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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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Considering the future of the IPCC

14th September, 2023

 

The next Assessment Report — the Seventh — of the UN's IPCC, faces some difficult decisions about how the Panel can stay relevant to the science, politics and policies of climate change.

As it considers its future, an international team of social scientists, led by Mike Hulme, has recently published a Commentary in the journal Nature Climate Change, offering three different institutional future pathways for the IPCC.

Welcome new students!

17th August, 2023

 

Congratulations to everyone who received their results today. We are looking forward to welcoming new students to the Geography Department at the start of term.

We are busy preparing materials to welcome you. We will be in contact in early September with more information about induction to the Geography Department.

For those eligible it would be great if you could make an application to the Geography Scholarship for Black and mixed Black heritage students. Applications close on 3 September.

A T 'Dick' Grove, 1924-2023

7th August, 2023

 

Alfred Thomas Grove, known universally as Dick, died at home in Cambridge on 9th July 2023, aged 99. Dick was a University Lecturer in Geography from 1954 to 1980, after which he became Director of the African Studies Centre at Cambridge. He also became Vice-Master at Downing College during the 1970s. He made major contributions to the understanding of environmental change in Africa, especially in dryland regions.

A full appreciation of his life is available to read.

Becky Dell is appointed Assistant Professor in Glaciology at the Scott Polar Research Institute

3rd August, 2023

 

We are delighted to announce that Dr Becky Dell has been appointed as an Assistant Professor in Glaciology at SPRI, starting October 1st this year.

Becky first arrived at SPRI in 2017 for her PhD, which focussed on developing remote sensing and machine learning methods for the study of ice-shelf stability in Antarctica. Since completing her PhD in 2021, Becky has worked within the Institute as a European Space Agency Climate Change Initiative Fellow.

Becky has significant expertise in both remote sensing and fieldwork-based studies of Antarctic ice shelves, which will continue to be of considerable benefit to the research, teaching, and outreach of both SPRI and the Geography Department.

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  • 4th October 2023:
    Vacuuming the Atlantic, Paepalology and getting things ‘wrong, wrong, wrong!’ – pollen tales from the archives. Details…
    Quaternary Discussion Group (QDG)
  • 5th October 2023:
    Earth hunger: Global integration and the need for strangers. Details…
    Core Seminar in Economic and Social History
  • 12th October 2023:
    A comparative history of national accounting in India and the USSR. Details…
    Core Seminar in Economic and Social History
  • 18th October 2023:
    The Pleistocene Evolution of the Antarctic Circumpolar Current: An Interglacial Perspective. Details…
    Quaternary Discussion Group (QDG)
  • 19th October 2023:
    How was power shared in colonial Africa? Taxation and representation in the British empire. Details…
    Core Seminar in Economic and Social History
  • 26th October 2023:
    Wages and labour relations in the Middle Ages: It's not (all) about the money. Details…
    Core Seminar in Economic and Social History
  • More seminars…