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Visiting Scholars

The aim of a Visiting Scholar is to discuss and share ideas with another academic in our Department who works within the same, or closely related, field of interest. From this mutual collaboration may come ideas, joint publications and grant applications for future joint research projects. For stays of six months or more, we expect a short report (500 words), to be submitted by the host to the Director of Research within three months of the end of the visit, detailing the activities undertaken in Cambridge.

Our Visiting Scholars have a PhD degree, are carrying out research and looking to collaborate with academics in the Department of Geography at Cambridge while they are taking a sabbatical from their home institution. While a Visiting Scholar will have a prime point of contact – their ‘host’ – we hope that they will engage more widely with our research activities, through attending meetings of our Thematic Research Groups and through discussions with individual researchers in the Department. And we encourage links with researchers in other Faculties and Departments in Cambridge over the course of their stay.

The Department of Geography accepts Visiting Scholars from a wide range of backgrounds and research fields. They can be either supported by their institutions or self-funded.

Current Visiting Scholars in the Department:

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Dr Tito Arosio, collaborating with Prof Ulf BĂĽntgen

Research:

Tito Arosio is a post-doc supported by the Swiss National Foundation.
He pursued his PhD at the University of Bern, Department of Physics. He collaborated with Prof. Leuenberger and Prof. Nicolussi. He studied the stable isotopes of tree rings in a large database of wood samples that covers the last 9,000 years, to understand paleoclimate in the Alpine region. He has measured the values of the stable isotopes of Hydrogen, Oxygen, and Carbon in thousands of samples and has identified some non-climate signals they carry. He discovered that larch wood carries a deuterium signal different from other conifer species, a finding that is useful for the analysis of archeological timber specimens. His research now focuses on the analysis of the values of three stable isotopes in various databases to try to reconstruct alpine climatic variations during the Holocene.

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Dr Agata Buchwal, collaborating with Prof Ulf BĂĽntgen

Research:

Agata Buchwal is a visiting scholar supported by Polish National Agency for Academic Exchange (NAWA).
She pursued her PhD at the Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznan (Poland), Faculty of Geographical and Geological Sciences. She studies tree rings of arctic shrubs in relation to changing climate in Low and High Arctic tundra ecosystems. She conducted numerous arctic expedition to Spitsbergen, Greenland, Alaska and Siberia. Her recent synthesis revealed divergent tundra shrub growth in relation to declining sea ice extent in the Pan-Arctic region. Her recent research focuses on the analysis of Juniperus nana growth ring from northern Scandinavia. Specifically, she is interested in blue rings formation, i.e., not fully lignified growth rings related to cooling events in the Northern Hemisphere in last ca. 300 years. In her Home University she enjoys teaching classes on Arctic in a Changing Climate and Dendrochronology. She enjoys tutoring activities with research-oriented students.

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Prof Andrew Goetz

Research: Andrew R. Goetz is a Professor in the Department of Geography & the Environment and a faculty associate in the Transportation Institute, Rocky Mountain Land Use Institute, the Scrivner Institute for Public Policy, and the Urban Studies program at the University of Denver USA. He is a co-author of four books, including Metropolitan Denver: Growth and Change in the Mile-High City (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2018). He has published numerous journal articles and book chapters on a wide variety of transportation and urban studies topics, including urban, metropolitan, and statewide transportation planning and policy; transport sustainability; urban planning and smart growth; environmental impacts of transportation; transit planning; transit funding and financing; transportation infrastructure investment and urban/economic growth; transit-oriented development; intermodal transportation; freight transportation; air transportation; airport planning; and high-speed rail. Prof. Goetz is currently a member of the scientific committee of Cluster 1: Transport Infrastructure Impacts and Evaluation in the Network of European Communications and Transportation Activities Research (NECTAR), and the Treasurer of the Commission on Transport and Geography in the International Geographical Union. He was awarded a U.S. Fulbright Global Scholar fellowship to teach and conduct research at the University of Malta from February to May 2023. His research project focused on the impacts of low-cost airlines on air transport and tourism development in Malta. He has been a Senior Visiting Fellow at the University of Bologna, Italy in December 2017, and a Visiting Fellow in Humanities also at the University of Bologna in 2009. Prof. Goetz served as associate editor of the Journal of Transport Geography from 2004-2012, and still serves on its editorial board along with the World Review of Intermodal Transportation Research. He received the 2010 Edward L. Ullman Award from the American Association of Geographers for Significant Contributions to Transportation Geography.

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Dr Jakub Kronenberg, collaborating with Prof Chris Sandbrook

Research:

Jakub Kronenberg is an ecological economist working on environmental values and the institutional context of nature conservation, in particular with regard to urban green spaces and birds. Among other things, he investigates problems with the neoliberal governance of nature.
He is an Associate Professor at the University of Lodz, Faculty of Economics and Sociology, where he established and led, until leaving for Cambridge, the Social-Ecological Systems Analysis Lab. Since 2009, he has been a member of the board of the Sendzimir Foundation, which promotes sustainable development in Poland.
During his stay at the University of Cambridge, Jakub works on the project entitled “Environmental values and conservation rhetorics: exploring economic and other arguments for the conservation of birds,” funded by the Polish National Agency for Academic Exchange (NAWA).

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Dr John Marazita, collaborating with Prof Mike Hulme

Research: (Details to follow)

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Prof Alberto Mataran Ruiz, collaborating with Prof Charlotte Lemanski

Research:

BsC and PhD in Environmental Science (University of Granada). He has been visiting scholar in different international universities and professor in several graduate and postgraduate programs including Urban and Regional Planning, Agroecology, Environmental History, and International Cooperation. His research interest is centred on the conflicts related to energy colonialism, and on local self-sustainability including the importance of periurban areas and local food systems. According to this his methodological approach is based on decolonial, bioregional and agroecological perspectives always considering the importance of participation for the transition processes in Europe and Latinamerica.
He is now working on different research projects addressing the colonial deployment of renewable energies in Spain and abroad, including a participatory analysis of the impacts and possible planning alternatives. He is also partner of the EU Healthy Municipal Soils project (HUMUS) defining participatory methodologies for the development of EU Soil Mission at local and regional level. He is finally part of the working group that is developing the regional plan for biodistricts in AndalucĂ­a (south of Spain).

Prof Anthony Patt, collaborating with Prof Rachael Garrett

Research: (Details to follow)

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Dr Ihor Radchuk

Research:

Ihor is a Senior Researcher at the Department of Environmental Research, Institute of Telecommunications and Global Information Space, National Academy of Sciences, Kyiv, Ukraine. In his PhD research defended on the topic "Environmental monitoring of limnological systems by remote sensing of the earth". The purpose of the research is to increase the efficiency and completeness of information when assessing eutrophication and strategic freshwater reserves in limnological systems of various geological origins, based on Earth remote sensing, geographic information systems and field tests.

Ihor, for more than ten years, has been studying Ukrainian water objects (rivers, lakes, and seas). His main directions of scientific research are identifying features and regularities of the processes of artificial and anthropogenic influence on the ecological state of water bodies using information, analytical tools, and technologies. Creation of a cartographic model of technogenic and anthropogenic load on local ecosystems, using a synthesis of contact and distance methods, correct application of bathymetry methods, construction of a 3D model of lakes, and research of processes of eutrophication of limnosystems. He has scientific developments 3D models of water areas of lakes Ukraine, coastal strips based on remote sensing of the Earth data process and GIS.

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Dr Snizhana Zahorodnia

Research:

Dr. Snizhana Zahorodnia, Senior Researcher, Department of Environmental Research, Institute of Telecommunications and Global Information Space, National Academy of Sciences, Kyiv, Ukraine. She defended her Ph.D. on the topic "Evaluation of the ecological state of the nature reserve fund using geoinformation technologies" from the specialty "Environmental safety."

The main directions of scientific research are ecological safety of the system of nature management, lake ecosystems, wetlands, and territories of the nature reserve fund of Ukraine using the toolkit of geoinformation technologies and methods of remote sensing of the Earth. Cartographic support for managing the nature reserve fund using geoinformation systems, combining remote and on-site research.

Key subjects are developing models for analyzing anthropogenic factors' influence on the ecosystem of the nature reserve fund and improving the technology of ecological cartographic assessment of the ecological state of natural objects using geoinformation systems to support management decision-making regarding environmental safety.

Applications

In order to be an academic visitor in the Department you need to be invited by a member of the Department academic staff.

We cannot provide Visiting Scholars with any help finding accommodation, setting up childcare facilities, or other personal welfare. Please note that the University of Cambridge does not provide childcare support to visitors. The University Accommodation service may be able to help with accommodation.

Latest news for Visiting Scholars

  • Department Seminars
  • Newcomers and Visiting Scholars Society
  • Work Permits – If you are from a non-EU country, you need to check with your British Embassy regarding the necessity of a visa and/or work permit. The Home Office has recently changed its rules for visitors and has not yet provided a specific new channel through which a potential visitor may apply.