and public health implications of immobility

7th February, 2024

 

An interdisciplinary review piece by Dr Liam Saddington and colleagues from public health, psychology, and law explores the implications of immobility in the face of climate change.

Although there has been widespread discussion of climate migration, this paper explores how climate related hazards affect immobile populations. Led by Dr Daniel Robins, the paper explores how we conceptualise "environmental immobility" arguing that an interdisciplinary approach is needed when considering both "voluntary" and "involuntary" immobility.

Prioritise environmental sustainability in use of AI and data science methods

30th January, 2024

 

Artificial Intelligence (AI) and data science will play a crucial role in improving environmental sustainability, and leveraging them has huge potential to provide effective and robust guidance for our changing world. However, the energy requirements of these methods is significant and growing, and will have an increasingly negative effect on the environment without sustainable design and use.

Academics, including Dr Emily Lines of the Department of Geography, are calling for consideration of the energy requirements of AI to be prioritised in research, in a new article published in Nature Geoscience. They call for environmental scientists to lead the way in developing robust standards that will minimise the environmental impact — and facilitate the accessibility — of AI and data science innovation, with benefits for both the global research community and the world at large.

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  • 24th April 2024:
    Title to be confirmed. Details…
    Quaternary Discussion Group (QDG)
  • 25th April 2024:
    Inaugural Lecture by Dr Hannah Hasenberger. Details…
    Department of Geography - main Departmental seminar series
  • 25th April 2024:
    'I can work all manner of Works': the meanings of labour in the works of Hannah Wolley (c.1622-74?). Details…
    Early Modern Economic and Social History Seminars
  • 2nd May 2024:
    Title to be confirmed. Details…
    Early Modern Economic and Social History Seminars
  • 9th May 2024:
    Inaugural Lecture by Dr Max van Wyk de Vries. Details…
    Department of Geography - main Departmental seminar series
  • 9th May 2024:
    Canoes and capitalism. Details…
    Early Modern Economic and Social History Seminars
  • More seminars…