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162 Geography Dissertation Ideas: Creative Topics For Your Writing

162 Geography Dissertation Ideas

Finding the best geography dissertation ideas is not a straightforward process due to the broad nature of this academic field. Most students find geography challenging, and writing a thesis on this subject is even more difficult. Selecting a dissertation topic is among the major hurdles for geography students. Therefore, this article highlights some of the best dissertation ideas for geography students. This article is helpful because it inspires students with difficulties picking topics or ideas for their thesis papers.

What is Geography?

Geography is a field in science devoted to studying phenomena on different planets, including earth, lands, inhabitants, and features. Ideally, this field entails studying the earth’s physical attributes, the atmosphere, and human activity.

It also encompasses resource and population distribution, economic and political activities. Students that love unveiling the universe’s secrets pursue geography studies. And educators expect such learners to write geography dissertations at some point in their academic journey. But what makes a successful dissertation in this study field?

A good geography dissertation should have several clear sections as follows:

Choosing a topic : Your dissertation should have a unique, engaging, and relevant topic. Therefore, finding a title for your geography thesis should be your first step in the dissertation writing process. Introduction : A geography dissertation intro should state the topic while highlighting its importance. It should also note the objectives or goals of your dissertation. Include a thesis statement towards the introductory part’s end, telling the readers what to expect in the rest of the paper. Literature review : Your geography dissertation should present other studies on the topic and their results in this section. Explain what prompted you to research this topic. And this can be a gap in the past studies or adding onto what already exists. Methodology : In the methodology section, present the methods you used to conduct your research, such as surveys and questionnaires. Also, tell the readers why you chose those data collection methods for your study. Findings : State the findings of your studies without explaining or elaborating. Ideally, this section presents the results of the research without discussing them. Discussion : This section discusses the previous sections’ findings that you stated or presented. Explain the results of your study in detail in this part of your dissertation. Conclusion : Wrap up the paper based on your study findings. Make sure your readers understand why you’ve reached a specific conclusion based on the results and analysis. References : This section should include all the information sources you used in your study.

These are the sections of a brief outline of a geography thesis. But even with knowledge of the primary parts of a geography dissertation, you need an interesting topic to impress the professor to award you the best grade. Here are some of the geography ideas to consider for your dissertation.

Physical Geography Dissertation Ideas

The environment has many geographical features. For instance, you will notice hills, mountains, dams, lakes, and much more when walking around. And these features make the environment impressive. Here are physical geography ideas to consider for your dissertation.

  • Nuclear power role in the environment
  • Water scarcity and its scientific implications
  • Why mangrove trees are essential to the marine ecosystem
  • The impact of climate change on agricultural production
  • The effect of carbon dioxide concentration increase on the atmosphere
  • How wastes and pesticides cause soil contamination
  • Global warming and the realities about it
  • How to switch to cleaner vehicles and fuels
  • How humans cause global warming
  • Natural resources and their social dimensions
  • The essence of modeling and geospatial science
  • Sustainability practices and climate adaptability
  • Evaluating fisheries management and ecology
  • Exploring the planet’s invasive species
  • How local power station emissions affect soil pollution levels
  • Investigating green-field land use in some places
  • Analyzing the UK air quality
  • Analyzing the UK water quality
  • Investigating the impact of land use on local water quality
  • Investigating the effect of organic farming on water quality
  • Investigating the effect of human activity on coastlines
  • Analyzing the impact of reservoirs location on water quality
  • Exploring the link between respiratory diseases and air pollution
  • Investigating the connection between river discharge and climate change
  • Are the effects of floods and high river flows increasing in some areas?
  • Is climate change a result of growing geographical hazards?
  • Investigating land contamination in some areas
  • Climate change and hurricane strength- What’s the connection?
  • Atmospheric temperatures and their association with ground temperatures
  • Analyzing soil fertility after a volcanic eruption
  • Investigating the impact of rock climbing on cliff vegetation
  • Meteorological hazards and their impact on climate change
  • Coastal tourism sustainability- Its effects on beach and land
  • How natural factors affect the local ecosystem
  • Analyzing soil in your local area

A student can pick any of these ideas and use them as a topic title. Alternatively, they can tweak it a little to suit their study. Another great option is to get assignment help online and stop wasting time on your dissertation if you don’t like it.

Human Geography Dissertation Ideas

Human geography is vital for the environment. Ideas in this category can enhance the scope of your study. Here are exciting topic ideas to consider in this geography subfield.

  • Why studying human geography is essential in modern times.
  • How does urban geography relate to business?
  • What are the primary issues in human geography?
  • Comparing physical geography and human geography
  • Human geography and its connection to cultural geography
  • How urbanization affects natural resources
  • How weather patterns alter agriculture
  • How fishing affects man
  • Agriculture’s history and importance
  • How human activities cause ozone depletion
  • How mining affects the environment
  • How human activities cause climate change
  • Human geography and its sub-disciplinary fields
  • Homelessness and poverty in African suburbs
  • Investigating clay and gravel along the beach coral reef
  • How landscape development affects the environment
  • Can humans use GIS in assessing spatial quality in the education sector?
  • Can humans use commerce as a sign of sustainable food supply and agriculture?
  • Is geothermal technology suitable for infrastructure and social housing?
  • Is there sufficient research to monitor health inequalities effectively, especially in rural areas?
  • Should urban renewal prioritize green infrastructure?
  • Can ways to evaluate the effects of outdoor recreation on natural resources and rural communities support sustainable development?
  • Climate change research- Is using volunteered information and citizens’ role in geographical investigations a viable option?
  • How socio-economic demographics affect low-carbon practices’ adoption
  • Does the world have sufficient green infrastructure to mitigate urban heat islands?

Pick one of these ideas as your topic or use it for inspiration. Nevertheless, prepare to research your idea extensively to write a quality and informative geography thesis.

Social Geography Dissertation Ideas

Social geography is a scientific study of society and its relationship with space. If that’s something that you find interesting, here are some of the best topic ideas to consider in this category.

  • Society’s role in climate change
  • How modern society affects the natural ecological systems
  • Are modern societies responsible for global warming?
  • How the community can help in addressing climate change issues
  • Society’s role in the implementation of environmental protection policies

Topics in this geography subfield allow students to work practically and theoretically. They can also focus on demographic change in cities and rural areas and spatial identities and cultures.

Cultural Geography Dissertation Ideas

Cultural geography is a major scientific branch involving ethnic geography study. It covers art, religion, and languages. Here are brilliant geography topic ideas to consider in this subfield.

  • Critical analysis of the GIS
  • Investigating imposition systems globally
  • Electoral geography democratization
  • Counter-mapping community resources- What are the dilemmas?
  • Cultural geography and its role in modern society development
  • Ecology and cultural history
  • Culture as a concept in contemporary human geography
  • Cultural landscapes and communication methods
  • How cultural activities promote urbanization
  • How humans influence different land activities
  • Why cultural geography matters
  • Physical geography versus cultural geography
  • How cultural geography promotes tourism
  • The effects of globalization on the Chinese economy
  • The influence of cultural superiority on human behavior
  • How globalization benefits developing and developed countries
  • How the native culture affects human psychology
  • Geo-cultural space and heritage monuments
  • The role of women in modern Chinese society
  • Geography aspects of global religions’ study
  • Investigating the education systems in eastern and western cultures

Any of these ideas can be an excellent topic for a geography thesis. However, learners should take adequate time researching these topics to write impressive papers.

Food Geography Dissertation Ideas

Food geography explores foods and their complexities as a societal and geographic phenomenon. If interested in this field, you can explore any of these ideas in your dissertation.

  • Can the world depend on eco-friendly foods?
  • Is food a cultural aspect?
  • Is food a building block for quality life and public health?
  • Investigating food differences in different cultures
  • Is food the cause of social disparities?
  • How food production affects the environment
  • Strengthening food production with geographical studies
  • How geography can help in boosting food security
  • Investigating food, agriculture, and nutrition geography
  • Exploring the geography of food consumption

These are fantastic food geography ideas to explore when picking a topic. Nevertheless, please choose a title in this category when confident that you can work on it to produce a winning thesis.

Best Geography Topics for Dissertations

Maybe you want to write a thesis on a unique topic and impress your educator. If so, consider these ideas for your geography dissertation topic.

  • Can green energy substitute fossil fuels?
  • Causes and impacts of earthquakes
  • Can floods help sustain life?
  • Investigating individual responsibility in curbing global warming
  • Natural disasters and their severity in the contemporary world
  • How to address the ongoing water crisis
  • How to address human-animal conflicts
  • Can humans prevent floods?
  • Humans’ role in protecting the endangered species
  • The impact of the current industrialization trend
  • Wildfire eruption- What are the causes?
  • Primary causes of water pollution
  • Geographical location and its influence on a nation’s climate
  • The impact of public housing on the housing industry
  • The effect of water bodies on the climate
  • How oil exploration affects the environment
  • Describe the glaciers formation process
  • What are the alternatives to dumping wastes?
  • How atomic blasts affected Hiroshima and Nagasaki
  • Investigating the continental drift process
  • Climate and geography- What’s the relationship?
  • The influence of water bodies on the climate
  • Qualities and features of coastal erosion
  • Why humans protecting the endangered tree species in the rain forests is important
  • Why glaciers are melting faster than experts had predicted
  • Describe the worst ecological crisis in human history
  • Is meteorological science natural or accurate?
  • Ways to reduce deforestation effects
  • How floods affect the human lives
  • Hurricane impacts and ways to predict them
  • Exploring a dessert’s geographical features
  • Why landslides and earthquakes are so widespread today
  • Are humans playing a role in their extinction
  • Causes and indicators of climate change
  • Causes of urbanization in different areas
  • Effects of volcanoes on nearby settlements
  • How gas and oil exploration influence social issues
  • Investigating land-use and demographic changes in your locality
  • Emerging trends in grassland agriculture

These are some of the best ideas to explore when writing a geography thesis. But like the other topics, learners require sufficient time to investigate these ideas and write quality papers.

Environmental Geography Dissertation Ideas

Environmental geography focuses on spatial aspects of the natural world and human interactions. Here are topic ideas to explore in this subfield.

  • The potential impact and extent of global warming
  • Can the world environment cope with the potential population growth?
  • Why are humans destroying tropical forests?
  • Should humans protect tropical forests?
  • Famine causes and why it kills people
  • The essence of GIS and remote sensing
  • The impact of bioremediation
  • How ice age affects the climate
  • How deep-sea mining impacts the oceans
  • How humans can reinforce the ozone layer
  • Groundwater contamination and the risks
  • Greenpeace organization role in preserving the global ecology
  • The essence of national parks in an ecosystem
  • Why humanity should prevent the extinction of the endangered species
  • The significant effects of deforestation
  • How Fukushima disasters affected the environment
  • Why coral reeds matter
  • How coral reeds affect the environment
  • The connection between acid rains and industrial activities
  • How reforestation can help with the environmental revival
  • Effective water management methods in different parts of the world
  • How the ecosystem deals with forest fires and other disasters
  • The essence of the paleo-ecology study
  • Seasonal weather changes- How an ecosystem can deal with them
  • How desert spreading affects the local wildlife
  • Resources availability- Are they equally spread?
  • Harnessing the greenhouse effect

Some of these topics are easy to work on, while others require an in-depth investigation. Either way, a dissertation is an advanced paper that requires time to research, analyze, and present data in an organized manner. Nevertheless, students can seek dissertation help online if unable to write this paper.

Quality Help with Geography Dissertation

Are you struggling to pick a topic and write a geography thesis? If so, our experts can help with this academic assignment. We’re a team of renowned professionals with an exceptional reputation for helping college and uni students with geography theses. Many students in the UK, US, and other parts of the world have always trusted us to assist them with academic papers.

Our educated, knowledgeable, and reliable writers deliver comprehensive and unique dissertations on different geography topics. No matter how urgent or complex this assignment seems to you, our experts can write a custom paper within your timeframe. We’re an affordable and trustworthy dissertation service you can count on for all the assistance you need to earn your degree.

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146 Impressive Geography Research Topics Every Student Will Like

geography research topics

Are you a student seeking inspiration for your next geography research project? Look no further! In this article, we present you with a treasure trove of 146 original and top-quality geography research topics, completely free of charge. Whether you’re pursuing a degree in geography or simply passionate about exploring the world around you, these topics cover a wide range of fascinating subjects.

From human geography and cultural landscapes to physical geography and environmental sustainability, we’ve got you covered. Each topic is carefully crafted to ignite your curiosity and help you delve deeper into the field. Get ready to embark on an exciting journey of exploration and discovery as you uncover unique research ideas that will captivate both you and your readers.

Areas Of Geography

Geography is a field of study that explores the Earth’s physical features, human activities and their interactions. It examines the spatial patterns, processes, and relationships between the environment and society. Geographers investigate the Earth’s surface, analyzing its landscapes, climate, ecosystems and resources, as well as the distribution of populations, cultures, economies, and political systems. There are several types of geography, each focusing on specific aspects of the Earth’s physical and human dimensions:

Physical geography examines natural phenomena like landforms, weather and ecosystems. Human geography studies human activities, such as population distribution, urbanization and cultural landscapes. Economic geography explores the spatial patterns of economic activities, trade and resource distribution. Political geography analyzes the political systems, boundaries and geopolitical relationships between regions. Environmental geography investigates the interactions between humans and the environment, including environmental issues and sustainability. Geographical information systems (GIS) and remote sensing employ technology to analyze spatial data and maps.

These subfields together provide a comprehensive understanding of the Earth’s complexities and its relationship with human society.

Easy Geography Research Paper Topics

Want to write your paper in just a couple of hours? Explore a curated list of accessible and easy geography research paper topics that will make your geography research paper writing a breeze:

  • The impact of climate change on coastal regions
  • Exploring the relationship between geography and tourism
  • Analyzing urbanization trends in developing countries
  • Investigating the effects of deforestation on biodiversity
  • Examining the role of geography in natural disaster management
  • Studying the cultural landscape of a specific region
  • Analyzing the geography of food production and distribution
  • Exploring the impact of transportation on urban development
  • Investigating the geography of renewable energy sources
  • Analyzing the spatial patterns of population growth
  • Studying the impact of globalization on local economies
  • Examining the geography of water resources and management

Human Geography Research Topics

Improve your chances of getting a top grade! Delve into the complex interplay between humans and their environment with this comprehensive list of human geography research topics:

  • Exploring the social implications of gentrification in urban areas
  • Analyzing the influence of gender on migration patterns
  • Investigating the impact of globalization on cultural identity
  • Examining the geography of poverty and social inequality
  • Studying the relationship between health and geographical location
  • Analyzing the spatial distribution of ethnic communities in cities
  • Investigating the geography of political power and governance
  • Exploring the role of geography in shaping human behavior
  • Analyzing the impacts of urban sprawl on communities
  • Studying the geography of education access and quality
  • Examining the spatial patterns of crime and its socio-economic factors
  • Investigating the geography of healthcare provision and disparities

Cultural Geography Research Topics

Interested in cultural geography? Immerse yourself in the rich tapestry of cultures and their geographical influences with this captivating list of cultural geography research topics:

  • Analyzing the cultural landscapes of indigenous communities
  • Exploring the impact of globalization on cultural diversity
  • Investigating the geography of language and its preservation
  • Examining the influence of religion on cultural landscapes
  • Studying the role of cultural heritage in tourism development
  • Analyzing the geography of cultural festivals and events
  • Investigating the spatial patterns of cultural diffusion
  • Exploring the impact of migration on cultural identities
  • Analyzing the geography of music and its regional variations
  • Investigating the role of food culture in shaping identities
  • Examining the spatial distribution of cultural institutions
  • Studying the geography of art and its impact on communities

Physical Geography Research Topics

Do you want to write about physical geography? Investigate the natural processes and phenomena shaping our planet through this collection of compelling physical geography research topics:

  • Analyzing the processes of coastal erosion and their impacts
  • Investigating the formation and characteristics of river systems
  • Examining the effects of climate change on glacial landscapes
  • Analyzing the spatial patterns of soil erosion and conservation
  • Investigating the biogeography of specific ecosystems
  • Exploring the impacts of climate on vegetation patterns
  • Analyzing the geography of water resources and hydrology
  • Investigating the formation and classification of landforms
  • Examining the spatial distribution of biodiversity hotspots
  • Studying the interactions between humans and the natural environment
  • Exploring the impacts of urbanization on natural landscapes

Geography Thesis Topics

Are you busy planning your thesis? Engage in an in-depth exploration of geographic concepts and theories with this thought-provoking list of geography thesis topics:

  • Investigating the geographical aspects of sustainable development
  • Analyzing the impacts of climate change on vulnerable communities
  • Exploring the role of geography in disaster risk reduction
  • Studying the geography of migration and refugee movements
  • Examining the relationship between urban planning and social equity
  • Analyzing the spatial patterns of energy consumption and renewable solutions
  • Exploring the geographical dimensions of political conflicts and peacebuilding
  • Investigating the role of geography in land use planning and conservation
  • Examining the impacts of globalization on local economies

Urban Geography Thesis Topics

Are you interested in writing about urban geography? Analyze the complexities of urban landscapes and urbanization processes with this curated selection of urban geography thesis topics:

  • Analyzing the effects of gentrification on urban neighborhoods
  • Investigating the role of urban design in creating sustainable cities
  • Examining the spatial patterns of urban sprawl and its consequences
  • Studying the geography of social segregation in urban areas
  • Analyzing the impacts of transportation systems on urban mobility
  • Investigating the relationship between urbanization and public health
  • Exploring the geography of informal settlements and slums
  • Analyzing the impacts of urban green spaces on quality of life
  • Investigating the geography of urban food systems and food security
  • Examining the role of technology in shaping smart cities
  • Studying the spatial distribution of cultural and recreational amenities in cities

PhD Research Topics In Geography

Expand the boundaries of geographical knowledge and contribute to the field with this diverse and stimulating list of PhD research topics in geography:

  • Analyzing the geography of environmental justice in urban areas
  • Investigating the impacts of climate change on indigenous communities
  • Examining the role of geography in disaster risk governance
  • Studying the spatial patterns of land use change in rapidly urbanizing regions
  • Analyzing the impacts of transportation infrastructure on accessibility and equity
  • Investigating the geographical dimensions of health inequalities
  • Exploring the relationship between globalization and urbanization processes
  • Analyzing the geography of political conflicts and territorial disputes
  • Investigating the impacts of natural resource extraction on local communities
  • Studying the spatial dynamics of international migration and its consequences
  • Exploring the geography of innovation and knowledge economies in cities

Captivating Research Topics In Geography

Looking for some captivating research topics in geography? Ignite curiosity and scholarly interest with this awesome collection of research topics that delve into various aspects of geography:

  • Investigating the geography of mega-cities and their challenges
  • Analyzing the impacts of climate change on vulnerable coastal regions
  • Exploring the spatial patterns of cultural landscapes and heritage sites
  • Studying the geography of borderlands and transnational interactions
  • Examining the impacts of tourism on local communities and environments
  • The role of geography in understanding human-environment interactions
  • Analyzing the spatial distribution of environmental pollution and its impacts
  • Exploring the geography of global food systems and agricultural practices
  • Investigating the impacts of natural disasters on urban resilience
  • Examining the role of geography in understanding urban inequalities
  • Studying the geography of geopolitical conflicts and their implications
  • Exploring the impacts of technological advancements on landscapes

Interesting Geography Research Topics

Discover a wide range of interesting geography research topics that will pique your professor’s curiosity and offer new insights into the world of geography:

  • Analyzing the impacts of climate change on glacier retreat and water resources
  • Investigating the geography of renewable energy transition and its challenges
  • Examining the spatial patterns of urban heat islands and their mitigation strategies
  • Studying the impacts of land use change on biodiversity conservation
  • Investigating the role of geography in understanding cultural diversity
  • Exploring the geography of disease outbreaks and their spatial spread
  • Investigating the impacts of natural hazards on human vulnerability and resilience
  • Examining the spatial distribution of ecological corridors
  • Studying the geography of regional economic disparities and development strategies
  • Exploring the impacts of transportation infrastructure on urban accessibility
  • The role of geography in understanding weather patterns

Good Geography Research Topics For 2023

Looking for some current topics to write about? Choose from a list of good geography research topics for 2023 that showcase the relevance and significance of geography in today’s world:

  • Impacts of population growth on urban infrastructure and services in geography
  • Geography of water scarcity and its implications for communities
  • Spatial patterns of environmental conservation and protected areas in geography
  • Impacts of land degradation on agricultural productivity and food security
  • Geography of natural resource management and sustainable practices
  • Relationship between climate change and human migration patterns in geography
  • Spatial distribution of environmental justice and marginalized communities
  • Impacts of urbanization on water pollution and ecosystem degradation
  • Geography of renewable energy sources and their integration into the grid
  • Role of geography in understanding regional conflicts over natural resources
  • Impacts of deforestation on biodiversity loss and ecosystem services

Geography Topics For Research For College

Need some great geography topics for research for college? Explore a comprehensive list of geography research topics tailored for college-level studies, offering opportunities for critical analysis and exploration:

  • Impacts of transportation infrastructure on urban air quality in geography
  • Geography of urban gentrification and displacement
  • Spatial patterns of urban food waste and its environmental consequences
  • Impacts of tourism development on fragile ecosystems in geography
  • Geography of environmental migration and its social implications
  • Role of geography in understanding climate adaptation strategies
  • Spatial distribution of environmental inequalities and environmental racism
  • Impacts of land use change on water quality in agricultural regions
  • Geography of geopolitical conflicts and territorial disputes
  • Impacts of industrial pollution on urban health and well-being
  • Role of geography in understanding disaster preparedness

Interesting Geography Topics For High School

Get the most interesting geography topics for high school. Foster geographical curiosity and critical thinking skills with this intriguing list of essay topics designed specifically by our best dissertation service writers for high school students:

  • Analyzing the impacts of climate change on the polar regions
  • Investigating the geography of natural hazards
  • Examining the spatial distribution of endangered species
  • Studying the impacts of urbanization on wildlife habitat fragmentation
  • Exploring the geography of cultural diversity and multiculturalism in cities
  • Investigating the role of geography in understanding climate variability
  • Analyzing the spatial patterns of population distribution and density
  • Investigating the geography of international migration and refugee flows
  • Examining the impacts of tourism on local communities and cultures
  • Studying the geography of natural resources
  • Exploring the role of geography in understanding global inequality

Engaging Geographical Research Topics

Embark on a captivating journey of geographical exploration with this diverse collection of engaging geographical research topics, connecting people, places and the environment through insightful investigations:

  • Urban sprawl impacts on land use and ecosystem services in geography
  • Geography of renewable energy transition and its challenges
  • Spatial patterns of urban heat islands and impacts on residents
  • Impacts of climate change on coastal erosion and shoreline management
  • Geography of water scarcity and implications for human populations
  • Role of geography in understanding geopolitical conflicts and peacebuilding
  • Spatial distribution of environmental pollutants and health effects
  • Impacts of globalization on local economies and cultural landscapes
  • Geography of gender inequalities and spatial dimensions
  • Impacts of natural disasters on vulnerable communities and recovery
  • Role of geography in understanding migration dynamics and urbanization
  • Geography of political borders and their social and economic implications

Affordable Thesis Help You Can Rely On

When it comes to working on a geography research paper or a thesis for Master’s degree , our company is your trusted source for comprehensive writing help. Our team of expert writers consists of experienced professionals who specialize in geography, ensuring that you receive top marks for your school or class. We pride ourselves on delivering high quality and impressive custom written theses tailored to your specific requirements.

With our secure and fast online service, you can access thesis help that is not only affordable but available 24/7. Rest assured that your work will be handled by native English-speaking experts (ENL writers), guaranteeing exceptional quality and adherence to academic standards. Trust us for all your thesis needs and achieve academic success with ease.

Make sure to check our posts with other topics before you leave:

  • 122 Best Ecology Topics To Sparkle Your Writing
  • 195 Top Anthropology Topics For Great Thesis
  • 170 Fantastic Astronomy Topics For High Scoring Tests

Why is choosing a great topic important when writing a geography essay?

Choosing a great topic ensures that your essay is engaging, relevant, and allows you to demonstrate your understanding of key geographical concepts while capturing the reader’s interest.

How can I choose a great topic for my geography essay?

To choose a great topic, consider current geographical issues, areas of personal interest and the availability of reliable sources. Additionally, ensure that the topic aligns with your essay’s objectives and requirements.

What are some strategies for narrowing down a geography essay topic?

To narrow down your topic, focus on specific geographical regions, phenomena, or concepts. Consider exploring the intersections between different aspects of geography, such as human and physical geography, to create a unique and well-rounded essay topic.

Can I get assistance in choosing a great topic for my geography essay?

Yes, you can seek guidance from your instructor, consult reputable academic resources or utilize online platforms that provide topic suggestions. Engaging in discussions with peers or experts in the field can also help generate ideas and refine your topic choice.

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Top 50 Geography Research Topics [Revised]

Geography Research Topics

Geography isn’t just about maps and memorizing capital cities; it’s a dynamic field that delves into everything from understanding our planet’s physical features to unraveling the complexities of human societies. In this blog, we’ll embark on a journey through fascinating geography research topics, ranging from climate change and urbanization to cultural dynamics and emerging trends. Whether you’re a curious student or simply someone intrigued by the world around you, join us as we explore the diverse realms of geography research.

What Are The Three Main Topics Of Geography?

Table of Contents

  • Physical Geography
  • Study of Earth’s physical features, processes, and phenomena.
  • Example: Investigating the formation of mountains, erosion patterns in river systems, or the impact of climate change on ecosystems.
  • Human Geography
  • Examination of the interactions between human societies and their environments.
  • Example: Analyzing urbanization trends, migration patterns, cultural landscapes, or economic activities within specific regions.
  • Environmental Geography
  • Focus on the relationship between humans and their natural surroundings, including the impact of human activities on the environment.
  • Example: Researching pollution levels in urban areas, deforestation rates in tropical rainforests, or the conservation of endangered species and habitats.

50 Geography Research Topics: Category Wise

Physical geography research topics.

  • Impact of climate change on polar ice caps.
  • Patterns of desertification in arid regions.
  • Formation and evolution of volcanic islands.
  • Study of river meandering and channel migration.
  • Factors influencing the distribution of biomes worldwide.

Human Geography Research Topics

  • Urbanization dynamics in developing countries.
  • Social and economic impacts of gentrification in urban neighborhoods.
  • Migration patterns and trends in Europe.
  • Cultural landscapes and identity politics in contested territories.
  • Gender disparities in access to resources and opportunities in rural areas.

Environmental Geography Research Topics

  • Analysis of air quality in megacities.
  • Impacts of deforestation on local biodiversity in the Amazon rainforest.
  • Water scarcity and management strategies in arid regions.
  • Ecotourism and its role in sustainable development.
  • Effects of marine pollution on coral reef ecosystems.

Geographical Techniques and Tools Research Topics

  • Applications of Geographic Information Systems (GIS) in disaster management.
  • Remote sensing techniques for monitoring agricultural productivity.
  • Cartographic visualization of population density and distribution.
  • Spatial analysis of crime patterns in urban areas.
  • Geographical modeling of disease spread and containment strategies.

Regional Geography Research Topics

  • Socioeconomic disparities between urban and rural regions in India.
  • Geopolitical tensions in the South China Sea.
  • Cultural diversity and integration in multicultural cities like London or New York.
  • Environmental challenges facing the African Sahel region.
  • Regional impacts of globalization on indigenous communities in South America.

Cultural Geography Research Topics

  • Influence of religion on cultural landscapes in the Middle East.
  • Cultural diffusion and globalization in the digital age.
  • Preservation of intangible cultural heritage in UNESCO World Heritage sites.
  • Impact of colonialism on indigenous cultures in Australia.
  • Gender roles and cultural practices in traditional societies.

Economic Geography Research Topics

  • Spatial distribution of industries in emerging economies.
  • Trade patterns and economic integration in the European Union.
  • Impact of globalization on labor markets in Southeast Asia.
  • Role of transportation infrastructure in regional economic development.
  • Economic consequences of natural disasters on local communities.

Political Geography Research Topics

  • Border disputes and territorial conflicts in the Middle East.
  • Secessionist movements and autonomy struggles in Europe.
  • Role of international organizations in conflict resolution and peacebuilding.
  • Geopolitical implications of Arctic resource extraction.
  • Influence of soft power and cultural diplomacy in international relations.

Social Geography Research Topics

  • Spatial patterns of poverty and social exclusion in urban areas.
  • Dynamics of neighborhood segregation and integration in diverse cities.
  • Impact of social media on community engagement and activism.
  • Gender-based violence and spatial justice in urban environments.
  • Cultural dimensions of health disparities in rural communities.

Historical Geography Research Topics

  • Legacy of colonialism in shaping urban landscapes in former colonies.
  • Evolution of trade routes and their impact on cultural diffusion.
  • Archaeological landscape studies of ancient civilizations.
  • Historical geography of migration and diaspora communities.
  • Environmental history of industrialization and its long-term impacts on ecosystems.

How To Write A Geography Research Paper?

Writing a geography research paper involves several key steps to ensure a well-structured, coherent, and informative document. Here’s a step-by-step guide on how to write a geography research paper:

  • Choose a Topic: Select a specific and focused research topic within the field of geography that interests you. Consider the scope of your paper, available resources, and the significance of the topic in the field.
  • Conduct Research: Gather relevant sources of information such as scholarly articles, books, journals, government publications, and online databases. Use both primary and secondary sources to support your research and develop a comprehensive understanding of the topic.
  • Develop a clear and short thesis statement that explains what your research paper is about. This statement should show the main idea or point you’re going to talk about in your paper.
  • Organize your paper by making a plan or outline. Split it into different parts like the introduction, where you start talking about your topic and explain why it’s important. Then, include a literature review where you talk about what others have already studied about your topic. If you did any special methods in your research, talk about them in the methodology section. Then, show your findings or results, discuss them, and finally, conclude your paper. Make sure you outline all the important things you want to talk about in each section.
  • Start your paper with an interesting introduction. Tell the reader some background information about your topic and why it’s important. Also, introduce your thesis statement here. Explain what you’ll be talking about in your research paper to help guide the reader through your paper.
  • Conduct a Literature Review: Review existing literature and research related to your topic to contextualize your study and identify gaps or areas for further investigation. Summarize key findings, methodologies, and theories from previous studies to support your own research.
  • Describe Your Methodology (If Applicable): If your research involves empirical data collection or analysis, describe the methodology and research design used in your study. Explain the research methods, data sources, sampling techniques, and analytical tools employed to gather and analyze data.
  • Present Your Findings: Present the results of your research in a clear and systematic manner. Use tables, graphs, maps, and other visual aids to illustrate your findings and enhance comprehension. Provide descriptive and analytical interpretations of the data to support your arguments.
  • Discuss Your Results: Analyze and interpret the significance of your research findings in relation to your thesis statement and research objectives. Discuss any patterns, trends, or relationships observed in the data and explore their implications for the broader field of geography.
  • Draw Conclusions: Summarize the main findings of your research and reiterate the significance of your study. Discuss any limitations or constraints encountered during the research process and propose areas for future research or further investigation.
  • Cite Your Sources: Ensure that you properly cite all sources of information used in your research paper according to the citation style specified by your instructor or academic institution. Use in-text citations and include a comprehensive bibliography or reference list at the end of your paper.
  • Proofread and Revise: Review your research paper carefully for grammatical errors, typos, and inconsistencies. Revise and refine your writing to improve clarity, coherence, and overall quality. Consider seeking feedback from peers, mentors, or academic advisors to further enhance your paper.

Emerging Topics in Geography Research

As our world continues to evolve, new frontiers of geography research are constantly emerging. From the quest for sustainable development to the rise of smart cities and the challenges of climate resilience, researchers are grappling with complex issues that defy easy solutions.

One promising avenue of research is the integration of indigenous knowledge and perspectives into geographic studies. By recognizing the wisdom of traditional cultures and their deep connection to the land, researchers can develop more holistic approaches to environmental management and conservation.

In conclusion, geography research offers a rich tapestry of topics that span the natural and social sciences. Whether it’s unraveling the mysteries of climate change, exploring the dynamics of urbanization, or celebrating the diversity of cultural landscapes, there’s something for everyone in the world of geography research.

So, whether you’re a student embarking on geography research topics or simply a curious explorer seeking to understand the world around you, take heart in knowing that the adventure has only just begun. Happy exploring!

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Our undergraduate students cover a wide range of topics from Human Geography to Physical Geography. Here you can find some examples of recently completed undergraduate dissertations.

Human Geography dissertation examples

Georgina Ogg

good human geography dissertation ideas

Supervised by: Dr. Flurina Wartmann

good human geography dissertation ideas

Simone Arvid

What was your dissertation about?

My dissertation was investigating the sustainability of ecologically restoring The Dunvegan Estate and The Kinrara Estate in Scotland using a qualitative mixed-method approach. It explored how local context and levels of engagement within planning processes are shaping different stakeholder and local community perceptions. The findings highlighted how complex issues of scale, social constructions and political-historical structures impacts the perceptions and general sustainability of the projects. It also illustrated that potential barriers to inclusive processes included revenues associated with woodland restoration, a disconnection with localism and the impacts of COVID-19.

What skills did you develop (further) during your dissertation research?

Due to the impacts of COVID-19, I had no prior practical experience with conducting research. Furthermore, we were initially restricted to conducting research using online methods, which led me to choose a qualitative mixed methods approach (e.g. surveys and interviews). However, I struggled to collect sufficient data due to the remoteness of both projects and a bias in the design of my survey. It pushed me to re-adjust the design of my methodology, which included in-person fieldwork in October/November as the COVID-19 guidelines changed. Ultimately, the process developed my research skills, creativity and resilience, as I managed to gather substantial data after experiencing significant setbacks.

What was the highlight of your dissertation work?

Conducting fieldwork in-person and getting the opportunity to connect with the local stakeholders on a personal level was a very rewarding and inspiring experience. It allowed me to explore the local culture and project sites, which enhanced my understanding of the place-based contexts and issues. Contributing new knowledge to a contemporary academic and political debate also ensured that the dissertation process was engaging throughout and felt very meaningful to complete.

Supervised by: Dr. Paula Duffy

good human geography dissertation ideas

What was your dissertation about? My dissertation was undertaken to study the contribution of land reform to sustainable development in the Western Isles of Scotland. This was conducted in collaboration with the James Hutton Institute and compared survey data from the National Islands Plan across the different Scottish Island regions; as well as my own interviews in Na h-Eileanan Siar. In an attempt to gauge the strengths and weaknesses of the Community Land Organisations (Community Land Trusts) in the region. The findings were incorporated to provide policy recommendations related to land reform which were presented to representatives of the Scottish Government and Islands Team.

What skills did you develop (further) during your dissertation research? I developed my research skills, both in quantitative and qualitative analysis; and also increased my knowledge in a key area of interest for me; and an area of great importance for policy makers and land managers in Scotland.

What was the highlight of your dissertation work? I think the real highlight for me was getting to see the benefit of my work to the government and interacting with many important stakeholders in this area. It was also really amazing to study an area such as Na h-Eileanan Siar in depth. The culture, the people and their relationship with the land is really inspiring and is something which I think we all could learn from.

Supervised by Dr. Lorna Philip

good human geography dissertation ideas

I chose to focus my dissertation on the role of urban green spaces in Aberdeen during the ongoing pandemic.

During the first lockdown it was clear to see that people being confined to their own homes led them to seek any opportunity to get outdoors so as to improve their physical and mental well-being. This was supported by Google's 2020 mobility data report which highlighted Aberdeen City as an example of a place showing a particularly large increase in park visitors during this period. I wanted to find out more about why people were deciding to visit green spaces or conversely maybe why there were now less inclined.

Access was a key aspect I focused on to identify the distribution of green spaces across Aberdeen city and find pockets that access could be improved for residents. I created online questionnaires to gather first hand responses of how people had been using green spaces and how maybe that had changed over the past year. The outcome of my dissertation made it clear to see how valuable these green spaces were to residents during the pandemic but also the new challenges which had arisen.

Supervised by Dr. Flurina Wartmann

Physical Geography dissertation examples

good human geography dissertation ideas

Emma Simpson

My dissertation mapped the groundwater vulnerability to the contamination through pesticides in the Ythan catchment. The river Ythan has a significant amount of baseflow which indicates a strong correlation between the groundwater and the river flow and is under a lot of agricultural pressure. Agriculture is the main identified reason for high pesticide values in the water which led to the area becoming a Nitrate vulnerability zone. Through creating two different models I visualised the most vulnerable zones of the catchment and with that data created a risk map for crops. This shows the areas that have intensive crops farming and are also vulnerable to groundwater pollution. Mapping two models allowed to show the distinctions when emphasising different parameters.

Throughout my research I developed skills in building hydrological models using ArcGIS as well as improved my data management skills. Especially from the data management I learned a lot for future research as I had to create 5 to 7 GIS layers per model and often further layers throughout the process. Another important learning was to extract the important information from the less important and to make choices for my final data set.

The highlight of my work was seeing the final maps and understanding the differences in the models. But also realising how abstract they are but then through creating risk maps can become relevant for stakeholders.

Supervised by Dr. JC Comte

good human geography dissertation ideas

Fingal Summers

My dissertation used modelling to analyse the effect of forestation on reducing river flood peaks in a Scottish upland catchment area. The catchment in questions was the Linne nam Beathach river catchment, Argyll. I created the model using a commonly implemented hydrological modelling software called SWAT (Soil and Water Assessment Tool), using a wide assortment of input data including measured discharge measurements, weather statistics, as well as soil and land use maps. After calibration and validation occurred, I used ArcGIS to manually update the land use map to extend forest boundaries to several different areas. Results showed that increasing forests on this catchment would decrease flood peak scenarios by a small margin.

I developed my skills in hydrological modelling, and in finding data sources for model creation. Furthermore, I had to get used to using a variety of new software and techniques, including the model software itself, and SWAT-CUP, which I used for the crucial step of calibration. More generally I increased my ability in finding creative solutions to difficult problems, and I further developed my Excel skills, such as using keyboard shortcuts to speed up handling of large amounts of data.

The highlight for me was seeing the calibrated model run for the first time and getting results. It had taken a lot of work to get to this point so it was a moment of great satisfaction. Another aspect I enjoyed was the analysis of the final simulated data, and using statistical techniques to compare it with original scenario of forest cover.

Supervised by Dr. David Haro Monteagudo

good human geography dissertation ideas

What was your dissertation about? My dissertation used data extracted from pollen diagrams to map patterns of tree spreading in the British Isles during the early Holocene. I created a series of isochrone maps – showing the direction and timing of species dispersal – using ArcGIS. This built upon research first conducted in the late 1980s (with hand-drawn maps), almost doubling the number of data points. Significant changes in patterns were observed in some instances, with the research ultimately adding to our body of knowledge regarding species distributions, rates of spread, and response to controlling factors such as climate and topography.

What skills did you develop (further) during your dissertation research? I learnt a number of new techniques, particularly how to use GIS software, and improved my statistical analysis skills and my ability to think critically when analysing data outputs. I also improved my ability to quickly find and filter potential data sources. In terms of personal development, working during the COVID lockdown helped me hone my time management skills, notably creating and keeping to my own deadlines whilst also remembering to take regular breaks.

What was the highlight of your dissertation work? Finding new and undiscovered patterns of tree spread, and being able to explore the possible causes for this. Completing my dissertation was a rewarding experience as I felt that I had contributed new knowledge to my subject field.

Supervised by Dr. J. Edward Schofield

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Your Human Geography Dissertation

Your Human Geography Dissertation Designing, Doing, Delivering

  • Kimberley Peters - Helmholtz Institute for Functional Marine Biodiversity at University of Oldenburg
  • Description

An undergraduate dissertation is your opportunity to engage with geographical research, first-hand. But completing a student project can be a stressful and complex process.  Your Human Geography Dissertation breaks the task down into three helpful stages:

  • Designing: Deciding on your approach, your topic and your research question, and ensuring your project is feasible
  • Doing: Situating your research and selecting the best methods for your dissertation project
  • Delivering: Dealing with data and writing up your findings

With information and task boxes, soundbites offering student insight and guidance, and links to online materials, this book offers a complete and accessible overview of the key skills needed to prepare, research, and write a successful human geography dissertation.

Supplements

This excellent new text guides students carefully, intelligently and sympathetically through the process of doing a human geography dissertation. It offers grounded advice - from the question of what a dissertation is, to the mechanics of data analysis - which will be indispensable for students researching the full diversity of topics covered by contemporary human geography. The insights, advice and reflections from both previous students and academic staff who currently teach human geography add valuable insights that will both reassure students and help them avoid making common mistakes.

This book will be an invaluable read for all Human Geography dissertation students. It conveys the excitement and possibilities of Human Geography research, whilst also alerting the reader to its challenges and pitfalls. This is certainly not a generic ‘how to do your dissertation’ textbook; instead it engages with Human Geography as a discipline and the role of the dissertation student as a producer of geographic knowledge. The book’s clear sections on designing, doing and delivering your dissertation, have useful examples, include input from the author’s students themselves, making this an accessible and comprehensive text. 

Kim Peters has written a much needed book that will be of great value to Geography students undertaking what is often the most challenging part of their degree, the dissertation.  As a Geography lecturer I have often wished that a book such as this existed.  Your Human Geography Dissertation goes way beyond a standard examination of the pros and cons of different research methods, covering a range of topics from the identification of dissertation subjects and the development of research questions through gathering data and writing up.  It is a readable and highly accessible text full of helpful detail, practical advice and useful examples.  Thank you Kim!  

This book is fantastic! It is recommended reading for our second-year research design course, and I have used some of the ‘dissertation tips’ videos in lectures on this course during 2018/9.  For my own dissertation students in supervision meetings, this book is my core recommendation of a text that will help students with their whole human geography dissertation journey. 

Of all the books that I recommend to my dissertation students, this book is always the first. Writing a dissertation is a daunting task, certainly the most demanding and challenging part of a degree, and Kim Peters, with her accessible style and useful and highly relevant advice, makes it a bit less intimidating. Your Human Geography Dissertation guides students through all the stages of their dissertation, helping them to think geographically, refine their research question and choose the appropriate research methods. This book is so recent but already feels like a classic. 

This volume is a well-written and well-organised volume to recommend to both my dissertation research students and to use on my section (human geography research methods) of our research methods in geography module. I will be using it as a recommended reading.

With this book as their guide your students will be able to achieve what it promises: design, do and deliver.

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Your Human Geography Dissertation: Designing, Doing, Delivering

Student resources, the resources on the site have been specifically designed to support your study..

On this website you will find:

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  • Research Resources
  • External Links
  • Graduate Guidances
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​Each chapter is supported by a combination of these resources, just click on the links to the left.

About the book: An undergraduate dissertation is your opportunity to engage with geographical research, first-hand. But completing a student project can be a stressful and complex process . Your Human Geography Dissertation breaks the task down into three helpful stages:

  • Designing: Deciding on your approach, your topic and your research question, and ensuring your project is feasible
  • Doing: Situating your research and selecting the best methods for your dissertation project
  • Delivering: Dealing with data and writing up your findings

​With information and task boxes, Graduate Guidances offering student insight and guidance, and links to online materials, this book offers a complete and accessible overview of the key skills needed to prepare, research, and write a successful human geography dissertation.

Disclaimer:

This website may contain links to both internal and external websites. All links included were active at the time the website was launched. SAGE does not operate these external websites and does not necessarily endorse the views expressed within them. SAGE cannot take responsibility for the changing content or nature of linked sites, as these sites are outside of our control and subject to change without our knowledge. If you do find an inactive link to an external website, please try to locate that website by using a search engine. SAGE will endeavour to update inactive or broken links when possible.

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10 Useful Human Geography Dissertation Topics You Have Never Seen Before

Human geography is an exciting and evolving topic. Anyone who is researching in the field and is in need of some unique human geography dissertation topics that no one has ever seen should keep reading…

If you cannot come up with a topic on which to write and need some suggestions take a moment to peruse the options below. See if any of these assignments stand out or if they strike up your imagination in any way:

  • Write about the geography of regional integration along a local river or write about new geographical tests for a hydraulic thesis
  • Discuss the importance of protecting natural diversity in your area or discuss the historical geography of hot springs in a particular state and how these fountains of health became central health spots for local populations
  • Write about the micro-regional geography of a particular island
  • Write about the pollen evidence that exists for a particular climate change in your area
  • Discuss the culture and the habitat of a mountain range or the role that wood plays in the economy of a local wood-based state
  • Discuss the oyster industry of a coastal region
  • Write about the progress of community gardens in America or your particular state
  • Write about the agriculture of a particular island
  • Talk about early human occupation of a particular set of island chains
  • Talk about second homes inside of national forests and how recreational land use can changed

All of these topics are exciting concepts that have emerged within the field of human geography. If you are writing your dissertation and you have found that the list above of new and exciting topics inspires you then you have taken the first step of many required to write your dissertation. Now you have to take some time to set up your work schedule and begin the process of researching items related to your topic. Keep generating ideas of where you want your paper to go and make sure that the topic you have selected is approved by your advisor and your dissertation committee before you start to dive into the research waters with everything you have. Even if a proposal is not required before you start writing it may be best to submit one to your advisor anyway and ensure they know you are on the right path.

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University of sussex sage scholarship, writing a human geography dissertation.

Now with just one term left of my undergrad degree, I’ve just finished the research for my dissertation titled: How do international students at the University of Sussex make their home in the UK? I conducted interviews with international students as well as creating a survey on Survey Monkey and got a good number of responses. It’s now time for the hard bit; the write up. Whilst 10,000 words seems like a mountain to climb right now, I’ve had useful advice from tutors and previous students on how to break it down into manageable sections.

One tutor recommended “How to do your dissertation in geography and related disciplines” (Parsons and Knight, 2nd ed.)

and another recommended “Study skills for geography, earth & environmental science students” (Kneale, 3rd ed.).

I found this book useful as it contained a clear structure plan, detailing how many words should be used in each chapter and how to define each section. It also explained the difference between an empirical thesis and a theoretical one with my area of work lying between the two. My subject involves using theories of culture, transnationalism and home whilst my research analysis will involve graphs and statistics as well as interview transcripts. It also involves a LOT of reading for the literature review which makes up about a third of the entire project. I’ve been finding resources for this by using library search, tutor recommendations, and work I’ve studied over the last year in terms of culture and ethnicity. I was concerned about how to structure the literature review as well as the other sections so I attended a library skills session on “How to write your dissertation”. It gave good general information however it was not specifically directed to geography students so I asked my tutor for further advice on structuring and what each chapter should contain.

Coming up in the next few weeks is my individual project review which involves presenting a two-page report and bibliography of my reading so far to my dissertation tutor. It will be a good opportunity to analyse and present my research up to now and will make up 10% of my total grade. In the meantime I’m going to be continuing my reading for the literature review as well as working on my structure, looking at previous students’ dissertations and reading through the recommended study skills books.

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27 Innovative Human Geography Dissertation Ideas

If you are looking for some highly inspirational Geography topics to carry your dissertation, check out the list below-

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  • Draw a comparative analysis between Chicago and Edinburgh during 19th century. Compare their economies, developmental system and ecosystems.
  • Write a review on urban Geography citing strengths and weaknesses. Study various parts of cities and spatial reconstitution in terms of post industrial era.
  • Write a dissertation on ecological hazards as a result of coastal erosion. Discuss the preventive measures to be opted.
  • What is the contribution of red mangroves in different spheres of lives?
  • Discuss the changes in the Everglades caused due to weather conditions.
  • Discuss the serious consequences of deforestation on our ecosystem.
  • What changes in weather is impacting our coastal ecosystem?
  • State the consequences of Kobe earthquake and its long term consequences.
  • Talk about the floods in Bangladesh and its future consequences.
  • Discuss the desserts of various parts of the world? Make a comparative analysis of desserts of North Pole and those present at the South Pole.
  • What physical factors made Canada a leading producer of diamonds?
  • What are the fascinating clandestine of caves and caverns?
  • What are the factors that are accountable for vast difference between the wild life and forests in U.S.?
  • Discuss the formation of mountains and their degeneration. Talk about the geomorphologic processes that contribute to this process.
  • Discuss the gravitational pull of the Sun and the Moon. How it impacts tides on earth.
  • What is wildlife corridor? Discuss it in contrast to human developed areas for developing various species of wildlife?
  • Why Aurora Borealis is considered as the Earth’s most tantalizing light show?
  • Talk about the extreme biodiversity of Mega diverse countries? Why they are so special?
  • How environment is shaping the developmental prospects in North Eastern Thailand?
  • What is contemporary gentrification? Why it is considered as a global urban strategy?
  • What is the function of GIS in determining real locations? How digital data can be integrated with it?
  • Differentiate between an open coast and sandy coastline?
  • What is the effect of elevation, latitude and longitude positions on weather conditions? How distribution of water bodies and land areas affect the weather?
  • How volcanic eruption takes place?
  • Disuses the principle of relativism?
  • What is the impact of rising global warming on planet earth?
  • Why earthquake occurs?

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Urban Geography Dissertation Topics & Titles

Published by Owen Ingram at January 6th, 2023 , Revised On March 22, 2023

Urban geography is a growing field of study that provides learners with a comprehensive understanding of how cities, towns and other human settlements develop and change over time. As such, it can be an incredibly rewarding topic to research for a dissertation.

Urban geographers also explore socio-economic issues such as housing, employment opportunities and access to services to identify inequalities that can lead to social exclusion.

Urban geographers utilise various qualitative and quantitative methods, including interviews, surveys, geographical information systems (GIS) mapping and remote sensing techniques such as satellite imagery.

By studying changes over time, they can track important trends in a city’s city’s development and understand why certain areas are more desirable than others. This research helps inform policies that aim to improve the quality of life for those who live there.

Students researching urban geography topics can explore the various facets of urban life and development, from the physical processes that shape cities to the social dynamics of their inhabitants.

Through this extensive research, students gain insight into how particular places have been formed and continue to evolve in response to external influences like policy decisions. They also learn about the cultural diversity within cities—knowledge that can help inform decision-making in urban planning or public health fields.

Furthermore, learning about urban geography also helps students become better citizens by developing an appreciation for different cultures and ways of life in major global cities like London or Tokyo.

Urban Geography Dissertation Topics: How to Choose One?

To help with this, it’s important first to consider your interest and expertise in the field of urban law. Once you’ve identified what topics you’re most interested in, you’ll need to narrow down your choice further by determining which topics are within the scope of your studies and have enough research material available for a successful dissertation.

When looking for potential topics, using trusted sources such as peer-reviewed journals or other authoritative documents is important. This will ensure that you choose an academically rigorous topic that is current and up-to-date with legal changes or new developments in the field of urban law.

When choosing an appropriate dissertation topic, students should consider topics such as urban development patterns, transportation networks within cities, housing markets and socio-economic dynamics.

Exploring different approaches to examining urban geographies – such as political ecology or critical geopolitics – might yield interesting results.

It’s also beneficial to explore a wide range of areas when selecting a dissertation topic to identify one that is suitable for your interests and resources.

  • Geography Dissertation Topics
  • International Development Topics
  • Diplomacy Dissertation Topics
  • Brexit Dissertation Topics

List of Urban Geography Topics for Dissertation

  • Malarial ecology: a global perspective
  • The pedagogical benefits of SimCity in urban geography education
  • Spatio‐temporal dynamics in California’s Central Valley: Empirical links to urban theory
  • The new economic geography versus urban economics: an evaluation using local wage rates in Great Britain
  •  Britain’s cities: geographies of division in urban Britain
  • Access to urban services—the case of secondary schools in Glasgow
  • Geography and public finance: planning for fiscal equity in a metropolitan region
  • The geography of the urban crisis: some evidence from Glasgow
  • Sustainable urban development in the UK: rhetoric or reality?
  • The view from the tower: geographies of urban transformation in Glasgow
  • Private profit, public interest and land use planning—A conflict interpretation of residential development pressure in Glasgow’s Glasgow’s rural-urban fringe
  • Citizenship, partnership and the popular restructuring of UK urban space
  • The urban crisis: poverty and deprivation in the Scottish city
  • The geography of multiple deprivations in the Clydeside conurbation
  • Toward a community economy—an examination of local exchange trading systems in West Glasgow
  • Proprietary residential communities in the United States
  • Urban restructuring and the reproduction of inequality in Britain’s Britain’s cities: an overview
  • Urban geography in America, 1950-2000: paradigms and personalities
  • Environments of disadvantage: Geographies of persistent poverty in Glasgow
  • The geography of religious affiliation in Scotland
  • Continuity and change in Scotland’s Scotland’s first garden suburb: The genesis and development of Pollok shields, Glasgow
  • Problems and planning in third world cities (Routledge Revivals)
  • The geography of disadvantage in rural Scotland
  • The relevance of religion for a relevant human geography
  • A geography of the third world

The Importance of Selecting the Right Urban Geography Dissertation Topic

The selection of an urban geography research topic can have profound implications for a student’s academic success. It is important to identify a meaningful and compelling research question that will contribute to the knowledge of urban geography and be achievable within the time frame allowed.

The right dissertation topic makes the research interesting for students. Being enthusiastic about the subject matter will make writing your dissertation much easier and give it more depth and insight when discussing the findings.

Engaging with research around your chosen topic expands your knowledge base and gives you ideas on how to approach certain aspects of the research process .

How Can ResearchProspect Help?

ResearchProspect writers can send several custom topic ideas to your email address. Once you have chosen a topic that suits your needs and interests, you can order for our dissertation outline service which will include a brief introduction to the topic, research questions , literature review , methodology , expected results , and conclusion . The dissertation outline will enable you to review the quality of our work before placing the order for our full dissertation writing service!

FAQs About Urban Geography Dissertation Ideas

How do i choose the most appropriate urban geography dissertation topic.

When determining which topic to focus on, researchers should reflect on what they find personally intriguing and what is relevant in society today. When looking for topics related to urban geography, it may be helpful to look at major news outlets or scholarly articles to better understand current city planning and development trends.

Additionally, speaking with local government officials or members of civil society organisations can provide valuable insights into pressing issues facing cities worldwide.

Is the list of dissertation topics above unique?

Yes, the mentioned topics are unique. Nevertheless, we cannot say that other students do not use these topics either.

Does ResearchProspect provide customised and unique urban geography dissertation topics?

Yes, ResearchProspect provides customised dissertation topics . To place an order or read about our services , visit the website.

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Geography Dissertation Topics

Info: 2847 words (11 pages) Dissertation Topic Published: 16th Aug 2021 in Dissertation Topic

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We have provided a selection of example geography dissertation topics below to help and inspire you.

If you are interested in human contribution to global warming (quite relevant currently), this may be the topic area for you! You can have a look at the examples below for further information:

Example population dissertation topic 1:

The development of Chicago as a city during the nineteenth century: A comparative study with Edinburgh.

According to Cronon (1991, p.64), ‘Chicago’s city streets became places where the products of different ecosystems, different economies, and different ways of life came together and exchanged places’. Using this quotation as a starting point, this dissertation seeks to address the development of both Chicago and Edinburgh in spatial, commercial and governance terms within the nineteenth century. In so doing it addresses linked core-competencies of special urban geography; including space theory and urban-ness as well as the issues of civic ritual in the mapping of urban spaces.

Suggested initial topic reading:

  • Cronon, W. (1991). Nature’s metropolis: Chicago and the Great West. New York: Norton.
  • Massey, D., Allen, J. and Pile, S. (eds) (1999). City worlds. London: Routledge.
  • Rodger, R. (2001) The transformation of Edinburgh: Land, property and trust. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Urban Geography

This is a very interesting topic as it relates to the understanding of human settlements and reshaping urban spaces. We have some ideas listed below which may be of use to you:

Example urban geography dissertation topic 1:

A literature based review of the main strengths and weaknesses of qualitative and quantitative approaches for the study of urban geography.

Urban geography, and in particular the study of cities and regions, is a growing area of research within the geography departments of the UK’s elite universities, with an increasing number of them forming specific research groups to address such issues as the development of urban-ness and the spatial reconstitution of the city in the post-industrial era. Focussing upon issues of ‘space and society’ within the post-industrial conurbation of Birmingham, this dissertation addresses the difficulties that the research geographer faces when seeking to achieve academic balance between field work, interviews, reviews of literature and computer modelling and asks whether, for such studies, the mixed method approach favoured by social scientists, remains the best vehicle for such research.

  • Baxter, J. and Eyles, J. (1997). ‘Evaluating qualitative research in social geography: Establishing ‘rigour’ in interview analysis’, Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, Vol. 22, pp. 505-525.
  • Bryman, A. (2012). Social research methods. (4th edn) Oxford: Oxford University Press.
  • Graham, E. (1999). ‘Breaking out: The opportunities and challenges of multi-method research in population geography’, The Professional Geographer, Vol. 51, pp. 76-89.

Example urban geography dissertation topic 2:

Contemporary gentrification has become a ‘global urban strategy’ (Smith, 2002): A comparative case study of water-side redevelopments in Market Harborough and Leeds.

Within urban geography, issues of land use and redevelopment are of pivotal importance. Using the redevelopment of the former canal basin at Market Harborough, and the redevelopment of canal-side warehouses into residential units within Leeds, as case studies, this dissertation has two primary objectives. First it evaluates the success of these two developments in terms of their contribution to the urban strategy outlined by Smith in which the gentrification of former run down areas has encouraged people to move back into the centre of cities. Secondly, the paper asks what proposed new redevelopment sites (such as those in Salford and Huddersfield) can learn from such previous schemes. This is a dissertation that could be further enhanced (from a human geography viewpoint) by the conducing of interviews with residents.

  • Coulson, A. and Wright, G. (2012). ‘Brindleyplace, Birmingham: Creating an inner city mixed-use development in times of recession’, Planning Practice and Research, DOI: 10.1080/02697459.2012.716591.
  • Jones, P. (2008). ‘Different but the same? Post‐war slum clearance and contemporary regeneration in Birmingham, UK’, City: Analysis of Urban Trends, Culture, Theory, Policy, Action, Vol. 12(3), pp. 356-371.
  • Smith, N. (2002). ‘New globalism, new urbanism: Gentrification as global urban strategy’, Antipode, Vol. 34, pp. 427-450.

Example urban geography dissertation topic 3:

The changing nature of urban geography and governance – a study of Rio de Janeiro.

According to Dear and Dahmann (2008), urban politics are being reshaped by the geographies of postmodern urbanism. Using Rio de Janeiro as a case study this thesis seeks to test the reliability of this hypothesis. Having first defined post-modern urbanism and applied its meaning to Rio, this thesis, thereafter, address two penumbral issues. First, it considers the issue of cultural homogeneity and community building across cities that possess a divergent multi-cultural and socio-economic basis. Secondly, the paper explores the extent to which the designation of land use within the built environment of a modern city has been changed so that it addresses not only political-corporate needs but the public needs of citizens.

  • Dear, M. and Dahmann, N. (2008). ‘Urban politics and the Los Angeles school of urbanism’, Urban Affairs Review, Vol. 44(2), pp. 266-279.
  • O’Hare, G. and Barke, M. (2002). ‘The favelas of Rio de Janeiro: A temporal and spatial analysis’, GeoJournal, Vol. 56(3), pp. 225-240.
  • Vargas, J.H.C. (2006). ‘When a favela dared to become a gated condominium: The politics of race and urban space in Rio de Janeiro’, Latin American Perspectives, Vol. 33(4), pp. 49-81.

Example urban geography dissertation topic 4:

Middlesbrough: Urban patterns of social and community cohesion.

Urban identity is built upon social and physical structures within a specific environment. Failure or success in the construction of social and community cohesion can see a city riven by either strife or united by a common aim. This dissertation examines the case of Middlesbrough has seen citizens enjoin with its city council in numerous (unfruitful) attempts to attain city status, and which exhibits a higher level of social and community cohesion amongst diverse groups, including whites with ancestral ties to the town, East Asians, and asylum-seekers and refugees, than other northern cities such as Bradford and Manchester. This paper explores the dimension that urban geography and patterns of community identity bring to Middlesbrough, and seeks to determine whether such patterns have overcome the town’s traditional class barriers.

  • Clout, H. (2003). ‘Place description, regional geography and area studies’. In, Johnston, R. and Williams, M., A century of British geography. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 247-274.
  • Leach, S. and Wilson, D. (2004). ‘Urban elites in England: New models of executive governance’, International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Vol. 28, pp. 134-149.
  • Webster, C., Blackman, T., Sapsford, R., Neil, B. and Chapman, T. (2004). A better place to live: Social and community cohesion in Middlesbrough. Middlesbrough: University of Teesside and Middlesbrough Council.

Example urban geography dissertation topic 5:

Planting schemes within the urban landscape to improve security against terrorism.

As a reaction to the World Trade Centre bombing in 2001, there has been a growing realisation amongst urban geographers and planners as to the positives that effective planting can have on issues of security as well as environmental concerns. Strategies such as crime prevention through environmental design and The National Capital Urban Design and Security Plan (for Washington, DC) have graphically illustrated how the planting of shrubbery-disguised bollards and mature trees can be used as architectural barriers for safety whilst also beautifying the urban street scene. This dissertation builds upon such advances in North America and applies the lessons learned there to architecturally, politically and culturally significant parts of London.

  • Crow, T.D. (2000). Crime prevention through environmental design: Applications of architectural design and space management concepts. London: Butterworth-Heinemann.
  • Kuo, F.E. and Sullivan, W.C. (2001). ‘Environment and crime in the inner city: Does vegetation reduce crime’, Environment and Behaviour, Vol. 33(3), pp. 343-367.
  • Sorkin, M. (ed.) (2008). Indefensible space: The architecture of the national insecurity state. New York: Routledge.

The Origins of English Landscape

Ever wondered about how historical landmarks came to pass or even exist in the first place? Take a look at some options listed below to find out more:

Example English landscape dissertation topic 1:

A discussion of cultural provinces of England: How historical geographical analysis can assist in the identification of a distinctive geo-cultural Cornish identity.

The work of geographers such as Langton, Fawcett and Gilbert helped shape contemporary geographic understanding of the concepts of regionalism and cultural provinces within England. The issue of regional identity and cultural traits is not, however, one of merely historic geographical analysis as may be illustrated by the more recent work of Colls on Northumbria. This dissertation uses the theories advanced by Colls with regards to Northumbria and in turn applies them to Cornwall. Through so doing issues of landscape history and evaluation are teamed with geo-political analysis of developing cultural trends within Cornwall. This is a challenging dissertation that, through combining aspects of cultural geography and history, would be particularly suited to a student with a joint-honours background.

  • Colls, R. (ed.) (2007). Northumbria: History and identity, 547-2000. Stroud: The History Press.
  • Deacon, B. (2001). The reformulation of territorial identity: Cornwall in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. PhD thesis, Open University.
  • McLean, F. (2006). ‘Introduction: Heritage and identity’, International Journal of Heritage Studies, Vol. 12(1), pp. 3-7.

Global Environmental Challenges

Want to make a change to challenges facing the world today? Base your dissertation around this topic to gain all understanding needed. Have at look at the following examples:

Example global environmental challenges dissertation topic 1:

An evaluation of the role of the environment in shaping development prospects in Isan (north eastern Thailand).

This is a dissertation that draws predominantly on the collection of new primary data and thereafter contextualises that data into longer-standing geographic debates through the undertaking of a substantive literature review. This provides a balanced academic approach to the overall study. In collating the primary data the researcher will spend three months conducting research and interviews with local leaders and tribesmen to ascertain their concerns relating to the retention of the regional identity and traditional way of life that incorporates an appreciation of the local environment. This is particularly pertinent given the increasingly globalised nature of development with Isan, and the challenges that such development realises.

  • Hirsch, P. (2001). ‘Globalisation, regionalisation and local voices: The Asian Development Bank and rescaled politics of the environment in the Mekong Region’, Singapore Journal of Tropical Geography, Vol. 22, pp. 237-251.
  • Keskinen, M. (2008). ‘Water resources development and impact assessment in the Mekong Basin: Which way to go?’, AMBIO: A Journal of the Human Environment, Vol. 37(3), pp. 193-198.
  • Sneddon, C. and Fox, C. (2006). ‘Rethinking transboundary waters: A critical hydropolitics of the Mekong basin’, Political Geography, Vol. 25(2), pp. 181-202.

Political Geography

This topic focuses on the study of both the spatially uneven outcomes of political processes and the ways in which these processes are affected by spatial structures. If you are struggling with a title, take a look at some examples listed below:

Example political geography dissertation topic 1:

Poulantzas’ interpretation of national territory: A critical evaluation in relation to Scottish independence.

According to Poulantzas (1978, p. 104), ‘National territory has nothing to do with the natural features of the land. It is rather of an essentially political character in that the State tends to monopolize the procedures of the organization of space.’ Combining political geography with concepts of statehood and the meaning of place, this dissertation evaluates the 2014 referendum proposal on independence (as devised by the Scottish government, through the auspices of Alex Salmond and the Scottish National Party) through the vortex of Poulantzas’ academic opinion. In so doing geographical theory is juxtaposed with issues of contemporary politics and public opinion (as measured through the conducting of 100 street-based interviews in Glasgow, Edinburgh, Aberdeen and Oban). This is a dissertation that, accordingly, seeks to blend aspects of political geography with not only human geography but also issues of urban space and geographic identity.

  • Kasperson, R.E. and Minghi, J.V. (eds) (1969). The structure of political geography. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction.
  • Pittock, M. (2012). ‘Scottish sovereignty and the union of 1707: Then and now’, National Identities, Vol. 14(1), pp. 11-21.
  • Poulantzas, N.A. (1978). State, power, socialism. London: Verso.

Example political geography dissertation topic 2:

The desire for an amenable environment: The politics of ‘neighbours from hell’.

In July 2001, the Social Exclusion Unit was created by Tony Blair, the prime minister of the day, who sought to create a nation where ‘no one is seriously disadvantaged by where they live’ (SEU, 2001, p. 6). Between the individual and the community lies ‘the neighbour’; this study seeks to contextualise contemporary geo-political discourses upon neighbourhood renewal by analysing the role of ‘the neighbour’. Through so doing, issues on the fragility of neighbourly relations are discussed, and the (often) self-imposed isolation of the wealthy, as well as the theological and political issues that embody the concept of ‘love thy neighbour’. Further, this dissertation questions the extent to which the ‘Big Society’ has built upon issues of neighbourliness since the Coalition. Finally, the paper makes recommendations on the means by which medium to large firms may negotiate renewed leases in bringing this geo-political issue up to date.

  • Field, F. (2003). Neighbours from hell: The politics of behaviour. London: Politicos.
  • Fortier, A.M. (2007). ‘Too close for comfort: Loving thy neighbour and the management of multicultural intimacies’, Environment and Planning D: Society and Space: Vol. 25(1), pp. 104-119.
  • Social Exclusion Unit (2001). A new commitment to neighbourhood renewal. London: Cabinet Office.

If these example dissertation topics have given you some inspiration and you now feel ready to choose a topic, see our  guide to choosing a dissertation topic  for further guidance.

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good human geography dissertation ideas

Geography Dissertation Topics (26 Examples) For Research

Mark Jun 21, 2020 Jun 20, 2020 Geography No Comments

Geography is a challenging subject ad writing a dissertation on it can be very difficult and challenging for the students. Selecting a topic is one of the major hurdles. So, here is a list of geography dissertation topics and projects topics on geography. Choosing the right topic can help in impressing the teachers and getting […]

geography dissertation topics

Geography is a challenging subject ad writing a dissertation on it can be very difficult and challenging for the students. Selecting a topic is one of the major hurdles. So, here is a list of geography dissertation topics and projects topics on geography.

Choosing the right topic can help in impressing the teachers and getting better grades. We offer research topics on geography and can also help you in completing your research and dissertations by offering high-quality services. You can also explore the list of geography dissertation topics and come up with some unique ideas.

List of geography dissertation topics

Identifying the factors that cause changes in the climate of an area.

Examining the concept of coastal erosion and how it takes place.

Studying the effects of natural calamities on the people living in nearby areas.

To investigate how natural disasters and calamities affect the economy of the countries.

Factors that contribute to creating a sustainable environment.

Studying the ecological value of forests to the government of the country.

Evaluating the concept of global food security.

Investigating the destinations of river sources.

Studying the impact of contaminated land in a certain area.

To study the soil fertility after a volcanic eruption.

Analysing the uses of green-field land in a certain area.

Studying the changes in the ecosystem in the last 10 years in the United States.

Factors defining the quality of water in the locality and how it differs from the characteristics of water in the neighbouring regions.

Exploring the best ways to study urban geography and analysing the strengths and weaknesses of qualitative and quantitative approaches.

A literature review on the concept of plantation forestry.

Studying the species of your locality that are considered to be endangered.

Exploring the changes in urban geography through the decades.

To study the changing thermal regime of polythermal glaciers.

A systematic review of the impact of climate change on the local economic geography.

Evaluating the association of social sciences with economic geography.

To explore how the decline in urban-rural divide led to economic change in the UK.

How certain fishing techniques are damaging the coastal region of the fishing island?

Studying the concept of semi-automated mapping of glacial landforms.

Evaluating the potential of high-resolution airborne remote sensing for glaciology.

How does ocean current affect the weather of an area?

Studying the effects of physical landforms on the life of people.

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good human geography dissertation ideas

A selection of dissertations from recent undergraduate students, and MPhil Conservation Leadership placement reports*, are now available for reading access online.

We regret to announce that paper copies of dissertations submitted prior to 2020 are not included in this service.

Paper copies of dissertations between 2015-2019 can only be viewed upon request in the Geography Library itself – please ask staff for access. Dissertations earlier than 2015 may be available to view in the Manuscripts Reading Room at the UL (again you need to request access in advance to view these). To find out about the availability of paper copies of earlier dissertations, you will need to search on iDiscover by searching using the words ‘Geography’, ‘Tripos’ and ‘Dissertation’. Check the holdings information to see whether they have a note to say ‘Transferred to UL’.

Please note down the file number (in the first column) before you proceed to the online request form , where you can request access to two dissertations per application. It is best to use this form from the Geography intranet.

You can also request a particular dissertation by clicking on the number in the first column of the table, which also takes you through to the request form.

Terms and conditions apply, and you must agree to these before you are given access.

Please note we can only process requests during our staffed hours. Please see the Library opening hours for further details.

*An index of the MPhil Conservation Leadership reports that are available to view are on the dedicated Moodle page for students.

Most recent years are shown first.

Number Title Abstract
Critical Review Essay
A Critical Review Essay of the Geographies of Pregnancy: The ‘Yummy Mummy’ Discourse and the Neoliberalisation of the Maternal
Emerging in popular culture in the 1990s, the figure of the ‘yummy mummy’ has been heralded as an emblem of ‘successful femininity’ (Littler, 2013). These glamorous mothers seemingly ‘have-it-all’, effortlessly navigating the complex and contradictory maternal landscape. Once a time of modesty, these glamorous mothers have reconfigured the maternal as a time in which women can be public, confident and empowered (Willmott, 2013; Malatzky, 2017; Allen & Osgood, 2009).
Applying the ‘yummy mummy’ discourse to the pregnant body, this critical review essay offers a more pernicious reading of it, arguing that this postfeminist discourse performs political work on maternal bodies. Narratives of ‘good’ neoliberal pregnancies now include both demonstrating a ‘maternal sacrifice’ for one’s foetus (Lowe, 2016), but also perfecting one’s physical appearance to conform with a very narrow vision of acceptable pregnant bodies. Pregnancy has become a project to be optimised (Brewis & Warren, 2001). Through the regulation of three everyday practices – fashion, food and fitness – pregnant bodies are encouraged to self-govern and self-survey with pertains to this model woman. Bodies positioned as outside of this classed, racialised and heteronormative figure are presented as abject and defective.
This critical review essay approaches the pregnant body as both a material and discursive construction. It looks at how the glamorous pregnancy discourse has influenced how the ‘mutable’ pregnant body is seen and understood (Witz, 2000). It considers how this discourse has been constructed in popular culture, particularly the tabloid media, to encourage the surveillance of pregnant bodies. It also considers the ways geographers have attended to forms of resistance to this discourse.
Socialising through Stocks: Retail Investors in Shanghai Stock Brokerages In recent years, geographers and anthropologists have increasingly drawn their attention to stock markets as sites of ethnographic research. Combatting a trend of abstraction and dehumanisation in the wider economic literature, ethnographic research aims to re-introduce sociality and culture back into finance and discuss their importance in this context (Abolafia, 1998; Maurer, 2006).
Responding to this Polanyist call to create embedded and contextualised understanding of finance, this study aims to use interviews to provide ethnography of the Shanghai stock market thirty years after its re-opening in 1990. Through incorporating an interactionist grounded typology, this study introduces diverse traders on the floor and VIP rooms of stock brokerages. These divisions in physical trading locations help produce communities that interact in unique social circles and exercise distinctive decision-making in the market.
This study finds the social connections emerging from the market accentuate existing inequalities by stratifying the division in information and access. Furthermore, social and economic practices are necessarily intertwined in the Shanghai stock market, and the brokerage hall is an inherently social space. The practice of trading, and the site of the trading hall, must be understood as simultaneously social and economic. This ethnography provides an updated account of the Shanghai stock market decades after the last major ethnographic research and calls for continued recognition of the importance of embedding markets within specific cultural and economic contexts.
Running Free? How prison parkruns both liberate and discipline The global prison population is growing on an unprecedented scale, with prison workers forced to address issues of worsening conditions and health and welfare crises with shrinking budgets and limited staffing levels. Prison parkruns are a relatively new initiative (first introduced in 2017) that seek to address some of these concerns through the power of sport. This dissertation uses the overarching theme of liberation and discipline to assess the impact of prison parkruns on prison officers, administrative staff and the prisoner experience. It argues that the prison parkrun initiative is highly effective in producing a more positive prison atmosphere, with greater opportunities for interaction between prisoners and an improved prisoner-staff relationship. In terms of ‘liberation’, prison parkrun provides a platform for prisoner agency and a sense of ownership of both the event and their actions. However, this dissertation argues that parkrun brings liberation and discipline in equal measure. Prison officers can observe prisoners at all times during parkrun, and restrict their access to the event based on behavioural metrics, turning the event into a behaviour-based privilege rather than a universal right.
Throughout the dissertation consideration is given to the role of the law, noting that this study comes within the context of struggling prison systems globally. Prison parkrun was at times discussed by interviewees as an expensive luxury, reducing it to a low priority event that cannot occur with any regularity. This opinion on prison parkruns fails to appreciate their evident value to staff in both liberating and disciplining participants, providing a fascinating study area for prison priorities and outcomes.
Collegiate American Football: Power, Perceptions and Experiences Using a critical sports geographical approach (Koch, 2017), this dissertation explores collegiate American football in the US. It investigates the perceptions and experiences of college football programs, the discourses that are produced and performed within them and the power relations and structures that govern them. The University of Southern California’s NCAA Division 1 football program, the Trojans, serve as my case study. Many previous studies concerning the exploitation of student-athletes lack a specific focus on football (e.g. Beamon, 2008) and rely on large national datasets and specific policies to talk on behalf of student athletes (Singer, 2008). Additionally, studies that have used football student-athlete experiences tend to be outdated and lacking recent developments in student compensation (e.g. Beamon, 2008) or have a narrow focus of investigation (e.g. Porter, 2019) leading to fragmented representations of experiences and perceptions. My study aims to empower the voice of the student-athletes. Therefore, my primary method of data collection was semi-structured interviews with former USC football student-athletes. A questionnaire survey and media exploration were used to supplement analysis. The dissertation tackles these issues by exploring them through a range of themes; the material body of, mental health and well-being of, and financial compensation for, student-athletes. Through my inquiry, I was able to identify ‘winners’ and ‘losers’ through common experiences and perceptions, determine prominent discourses and the power dynamics involved in their creation. I call for a more nuanced approach to studying student-athletes, acknowledging the role of individual experiences.
Exploring the (in)accessibility of Finnish homeless solutions through the lived experiences of homeless individuals in Helsinki, Finland. In 2008, Finland introduced its Housing-First policy, removing all preconditions to housing for homeless individuals (Kaakinen, 2019). Since then, Finland has proven successful in reducing rates of homelessness, aiming to eradicate homelessness by 2027 (YM, 2022a; 2022b). As a result, Finland’s homelessness solutions are rarely critiqued in scholarly literature. This dissertation explores the pitfalls of Finland’s homelessness policy through participatory methods in which homeless individuals guided research towards locally-defined priorities. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with six formerly-homeless individuals who live in a Housing-First unit in Greater Helsinki. Participants identified the accessibility of homeless assistance in Finland as a pitfall of the country’s homeless strategy, which became the focus of this paper.
Stigma played a role in rendering homeless assistance inaccessible by limiting the capacity of welfare services to provide compassionate and high-quality support. Additionally, stigma made participants less likely to reach out for support when it was needed. Sobriety requirements implemented by Staircase-Model homelessness solutions also reduced the accessibility of homelessness solutions by relying on homeless individuals to perform ‘behavioural self-regulation’ (Schinka et al, 2015, p1325), whilst ignoring the restrictions that homeless individuals face to their capabilities. These Staircase solutions pushed some participants into prolonged, chronic, or cyclical homelessness. Finally, limits to the administrative and digital skills, and structural knowledge of participants rendered homelessness assistance inaccessible for several participants, who struggled to locate and navigate homelessness services. Though Finnish homelessness solutions integrate strategies to combat these issues, they were not enough to render homeless solutions entirely accessible for the participants in this paper. Overall, whilst results are not generalisable to the wider homeless population in Finland, this paper demonstrates the value of exploring the lived experience of homeless individuals as a tool with which to analyse the effects of policy on the everyday lives of homeless individuals.
Atmospheric microplastic deposition in ombrotrophic peatlands: developing a methodological approach. There exists a growing body of research on atmospheric transportation of microplastics to remote environments, but as yet there is a distinct lack of research on the role of ombrotrophic peat bogs as archives of microplastic contamination, largely due to difficulties in isolating microplastics from organic rich matrices. This study investigated how the abundance of microplastics at four ombrotrophic peatland sites in Scotland – Blawhorn Moss, Flanders Moss, Strath Nethy and Forsinard Flows – is impacted by proximity to the city of Glasgow. A new sample preparation protocol involving H2O2 organic matter digestion, sieving, suction filtration and SPT density separation, was developed for this investigation. The author collected both surface and control samples in September 2022. Three surface samples and two control samples were analysed from each site. Microplastic and spherical carbonaceous fly ash particle (SCP) counts were obtained using stereomicroscopy and visual analysis. The results from this investigation were statistically tested using the Kolmogorov-Smirnov (K-S) test and Spearman’s Rank Correlation Coefficient, and show that the abundance of microplastics and SCPs in ombrotrophic peatlands negatively correlate with distance from Glasgow, which supports existing literature. This suggests that urban centres are important point sources of atmospheric contamination, although this conclusion is limited by the scale of the investigation. A new laboratory methodology for the extraction of microplastics from peat, with recommendations for further adaptations, has been developed during the course of this study, providing opportunities for further research. Microplastics can therefore be extracted from organic rich sedimentary archives, and thus assessed as a marker of the Anthropocene.
Exploring the discursive effects of religion in Christian Aid’s development narratives. A discourse analysis of public material produced in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, March 2020-March 2022. Since the ‘turn to religion’ within development scholarship (Bompani, 2019: 172), literature has increasingly considered the potential of faith-based organisations (FBOs) to produce alternative discourses of development. Scholarship has debated whether FBOs offer truly distinct narratives to mainstream actors, or simply reflect the dominant development paradigm. This research brings together post-development theory and a broadly Foucauldian approach to development as discourse to analyse the effects of religion within Christian Aid’s development narratives. I explore these effects through discourse analysis, focusing specifically on the construction of ‘development’ and associated subject positions within Christian Aid’s public material produced in response to the COVID-19 pandemic between March 2020 and March 2022. Firstly, I find that religion inspires an alternative ontology of poverty and development and provides values underpinning intervention, but that Christian Aid’s model of social change remains narrated through mainstream discourses of partnership and localisation. Secondly, religion shapes the construction of the ‘faithful supporter’, who engages with Christian Aid as a performance of belief, and religious metaphors construct equality between the donor and beneficiary with the potential to challenge longstanding North-South hierarchies in development discourse. I argue that religion offers teachings, metaphors, and values which can construct more egalitarian development narratives, but that the potential of religious ideas to generate alternative discourses of development may be undermined by CA’s adherence to mainstream narratives that reinforce North-South hierarchies. Religious discourses of altruism and commonality may also depoliticise development interventions when recontextualised within a post-colonial politics. I conclude by calling for further engagement with faith-based organisations, and the development alternatives that they propose, to understand their emancipatory potential as we seek a vision of social change for a post-Agenda 2030 world.
Critical Review Essay
The Weaponisation of Diet: Towards a Critical Approach to Anti-Veganism/Vegetarianism:
“Vegetarians and their Hezbollah-like splinter faction, the vegans… are the enemy of all that is good and decent in the human spirit”.  Anthony Bourdain (2013: 78)
These are the words of celebrity chef Anthony Bourdain in his book: Kitchen Confidential, as he refers to vegans – the offshoot of spiritual humanity’s moral enemy: vegetarians (2013). Dramatic they may seem, echoing a disdain held by many of the western population that this essay seeks to explore (Earle and Hodson 2017). Anti-vegetarian/vegan sentiment has been documented by academics across several fields of study (e.g. Véron and White 2018; MacInnis and Hodson 2017) attempting to explain why a person’s diet elicits such strong feelings of resentment and irritation. This essay seeks to build upon this literature, whilst investigating the crucial influence of gender to this prejudice.
Representations of Somaliland in China, Taiwan and the USA Somaliland, a de-facto state on the Horn of Africa, has fought for international recognition since it broke away from Somalia, its parent state, in 1991. Recently, the breakaway region has benefited from a convergence of regional developments which have boosted its popularity internationally, gaining support from US policy makers and its allies. Its efforts for recognition, for example, have also resulted in the establishment of a representative office in the Republic of China (Taiwan) in February 2020. This new-found relationship has amplified the small region’s visibility in the international system, gaining a mixture of support and disapproval amongst spectators. Thus, it has emerged as a point of discussion in tabloid media, identified as a key site for the production of geopolitical discourse. Media tabloids in particular produce highly sensationalised imaginations of entities for domestic audiences. By drawing on Chinese, Taiwanese and American tabloids, this dissertation compares the types of representations forged about Somaliland, and argues that they are used to (de)legitimise the enclaves’ claims to statehood. Some focus is then on exploring how these representations maintain the centrality of sovereign state in the inter-state system, and the ways anomalous geopolitical entities may blur the lines between legitimate and illegitimate, especially in the field of diplomacy.
The Spaces She Fears: Uncovering Lived Realities Hidden by an Imaginary of Gender Utopia in Copenhagen, Denmark Spaces are often described to have a “feel” or an “atmosphere”. Copenhagen public space is no different. This dissertation explores the gendered dimensions of this “feel”, uncovering the complex and contradictory experiences of gender inequality hidden beneath simplistic narratives of Danish gender utopia. Particular focus is placed on how gender inequality manifests in gender-based violence in public space, discussing how perceived and actual threats of violence impacts how women feel in the city. Drawing on atmospheric concepts propagated by Hermann Schmitz, Gernot Bohme, Ben Anderson and Derek McCormack, I conceptualise female fear as an affective atmosphere, enveloping women and propagating a feeling of “dis-belonging” to urban public space.
Via a phenomenological privileging of lived experience, this dissertation draws on the embodied experiences of ten women living in Copenhagen, in dialogue with personal insights as a young, female researcher. Analysis has focused on exploring the affective nature of particular urban moments and encounters: seeking to understand the affective forces that govern women in public space, while simultaneously uncovering the creative and powerful ways that women negotiate atmosphere, and even cause atmospheric change. Mobilising a more-than-representational methodology, I employ a multi-methods approach, which contributes to overcoming the difficulty of capturing the intangibility of affect/atmosphere, while maintaining a focus on the female body as an organiser of experience and a site of agency.
This dissertation concludes with an emphasis of public space as an affective and felt space, highlighting the importance of understanding the affective components of everyday life. Putting a geography of women’s urban fear in dialogue with affect/atmospheres has proven a productive academic pursuit. Politically, a more complex understanding of women’s experience in public space could contribute to working towards more progressive framings of women’s agency in the street, mechanisms to tackle gender-based violence and ultimately improved gender equality in Denmark. I encourage future research to employ a more intersectional lens, particularly along lines of sexuality, race and ethnicity, to further enhance this understanding.
The Geographies of a Crumbling Hospital: the effects of austerity, rurality and spatial violence on the Queen Elizabeth Hospital, Kings Lynn The current NHS is characterised by ‘crisis’ as it grapples to recover from the dual impact of austere underfunding and pandemic pressure. This crisis has a hidden spatial variation as the local geographies in which an individual hospital is situated have the potential to worsen or lessen the impacts. This dissertation uses the example of the Queen Elizabeth Hospital Kings Lynn, which is unique due to its remote rural location and the 3433 steel and timber props acting as a failsafe for the roof deemed a ‘structural risk’, to demonstrate how distinctive local factors can heavily influence the everyday experience of both staff and patients within hospital space. By adopting a mixed-methods approach combining data from interviews, NHS Staff Surveys and a Twitter analysis the study was able to analyse how several factors interact to shape hospital space and interactions. Findings showed that the physical deterioration of space can ‘wound’ the people forced to live amongst the decay – in the case of a state­controlled hospital, this can be understood as a form of spatial violence. Results also emphasise the strain placed on NHS staff creates a vicious cycle of decline that can compromise patient outcomes and is exacerbated by the unique situation of the Queen Elizabeth Hospital. This study was the first to assess the importance of a relationship between hospitals and their local community to increase resilience and ensure healthcare takes place in dignified worlds. This dissertation concluded that in order for the NHS to truly serve the people, it is essential to understand how people – including staff and patients – experience hospitals and other healthcare facilities differently depending on unique local geographies.
Critical Review Essay
Evaluating the Success of Management of Recent Effusive Volcanic Crises
As an ever-increasing number of people are exposed to volcanic hazards worldwide, understanding how to effectively manage a volcanic crisis is of growing importance. Approaching volcanic risk requires a holistic understanding of volcanology, including both the geophysical behaviour of a volcano and the social challenges present in proximal communities. This paper reviews the theoretical understanding of all aspects of volcanic risk management, from monitoring of eruption precursors to the current understanding of social vulnerability, scientific and social uncertainty, and risk perception. These ideas are then applied to the contexts of the eruptions of Kīlauea and Cumbre Vieja, two effusive eruptions of similar magnitudes and contexts that produced extensive lava flows, disrupting transport and energy infrastructure, and destroying the homes of thousands. This review finds successes in the geophysical monitoring of both crises, illustrating the value of effective monitoring systems in a volcanic context. Communication between volcanologists, the media, the public and other stakeholders in both cases was also strong. Crowdsourcing of visual data from the public, for example, was employed by scientists, demonstrating a diffusive boundary of communication and involving the knowledge of residents in the scientific process. The eruptions illustrate lessons for the handling of uncertainty and creating regulations to support safe tourist opportunities in the face of crisis. Additionally, the contexts of Hawai’i and La Palma demonstrate the complex push and pull factors present in volcanic regions that cause residents to move to or continue living in volcanic areas despite knowledge of the risk, presenting an additional challenge to volcanic management in these regions. A review of the literature around the two eruptions also reveals a gap in current research on social vulnerability and local risk perception at these locations, indicating an avenue for further research in both these cases and others around the world.
Queer Gentrification in the East End: The Creation of Pseudo-Inclusionary Spaces of Expression Over the last two decades, the Docklands redevelopment, and the Olympic Games have significantly altered the built environment and the demographics of East London. Gentrification is a complex form of neighbourhood change with multiple social and economic ramifications on local populations that has been documented in East London (Butler, 2007; Watt, 2013). Under deliberate place-marketing strategies of cosmopolitanism promoted by the 2012 Olympics, underpinned by implicit homonationalist discourses, the East End is increasingly framed as an inclusive space for queer people (Brown, 2006; Hubbard & Wilkinson, 2014). Precedents of white queer experiences of urban change and notions of “queer gentrification” are documented in different contexts, following the Castro District in San Francisco (Castells, 1983; Lewis, 2013). This dissertation addresses a deficit within gentrification literature, by centring a “queer of colour critique” (El-Tayeb, 2012), to highlight conflicts faced by queer people of colour (QPOC) in East London, from both queer and ethnic communities, and its repercussions on feelings of safety and belonging. I argue that lived realities of safety and queerness are radically different for QPOC, primarily due to intersections of marginalised identities. Secondly, experiences of gentrification are articulated in relation to their intersectional identities, exposing contradictions in notions of cosmopolitan urbanism where exclusive, homogenous queer spaces are reproduced in the East End. Lastly, the politics of belonging in East London are realised as pseudo-inclusionary for QPOC, with some movement towards progressive spaces through radical nightlife. This informs gentrification to be conceptualised as a plural process, manifesting disjunctively on different individuals.
Building a city image: investigating how the UK news media has represented The Line in Saudi Arabia. Urban development projects have become increasingly prominent as globalisation has enhanced the need for cities to compete at the global scale and as such, they have received greater attention in the academic literature. This dissertation contributes to the academic literature, spotlighting the under-studied role of the media in urban development projects and substantiating the literature on representation in development. Using 142 articles from popular UK news sources and interviews with journalists, this dissertation investigates how The Line in Saudi Arabia has been represented in the news media, contributing to its city image. Concepts from urban geography, development studies and notions of city image are employed to explore the city’s discursive representations and how these are constructed. The dissertation’s findings reveal the image created for The Line in the news media is intertwined with ideas about the model city, particularly in terms of trends towards smart cities, infrastructural prowess and challenges, and politics. Ultimately the different images presented of The Line are found to contribute to sceptical framings of the project’s feasibility and artificiality, which compound widespread discourses concerning Arabs and Middle Eastern urban development projects. The construction of The Line forms part of a series of plans proposed by Saudi Arabia’s de facto leader, Mohammed bin Salman, in an attempt to reform the country and prepare for a post-oil future, thus situating the dissertation in a potentially pivotal moment of national transformation.
A multi-method investigation into information diffusion on Twitter, in relation to the 2022 UK energy crisis Since Twitter launched in 2006, the social media platform has changed the way people communicate, now hosting almost 450 million users worldwide. With the aim to give everyone an instant voice, it has been heralded for flattening traditional social hierarchies through innovative features such as hashtags and retweets. But in this relatively new landscape, there is still little consensus as to how information flows on Twitter and whether traditional theory on public discussion can be applied to this new space. This piece seeks to fill these gaps by exploring the Twitter discourse surrounding the UK 2022 energy crisis. Employing novel multi-method analysis on a study sample of the 105,000 tweets posted over the time the energy price cap was unveiled in August, this research delves into the inherent geography of Twitter. As a salient everyday issue, the study site is well-suited to addressing theoretical questions of Habermas’ public sphere, as this space was traditionally conceived to debate daily events. Additionally, this study methodologically represents a benchmark for future research as big data analysis becomes more important and Twitter as a platform instigates a host of changes.
Long-term phenology of autumn raptor migration along the East African-Eurasian Flyway in relation to climate change. Climate change has already led to dramatic phenological shifts in the timing of bird migration, transforming ecological processes and population dynamics. Examining shifts in raptor migration are especially important, given the crucial role of many raptors as apex predators within ecosystems. The East African-Eurasian Flyway is a globally important flyway for raptor migration, yet phenological shifts in autumn raptor migration have never been studied along it. Using historical migration count data from Batumi, Georgia this study has analysed how the timing of post-breeding autumn migration has changed along this flyway in ten raptor species from 2008 to 2022. For six of these species, autumn migration timing has been examined from 1990 to 2022, using historical migration count data from the Northern Valleys, Israel. By relating these trends to historical temperatures in breeding grounds, the relationship between raptor migration timing and climate change has been explored. In contrast to previous research into raptor migration, this study reveals that most species of raptor along the East African-Eurasian Flyway have shown no change in the timing of post-breeding autumn migration, despite increases in temperature in their breeding grounds. The lack of phenological shifts is attributed to low phenotypic plasticity in migration timing, due to most species in this study being long- distance migrants with long generation times. Several species have shown delays in migration timing though, often on a scale larger than what has been observed before in raptors. These shifts are theorised to be due to shorter migration distances in these species, allowing them to extend their breeding season in response to climate change. Importantly, this study suggests that climate change is altering predator-prey interactions in many of the raptor species in this study, regardless of their response, disrupting the ecological structure and dynamics of ecosystems.
Unlocking the City: Addressing social and environmental inequalities through shared micromobility in Cambridge This dissertation explores the potential of the ‘Voi Technology’ shared micromobility scheme to alleviate social and environmental inequalities and enable previously marginalised groups to access transport in Cambridge. Shared micromobility is an increasingly salient form of public urban transport consisting of lightweight personal vehicles including electric scooters (e-scooters) and electric bikes (e-bikes) (Sustrans, 2019). These novel means of transportation were introduced to England via a series of trial schemes by the government beginning in 2020 (DfT, 2022). Shared micromobility schemes are marketed as a potential long-term solution to current social and environmental problems prevalent across transportation models across British cities (Olabi, et al., 2023; Asensio, et al., 2022). Cambridge was one of 17 British cities to participate in the initial wave of shared micromobility scheme trials operated by ‘Voi Technology’. (Cambridge City Council, 2020). The city has the highest levels of socio-economic inequality in Britain and a disconnected transport system. This dissertation explores whether the introduction of Voi has helped Cambridge to overcome these inequities (Luxon, 2020; Ferguson, 2020). This study presents data sourced from 10 semi-structured interviews with current users of the scheme; 4 interviews with key stakeholders; questionnaire data garnered from 77 users and 82 non-users of the scheme, and photographs taken by the author that reinforce the discussion. This dissertation concludes that there are considerable benefits including convenience, pleasure, social cohesion, sustainability and the reduction of bike theft that enable improved access to the city. However, the data also reveals significant barriers obstructing the success of the scheme such as affordability and irresponsible use. Thus, this dissertation raises questions about the future of mobility and connections between citizenship studies and transport and can provide recommendations for Voi Technology and similar micromobility startups going forward.
The Mutable Body: Exploring the Changeable Everyday Experiences of Living with Type 1 Diabetes Approximately 400,000 individuals in the UK are currently living with Type 1 Diabetes; an incurable chronic condition that occurs when the body is unable to produce insulin which is the hormone responsible for controlling the level of glucose in the body’s bloodstream (JDRF, 2022a). Nevertheless, while there exists considerable geographical literature exploring the space of ‘the body’ and the factors that influence the everyday experiences of bodies with various illness and impairments (Longhurst, 1997; Moss and Dyck, 2003; Mol, 2003; Crooks et al., 2018; Andrews, 2019), such geographical work relating explicitly to the Type 1 diabetic body remains limited (Lucherini, 2016; 2019). This original dissertation contributes to existing literature on ‘geographies of health’ and ‘geographies of the body’, and, more specifically, the ‘Type 1 diabetic body’. By completing eighteen in-depth semi-structured interviews with individuals living with Type 1 Diabetes, it uncovers how the Type 1 diabetic body and its everyday experiences are products of not simply the body’s biological materiality, but also its relations to various materials, other human bodies and popular discourses associated with Type 1 diabetes. More specifically, it indicates how the ways in which the Type 1 diabetic body changeably interacts with these relations, in different everyday spaces at different times, work to render the body’s everyday form, functioning, emotions and behaviours liable to change. Hence, the Type 1 diabetic body may be described as ‘mutable’.
A Ticking Lyme Bomb? An analysis of the influence of climate change and (sub)urbanisation on the incidence of Lyme disease in Pennsylvania, USA. Lyme disease is the most prevalent tick-borne infection in the United States, and is becoming more common, with an estimated 476,000 cases annually. Growing recognition of the potentially serious health impacts of Lyme disease infection, alongside the rising associated economic costs, have prompted greater research in recent years. This has identified climate change and (sub)urbanisation as key drivers in the emergence, geographic spread and rising incidence of Lyme disease. However, there remains a lack of adequate analysis of the role of seasonal climate across the lifecycle of the tick vector of Lyme disease, alongside clear empirical evidence linking (sub)urbanisation with rising incidence in a geographically-constrained area. This dissertation seeks to address these gaps, whilst also investigating whether variables identified as significant elsewhere appear to be drivers at this scale and geographic location. This dissertation focuses on Pennsylvania, the state with the highest recorded cases annually, yet an area under-represented in previous studies, at the county-level. A variety of climate and land-use variables were assessed, to analyse both the spatial and temporal patterns of Lyme disease incidence across Pennsylvania. Overall, compelling evidence of climate change and (sub)urbanisation-related land-use changes being primary drivers of the spatial and temporal patterns of Lyme disease in Pennsylvania are found. In particular, spring precipitation in the year prior to infection and forest cover are key predictors of interannual spatial variation. Changes to spring temperatures and land-cover are shown to be drivers of differential incidence increases across the state. In the counties experiencing the greatest increases in Lyme disease incidence, (sub)urbanisation is a significant factor behind this rise, while in counties with little change in incidence, none of the variables tested here are responsible, demonstrating the spatially heterogenous influence of environmental factors to Lyme disease, and hence the importance of context-specific public health approaches in the future.
Care on-demand: Expanding gig to account for a feminised experience of platform work The growth of “non-standard” work in recent years has ignited discussions over the role of work in peoples’ lives and what the future of work might look like. Exemplifying these concerns, the gig economy, which is technologically facilitated and systematically circumvents labour protections, has become the epicentre of debates over the future of work. Analysis has begun into the implications of flexible app-based work although, as this study seeks to rectify, the experiences of women in female-dominated sectors have largely been missed from the research. This study is a starting point at rebalancing the voices represented in the gig literature. Drawing primarily from interviews with women working in domestic roles organised via platforms this research provides an account of gig work in domestic spaces. This account is critical, demonstrating the ways in which current theories and ideas about the gig economy are incompatible with the experiences of those in feminised sectors. Employing a multi-disciplinary and feminist approach this study presents the unique, and often gendered, tensions felt by women working in intimate roles; their experiences of time, commitment, autonomy and their gendered, working identities have yet to be captured in accounts of gig work. This study finds that domestic gig work pushes at the edges of what is known about gig work in several ways, suggesting a variety of new challenges and opportunities yet to be explored in the future of work.
Deserving Subjects: An Analysis of Migrant Selection and Neoliberal Citizenship in Singapore In Singapore, migration is a pressing and highly divisive political issue that has received much scholarship attention. This dissertation builds on the existing critical literature by training academic attention onto the portrayal of migrants through discourse analysis. Using data from a corpus of 36 newspaper articles, parliamentary debates, political speeches, and policy briefs, this dissertation investigates how the political discourses of migrants reveal the countervailing economic, political and security objectives of the state. Drawing on concepts from political geography, citizenship studies, mobility studies and the geographies of threat and security, this research traces the discursive representations of two groups of migrants – foreign workers and foreign talents – and consider both the material and discursive implications of their representation. This dissertation will highlight how neoliberal discourses of deservingness and common vocabularies of threat are mobilised in different ways for each migrant group to articulate the complex interplay of the economic, political and security objectives of the state. Findings show that although these two groups of migrants share the same corporeal city, their embodied, spatial and social experiences of the city are very much different. This dissertation comes at a watershed moment where immigration policies in Singapore are in constant flux. With a paradigmatic shift to a points-based system of assessment on the horizon, this has a considerable impact on discussions on the lived realities of migrants in Singapore.
The ‘Führer City Linz’: The Role of Architecture in Embodying the National Socialist German Workers’ Party’s Ideology This dissertation aims to understand how architecture was used to embody Nazi Party ideology, including their community ideologies and their imaginary of an immortal Third Reich, through the use of neoclassical styles and community architecture. This dissertation uses a triangulation framework of visual and textual analysis of speeches, memoirs and letters from leading Nazi Party figures, interrogations led by the American Commission for the Protection and Salvage of Historic Monuments in War Areas and the models and plans for the Linz City Project in Austria. A qualitative approach was used, through thematic coding, to extract reflexive themes linking to the research questions and existing literature. The dissertation had a threefold aim: to reflect on why Linz was a significant location for a Führer State; explore how architecture was used to embody the ‘community’ ideology; and analyse how architecture was utilised to create the imaginary of an immortal Third Reich Empire. This dissertation contributes to the literature on the city projects taking place in the Führer States: Berlin; Munich; Hamburg; and Nuremberg, where architectural methods have been recognised as contributing to the production of an ordered and ‘pure’ German culture and society as their landscapes and architectural styles are ‘representative’ of the Volk (Taylor, 1974). Key architectural styles that have been drawn out of the current literature and further analysed in this dissertation are: size; rectangular spaces; lines of sight and direction; and immortality (Gell, 1998; Taylor, 1974). This dissertation offers a unique study area, as it is outside Germany’s borders and was arguably the project Hitler felt most emotionally attached to. I conclude that architecture was a tool to embody the power and desired ‘clarity’ of the Aryan volkisch community, with ordered large boulevards, rectangular spaces and lines of sight and direction, manifesting this ideology to all those in the landscape. I also conclude that to embody the imaginary of an immortal Third Reich, architectural styles were used to stage both the past and the future, using the Doric order and scale of buildings respectively.
Relational landscapes along a more-than-human railway: Settle-Carlisle, 1875-1930

The field of landscape studies has evolved from a discipline concerned primarily with landscape as it was constructed textually, to a more holistic discipline which recognises the agency of other-than-human objects in these relations. Not only can landscape be constructed, it also ‘is’, and it becomes (or performs as) part of a distinct atmosphere around the observer. Landscape is therefore ‘more-than-representational’. However, literature on this topic often fails to address the influence of more-than-human – particularly technological – actants as mediators of the affective atmosphere between observer and the landscape. Achieving this recognition is the focal point of this paper.

In order to address these concepts, I shall consider how they apply in practice to railway passenger-landscape relations. Historically, railways and landscape have oft been studied in tandem, but primarily only in reference to the representations generated following the arrival of the railway, and rarely, if ever, considering the more complex web of social-technological-natural relations which are present.

In this paper, I move discussion beyond the theoretical realm by analysing these concepts in practice, focusing on the early history of the Settle – Carlisle line as a case study. I apply a ‘historical re-enactive’ methodology to develop a more-than-representational overview of the train’s role as a mediator of passengers’ experiences. I identify particular features of the train which are situated ‘between’ the passenger and the landscape, explain how those features related to the atmosphere that passengers found themselves in, and then show the consequences of embodied relations between those features, passengers, and the landscape. I conclude by emphasising the importance of attending to mediating technologies, and the value of synthesising relationality, materiality, mediation, and atmosphere to better understand landscapes as more-than-representational.

Belief in the meritocracy? Children’s imagined futures in a stratified world. An intimate perspective. This research seeks to explore children’s imagined futures in a time of ‘austere meritocracy’ (Mendick et al., 2018) as they are being encouraged by government promoted narratives of meritocracy to have ambitious, economically productive goals whilst living in a highly unequal society where social mobility is increasingly challenging (Owens and de St Croix, 2020). It seeks to understand whether young people are aware of this tension, or whether they are engaging with meritocratic narratives. Data was collected by speaking to 18 primary school students, aged 10 or 11, across three socio-economically diverse schools. Students conducted creative tasks to establish their socio-economic status, imagined futures and awareness of potential barriers to achieving their goals. Gender, class and place were found to significantly influence young people’s imagined futures. Girls across the socio-economic spectrum showed awareness of barriers they were likely to face in the future as a woman and working class children showed awareness of economic barriers they were likely to face. Middle class children showed the least engagement with discourses encouraging them to become economically productive citizens and were the only group that aspired to more creative, rather than academic, jobs. This research shows that government promoted discourses of meritocracy and aspiration within the education system are not influencing all children equally, and most are aware that our society is not entirely meritocratic.
Two Decades of Retreat of Bylot Island Glaciers Globally, most glaciers are experiencing retreat due to continued global warming (IPCC, 2021). Arctic amplification is enhancing this warming in the Arctic creating concern for the future health of the Arctic’s glaciers. This study presents new estimates for the changes to the extent of glaciated area and the margin retreat of the 16 largest glaciers on Bylot Island, Nunavut, Canada. Area changes were calculated using a new semi-automated classification method, the Automated Glacier Extraction Index (AGEI), proposed by Zhang et al (2019). It marks a slight improvement on the existing NIR/SWIR method. Estimates for margin change were calculated using the GEEDiT and MaQiT tools developed by Lea (2018) which enable rapid digitisation of margins and quantification retreat. All Bylot Island’s largest glaciers retreated between 2001-2021 at an average rate of 28.85 m yr-1 over a two-decade period. The extent of the island’s main ice cap decreased by 250.6 km2 over a 15-year period (2001-2016), taking the total ice loss since 1958/61 to ~503.6 km2. Annually resolved measurements of margin change reveal that glacier characteristics and margin setting exhibited an important control on glacial retreat. In total, 8 glaciers were identified as potential surging glaciers. Of these, one advanced during the first decade (2001-2011).
Modelling Germination Level Soil Temperature for the Study of Subarctic High Latitude Treeline Movement Rapid warming in the Arctic is projected to cause widespread ecological change, especially at the boundary between boreal forests and the Arctic tundra, known as the treeline. Models of treeline movement often do not account for soil temperature due to limited direct measurements of soil temperature at treeline sites, using air temperature instead. This is not ideal as there is a growing body of literature supporting the biological importance of soil temperature for tree recruitment. This study builds a one-dimensional semi-infinite solid heat transfer model of soil temperature in the germination zone using remote sensing and reanalysis data. Daily and site-to-site variation in soil thermal properties are accounted for through the integration of the analytical heat transfer model with statistical models of key parameters. The model is validated using direct soil temperature measurements at 27 pan-Arctic sites at depths between 5 and 20cm. Overall, the model is found to be a better fit for soil temperature than air temperature. Finally, the soil temperature based growing season length is calculated at the treeline and the potential value of estimating soil temperatures for future studies of treeline movement is briefly considered.
Remembering to Forget How memories of the Teneguía (1971) eruption shaped the response to the Cumbre Vieja (2021) eruption, La Palma (Canary Islands). La Palma, Canary Islands, is one of the most volcanically active islands of the archipelago, with three eruptions occurring within living memory (Carracedo et al., 2001). In September 2021, La Palma gripped the world’s media as a fissure eruption began on the 19th of September, after fifty years of quiescence (Longpré, 2021). The eruption quickly became the most destructive in La Palma’s history; with 1,676 buildings destroyed by lava flows, the level of destruction was unprecedented and left deep psychological scars for those who lived through it. The last eruption to occur in La Palma was the 1971 eruption of Teneguía, a strombolian eruption that occurred near the sparsely populated town of Fuencaliente (Araña, 1974). The Teneguía eruption caused minimal damage and was thus fondly remembered for the natural show of a lifetime it gave locals and tourists who flocked from across the globe to view the spectacle (ibid). This dissertation aims to draw upon previous work in disaster risk reduction research (e.g., Longo, 2019 and Madson & O’Mullen, 2013) and apply the lens of memory and identity to the 2021 Cumbre Vieja eruption. By conducting interviews with civilians and elites combined with discourse analysis of newspaper articles, this dissertation found a substantial relationship between memories of Teneguía, the Palmero identity and the response to the 2021 eruption. As La Palma moves into the recovery phase and begins to look to the future of volcanic hazard management, this dissertation could not be more critical. However, further work on collecting interviews throughout the recovery phase and attempts to apply Taylor et al., (2020)’s methodology of ‘Messy Maps’ would enhance volcanic risk assessment and hazard management in the Canary Islands.

Critical Review Essay

A fung(u)ide to addressing the problems of the modern world: towards a critical geography of the mushroom

What can we learn by thinking like – or thinking with – mushrooms? Fungi form complex networks through series of entanglements with other fungi as well as other species, forming symbiotic relationships. Thinking through entanglements, both entanglements with other humans, as well as the more-than-human, can inform geographical thinking about living through the Anthropocene. In more-than-human geographies, animals have had their moment, and even plants; it’s more than time to consider the potential of fungi for understanding the modern day. To do so, we can think through entanglements, the more-than-human, geographies of affect and the microbiopolitics of fungal life. Fungi are amazing and unique organisms that have the potential to transform landscapes and environments from within the ground. The practice of fermentation can offer an ontology whereby we begin to understand the importance of fungi in our lives, as well as being a philosophy for delivering change. It also becomes fruitful to increase the scale of investigation through addressing how the philosophy of fermentation have practical approaches as a method of metabolising waste and the negative effects of the Anthropocene. Finally, discovering how these practical effects can be applied to real-world circumstances offers a guide to living with and through the Anthropocene via fungal connections. Moving up in scales in such a way shows how significant fungi are to many functions: from the individual body to a systems-scale. Investigating such themes will answer the question: what can we learn from mushrooms?
Critical Review Essay
A Critical Review of Energy Justice: Is there room for the more-than-human?
This critical review essay examines the concept of energy justice in its current state and aims to address whether an incorporation of more-than-human theories would make it a more effective tool for policy makers. It provides an overview of energy justice literature, highlighting the importance of such a concept in the context of global energy system transitions that could provide an opportunity for enacting socio-economic and environmental change. More-than-human theories are suggested as a method to address two of the main criticisms of energy justice, its anthropocentric nature and its reliance on Western knowledges. There is a challenge to the Western perception of the environment as a resource for human use and control, towards non-Western and Indigenous understandings of natures intrinsic value, promoted by more-than-human and post-development theories. Reflecting on these emerging examples of non-human agency, a case study of a proposed development in the UK energy system is analysed first through energy justice in its current state, compared with an alternate energy justice that aims to value more-than-human agency. The proposed Woodhouse Colliery in Whitehaven is chosen as a contemporary example of the major debates within the energy system, between the need for jobs and environmental action. The analysis finds that although there are many of the tools necessary to achieve procedural justice for more-than-human actors, the challenge lies with justice of distribution and recognition. For energy justice to be effectively implemented there will need to be a radical shift in Western understandings of the environment, from a passive object to an active subject. Although there is some evidence this shift may be beginning, with some non-human agency making its way into policy, there have also been recent examples with much less success in enacting social and environmental reform, such as the proposal of a Green New Deal in the UK and USA.
Can Buildings Heal? The therapeutic potential of biophilic urban design This dissertation aims to investigate how biophilic design in the built environment can support and improve human well-being, with a focus on emotional restoration. One purpose-built (Oldham) and one interim (Cambridge) Maggie’s centre are used as case studies to explore how relationships with and emotional responses to the built environment emerge in spaces with different degrees of biophilic design. Visual content analysis and thematic analysis of semi-structured interviews were conducted. The analysis revealed that patterns and aspects of biophilic design could be detected at both centres, yet much more powerfully at Maggie’s Oldham, due to the purposeful inclusion of natural design elements like wooden materials into the integral structure and function of the space. The results also showed how this presence of biomimicry fostered positive emotional responses that helped visitors feel calm, happy, and comfortable. This dissertation demonstrates the affective power of the built environment, when utilising biophilic design, in the ways in which natural features contributed to supra-individual ‘architectural atmospheres’ (Martin et al. 2019) through the construction of fields of collective emotional energy that shaped the capabilities of individuals and encourage positive emotions. Meanwhile, it is shown that this architectural affect constitutes just one element of a broader ‘ecology of place’ (Thrift 1999) in the centres, operating alongside the interactions of hu-man and non-human actors. This dissertation emphasises the importance of networks of human interaction and support at both Maggie’s centres, to high-light how emotions are mediated socio-spatially through relations both with people and environments. This dissertation concludes by paying attention to the overlapping and intertwined nature of the built and social environments, which co-constitute the intersubjective force-fields of emotion and affect within the Maggie’s centres. It argues that the biophilic urban space at Maggie’s centres effectively acts as an emotionally resonant foundation, as a ‘silent carer’ (Butterfield and Martin n.d.) that actively underpins and supports the healing practices and social interrelations that occur upon it.
The impact of ice mélange buttressing in Neny Fjord (W Graham Land, Antarctic Peninsula) on Neny and Remus Glacier Ice mélange has been recognised as a proglacial factor influencing glacier dynamics through mechanical backstress at the calving front of marine-terminating outlet glaciers. However, observations of the interactions between ice mélange and glacier terminus are limited in number and geographical spread. This study investigates ice mélange processes in a fjord on the west coast of the Antarctic Peninsula and their impact on the glaciers terminating in that fjord through buttressing effects. Image classification methods are applied to Landsat data in order to derive area measurements of ice mélange cover at different points throughout the daylight season. Significant interannual variations in ice mélange area are evident between 2001 and 2018. A dramatic difference in the timing of ice mélange disintegration is discovered between the austral summers of 2016-17 and 2017-18; this occurrence is explained as a result of the coupling of the El Niño/Southern Oscillation and the Southern Annular Mode, which drive variability of surface air temperatures and, more importantly, ocean temperatures via the upwelling of warm Circumpolar Deep Water onto the continental shelf off the southwestern Antarctic Peninsula. The insights into ice mélange behaviour are then related to surface velocity data of the three glaciers terminating in the fjord. The results are mixed, yet there is indication that the proglacial ice mélange exerts significant backstress on their calving fronts. It is found that seasonally resolved velocity data are needed to test the hypotheses made about the relationship of ice mélange buttressing and glacier velocity.
Critical Review Essay
Revisiting the Enlightenment: mapping influences on geographical thought

The origins of modern geography are often traced back to the imperial antics of a number of European states, and, as a result, geography rather quickly became “the science of imperialism par excellence” (Livingstone 1992: 160). However, a budding literature that emerged towards the end of the last century places geography as originating in the period of time we have come to know as the Enlightenment.

Following the seminal text by Livingstone and Withers, Geography and Enlightenment, this critical review essay will explore in greater depth how Enlightenment was geographical, as well as exploring in further depth geography’s “perennial obsession with the far away, with mapping the world, [and] with exhibiting classi?ed knowledge” (Livingstone and Withers 1999: 2) through chapters on exploration, mapping, and classi?cation, as well as using the biographies of Alexander von Humboldt (1769-1859) and James Cook (1728-1779).

Particularly in line with the focus of decolonial literature, this essay will also examine the relationship both of these entities have with empire: perhaps what Livingstone and Withers were alluding to when they wrote of geography’s interest in “the imposition of European ways of thinking” (ibid). However, the essay will show Enlightenment as neither entirely emancipatory nor entirely imperial: that Enlightenment thinkers put forth critiques of imperialism at great personal risk, but were not capable of eliminating imperialist impulses.

Ultimately this essay will show that geography, Enlightenment, and empire alike are each complex and variegated enterprises, complicated even further when considered in relation to one another – and that this does not weaken the discipline, but, rather, that acknowledging the complexities is indeed a symbol of a strong discipline.

Visceral Temporality (Not) Eating, Embodiment and Disordered Time Listening to the stories of nine individuals with (histories of) eating disorders, this dissertation unites the theoretical frameworks of queer phenomenology and visceral and affective geographies to explore the temporal intimacies, practices, and embodiments of living with, and through, an eating disorder (Lavis, 2016). Orientating myself towards ‘mad’ scholarship and feminist epistemologies that question claims to objectivity and warn against co-optation of narratives, I seek to empower my participants and their lived knowledge. As such, the complementary methods of photo elicitation and semi-structured interviews were employed for their emancipatory potential and to elicit rich narratives. I move beyond biomedical psychiatric and Foucauldian feminist interpretations of eating disorders that consider the body to be passive, exploring the visceral and affective complexities and liveliness of eating disordered bodies (Hayes-Conroy & Hayes-Conroy, 2020). My focus on temporality supplements existing research on eating disorders which largely attend to materiality and relationality (Warin, 2010; Gooldin, 2008; Eli & Lavis, 2021; Lavis, 2013, 2017). While I do not neglect the material and relational intensities of eating disorders, my dissertation argues these are co-constituted, mediated, enlivened, and dulled by temporality: both in the way temporality is experientially registered but also actively mobilised and performed as a coping strategy for those with eating disorders. Crucially then, this dissertation finds time is not a deadened ‘just happening’ but holds visceral potential as those with eating disorders feel their subversion of normative time and social rhythms. Consequently, for individuals with eating disorders, temporality is affectively textured through habits, more/less-than atmospheres of anticipation or (dis)comfort, and the entanglement of the future presenced and living present (Anderson, 2010). This dissertation reveals the need for geography, especially health geographies, to dedicate time to time. Scholarship must conceptually attend to temporality beyond linear teleology, instead acknowledging its embodied, situated, and relational capacities. The effectivity of an interdisciplinary approach alongside ‘mad’, feminist epistemological and methodological orientations for future studies of temporality and mental health is further underscored.
Towards a historical ecology of Vestland, Norway: a palaeo perspective

The reconstruction of palaeoecological change is crucial to understanding the dynamic and multiple trajectories of environmental change over the 21st century and beyond. In order to accurately understand these potential trajectories, background information on ecosystem dynamics and variability are needed. Historical palaeoecological studies covering the ‘geologically recent’ period provide this missing link between palaeoenvironmental change and modern ecological dynamics. This is particularly important in high-latitude temperate forest environments where forest and shrub expansion are altering carbon cycle dynamics and atmosphere-soil-vegetation feedbacks to amplify modern warming.

This study utilises historical ecology as a methodology to reconstruct the palaeoecological histories of two lake catchments, Lontjørnane and Stoylsvatnet, in west Norway over the last millennia. These cultural landscapes provide rare records of dynamic ecosystem variability in response to evolving disturbance regimes, predominantly agricultural activity and environmental change. By reconciling the palynological records with historical documentation, the dominant and directive control of anthropogenic activity on ecosystem structure, composition, and dynamics in these ‘wild’ landscapes is revealed. Both sites record vegetation histories consistent with early agricultural activity followed by late forest re-growth in response to land abandonment and modern warming after centuries of cumulative disturbance. These palaeoecological histories provide the information needed for situated conservation frameworks and projections of future ecological change in Vestland, Norway.

A robust tephrochronological framework is built at both sites in order to effectively constrain and interpret the temporal dynamics of palaeoecological changes. This chronology is constructed from key Icelandic cryptotephra isochrons and 210Pb dating. In addition, this study reports the first identification of distal cryptotephra deposits from the 1625 AD eruption of Katla and only the fourth identification of distal deposits from the 1477 AD Veiðivötn eruption – the latter of which presents a potential chronostratigraphic tiepoint for the onset of the Little Ice Age.

‘A difficult line to walk’ Austerity and the Divided City: How do foodbanks navigate political polarisation and segregation in Belfast, Northern Ireland? This dissertation explores the ways in which foodbanks navigate political polarisation and ethnosectarian segregation in the city of Belfast, Northern Ireland. To do so, I first ground my investigation within the relevant literature on theories of civil society, urban segregation, and austerity. However, despite there being a growing body of geographical scholarship dedicated to investigating the dramatic rise and rise of foodbanks in the context of austerity Britain, there have been few attempts to examine these within the devolved region of Northern Ireland. This investigation is an attempt to both fill this gap, and answer Strong’s (2020) call for a closer engagement with the “everyday spatial politics of foodbanking” (pp. 212). To do so, interviewed a range of food bank managers working throughout the city in order to produce a qualitative account understanding of food poverty and austerity in the region. By focusing on the perspectives of foodbank managers within organisations across Belfast, this investigation devotes warranted attention to what Williams et al. (2016) call the “neglected politics articulated within foodbanks themselves” (pp. 2292). To unpack the themes of this ‘neglected politics’ I uncovered, I performed a discourse analysis on my interview transcripts using NVivo coding software. This investigation provides insight into how civil society organisations, like foodbanks, navigate austerity within the context of a divided city. Primarily, my findings illustrate how the foodbank managers and volunteers, who are locally embedded within the communities they serve, are an invaluable resource. However, my findings suggest that they are not a finite resource and volunteer burn-out is a potentially destabilising force within the austere, post-conflict city.
Beaver Biopolitics and Human-Beaver Entanglements in Ladock, Cornwall Beavers are highly contested creatures who have been perceived throughout history both as useful, hard-working animals and troublesome, dangerous pests. As species reintroductions become increasingly popular in conservation, beavers are being brought back to Britain, from which they have been absent for around 500 years. In August 2021, I attempted to conduct four-and-a-half weeks of more-than-human anthropological field research to explore the lives of the beavers reintroduced under the Cornwall Beaver Project (CBP). Drawing on Michel Foucault’s theorization of biopower and Maan Barua’s understanding of nonhuman labour, this dissertation argues that the reintroduced beavers are being positioned as service providers in a more-than-human division of labour. It understands the CBP as a neoliberal biopolitical regime, governing beaver lives so as to maximise the performance of more-than-human labour and the generation of encounter value. This project finds that beavers do not passively acquiesce to human control and frequently undermine biopolitical management. However, the beavers cannot always escape the violence associated with neoliberal inflections of biopower. This suggests the need for reflection on the ways in which beaver reintroductions are occurring in Britain.
Extinction Rebellion: Dutiful or disobedient? A Twitter analysis of April’s 2019 London protests Extinction Rebellion are a social movement who use civil disobedience tactics to endeavour to change state policies to prevent climate and ecological breakdown. In April 2019, Extinction Rebellion held an eleven-day protest in London causing major disruption. This study investigates public opinion on Extinction Rebellion through the platform of Twitter using the lens of citizenship. It first uses manual sentiment analysis to determine whether Twitter users suggest Extinction Rebellion were dutiful or disobedient in its actions in April 2019. It then explores the importance of tweeters’ beliefs on climate change and how change can be made to state policies, to better understand individuals’ tensions between a duty to respect local civil society and a duty of protection to a global civil society. This study has methodological contributions to the field of sentiment analysis and provides evidence that a social movement which performs civil disobedience and cause disruption can be perceived as morally dutiful.
Roads to Improvement: The Construction of “Destitution Roads” by the Edinburgh Section of the Central Board as a response to Highland Famine, 1847-1850 Recent work in historical geography has investigated the ‘governmentalisation of famine’ in the nineteenth century (Nally, 2008; Sasson and Vernon, 2015). This literature has drawn on Foucault’s (2007) concept of governmentality to argue that famines were considered legitimate sites of intervention and that relief responses were designed to conduct specific societal outcomes. This dissertation explores the governmentalisation of famine further by examining the under-investigated Highland Potato Famine. Administrators of eleemosynary aid between 1847 and 1850 viewed famine responses as an opportunity to reconfigure and ‘improve’ Highland society. With elements of internal colonisation, relief programmes aimed to stimulate agrarian capitalism, a free market, and the transition of Highland cottars into landless, proletarianized labourers who were forced to sell labour and purchase food in that free market. This governance arguably made Highlanders more food insecure. Considering the efforts of the Edinburgh Section and the destitution road project, however, this research queries the overly-paradigmatic nature of Foucault’s (2007) theorised shift from sovereign-territorial power to a governmental-population regime, and its application to the governmentalisation of famine. Contrary to this paradigmatic interpretation, territory does not disappear from governmental concern but is considered in a new way. The Edinburgh Section’s governmental intervention through road construction within the boundaries of their relief area entailed the transformation of Highland land into a territory which could be governed according to the Section’s capitalist political ideologies. As such, territory was a ‘political technology’ in the governmentalisation of famine (Elden, 2013). The destitution road project calculated and managed networks and flows through Highland terrain, which made a Highland territory that was a coherent ‘spatio-political object’ for the Edinburgh Section’s governing policies and ideologies (Painter, 2010: 1104). In particular, control over Highland territory enabled networks of free market trade to circulate the Highlands, encouraged flows of waged labour and the proletarianization of Highland labourers, and stimulated new territorial property regimes and agricultural organisation for profit. Control of territory encouraged a shift from a tenancy system in which Highlanders possessed the means to subsistence towards a capitalist system that that was based on waged labour and commoditised food. This dissertation, therefore, concludes that the calculation and management of territory, as well as populations, must be considered in research into the governmentalisation of famine.
An exploration of processes of de/politicisation in the French Citizens’ Convention on Climate Citizens assemblies on climate change are growing in popularity at the local, national, and even global scale. They are lauded as a way to bring about ambitious climate action, bringing citizens’ voices to the forefront on climate change, an issue where policymaking is often dominated by inaction from politicians and overly technical issue frames. However, this form of ‘deliberative democracy’ is also highly criticised by some for ‘depoliticising’ climate change, creating exclusions through consensus-seeking processes and preventing thinking beyond dominant societal paradigms, thus foreclosing visions of alternative futures. This dissertation seeks to explore processes of depoliticisation and politicisation of climate change within the French Citizens’ Convention on Climate (CCC), focusing on three core axes of reflection: consensus, the discursive framing of climate change, and expertise. It carries out a discourse analysis of videos of the Conventions sessions and the Convention’s final policy proposal document, as well as supporting documentary material. It shows that, contrary to those who argue that deliberative approaches are strongly depoliticising (Machin, 2013; Pepermans and Maeseele, 2016), both depoliticisation and politicisation of climate change take place within the CCC. It also highlights that framing climate change as not only a technical, but a social justice issue, is a core driver of politicisation, allowing citizens to challenge expert framings and understand society as contingent, enabling citizens to think beyond dominant societal paradigms. This dissertation suggests that future work should study depoliticisation and politicisation in citizens’ assemblies, providing policy relevant insights and informing ongoing debates about whether it is best to tackle climate change through politicisation or depoliticisation.
An investigation of trends in fire occurrence and recurrence, burn severity, and vegetation health in the (Indigenous) Bolivian Amazon. Due to the small percentage of Amazonian forest in Bolivia, fire in the Bolivian Amazon generally receives less coverage than in other countries. Despite this, large portions of the country have recently faced greater fire outbreaks. The causes of these fires are anthropogenic; however, not all forest users contribute to this equally. Indigenous communities have been hailed as successful forest users of fire.
Thus, an investigation into the spatial variation of fire outbreaks and effects focusing on the difference between Indigenous lands and other lands may offer helpful insights. Using remote sensing products and vegetation indices, this study investigates the spatial distribution of fire occurrence and recurrence, burn severity, and vegetation health, focusing on land-cover and land tenure. The results show a significant difference between expected and observed frequencies of fire occurrence across land-covers and a significant difference between fire occurrence in Indigenous lands and other lands in five land-cover types. No statistically significant results could be drawn from burn severity trends; however, Indigenous lands appeared to suffer less severe burns. Statistically significant trends were identified in four land-cover change time series and one NDVI time series.
Putting the Brakes on Fast Fashion: Investigating Barriers to the Growth of Slow Fashion Fast fashion is a $1.6 trillion dollar industry that is responsible for some of the most pressing social and environmental crises humanity faces. These include, inter alia, climate change, modern day slavery, precarious working environments and gender based violence both in the developed and developing world (Hoskins, 2014; Anguelov, 2015). However, since the late 2000s, an alternative paradigm has emerged – one that represents a departure from decades of socio-environmental decay under the incumbent fast fashion business model. This alternative enterprise is known as ‘slow fashion’, and it is steered on a foundation of climate positivity and social empowerment. The slow fashion movement has gathered some momentum over the last few years with positive change happening both at the institutional and consumer levels. However, despite the interest in slow approaches to fashion amongst academics, companies, consumers and the media, significant barriers to full-scale adoption remain.
This dissertation aims to unpack the roadblocks which stand in the way of slow fashion’s growth. The study triangulates data from interviews conducted with 7 CEOs of UK-based slow fashion companies and questionnaire data garnered from 110 young adults from various parts of the UK. I propose that there are three different types of barriers facing slow fashion: (1) demand-side barriers; (2) supply-side barriers and; (3) systemic barriers. In turn, this dissertation helps to reveal that in order to transition the fashion industry to a more sustainable future, interventions are not only needed at the level of the consumer and the firm, but they are also needed at the level of the political economy. These findings consequently enrich previous studies on the barriers to slow fashion and highlight areas of action for policy makers and future researchers. : fast fashion, slow fashion, sustainability, sustainable fashion, neoliberal capitalism.
Unequal foodscapes of plenty – An investigation into the socio-spatial food provisioning
strategies of low-income migrant mothers in Sham Shui Po, Hong Kong
In Hong Kong, urban food insecurity is a pressing issue that low-income families must overcome every day. Using data from a survey and 21 semi-structured interviews, this dissertation investigates how and why low-income Chinese migrant mothers living in the Sham Shui Po district use a variety of socio-spatial strategies to provide food for their families. Drawing on concepts from both feminist and food geographies, the research traces the women’s embodied, social, and spatial experiences with food provisioning starting from food acquisition to preparation and consumption. Findings highlight how their food provisioning strategies are characterised by dynamic forms of mobility between and within the public urban space and the private domestic space. Food acquisition occurs via three key avenues: personal purchase, formal charity food assistance, and informal networks. Decisions to utilise these avenues are governed by cost, food quality and quantity; the women also needed to simultaneously navigate embodied and temporal constraints imposed by childcare responsibilities. Strategies for food preparation involved negotiating domestic spatial constraints and food preferences of family members that subsequently govern differential modes of food consumption. The study also emphasises the value of social networks as a vital source of knowledge and material food exchange within the women’s food provisioning strategies. Ultimately, these women have the resourceful and adaptive ability to selectively deploy social and/or spatial food provisioning strategies across various sites to obtain affordable and quality food tailored to the needs of their family members. These strategies require navigating various constraints which are shaped by their class, gender, and the wider urban context. The study’s outcomes contribute towards research efforts seeking to understand the context-specific manifestations of, and coping mechanisms against urban food insecurity for low-income families.
Use of a remotely sensed landform assemblage on a Svalbard glacial
forefield to determine the cause and nature of Little Ice Age glacial advance and subsequent retreat
This project uses a landform assemblage approach to determine the glacial history of Von Postbreen in western Spitsbergen, Svalbard. Landforms in Von Postbreen’s forefield are identified and interpreted using elevation data from the open access ArcticDEM and multi-swath fjord bathymetry. These data are supplemented with map sources and Landsat imagery that mark the glacier’s changing extent through time. The landforms identified are used to analyse Von Postbreen’s history. Aspects investigated are the likelihood of a Little Ice Age surge of the glacier, the nature and speed of its subsequent retreat, and differing landform preservation potentials between the submarine and terrestrial areas of the forefield. The landform assemblage at Von Postbreen was compared to a model, and is indicative of a surge during the Little Ice Age, in particular due to the presence of crevasse-squeeze ridges in the terrestrial forefield. The glacier has since undergone grounded retreated of 7.35km, at varying speeds through time, including a period of confluence with the adjacent glacier, Tunabreen. The landforms in both submarine and terrestrial environments have probably undergone alteration, by melt-out of ice-cored landforms in both environments, draping by sediments in submarine areas, and fluvial and aeolian erosion in terrestrial areas.
Learning to Be Affected at the IDEAL Society Ecovillage: An
Embodied Education for a Posthumanist Economic World
Through the lens of the Diverse Economies literature, this dissertation investigates the diverse more-than-capitalist economic practices, ontologies, and educational systems of the IDEAL Society ecovillage in British Columbia, Canada. As we head towards environmental and climate crisis, it is becoming increasingly clear that the capitalist mode of production is failing to adequately protect both people and the environment. The ontologies underpinning the capitalist economy render the more-than-human world as a passive resource for humans to exploit – it calls for new ways of thinking that rework the relationship between economy and ecology, so that we can produce economic actors who choose to perform a fairer, more sustainable economic world. Cultivating more ethical economic subjects relies upon interrupting capitalist identities and instilling ontologies that create a moral imperative for us to act in the interests of the nonhuman world as well as our own. The ecovillage model is a prominent way in which groups are trying to develop a radically new economic ethics. People around the world are generating alternative lifestyles based upon revising the human relationship with interdependent ecosystems through communal living and emotional development. Here, I examine the ways in which the IDEAL Society’s educational model makes use of affective encounters to cultivate and to instil such an ethics. Engaging with Latour’s (2004) concept of ‘learning to be affected’, this dissertation uses visual methods as well as interviews and textual material to investigate the opportunities and encounters afforded by this model to be affected and transformed. After first tracing the performance of the economy of the IDEAL Society, I analyse the modes of engagement with the environment that its members are actively constructing, before uncovering the affective and somatic experiences through which these are maintained and taught to others. Although it is unclear whether the ecovillage itself is capable of long-lasting, performative change outside of its boundaries, in amplifying the potential of its practices, this work supports an urgent call for transformative research so that such groups can help guide towards a solution for a more ethical, sustainable economic world in the future.
Surface velocity mapping of the Larsen C Ice Shelf: assessing the ice dynamic response to the A-68 calving event The impact of ice shelf change on ice sheet dynamics is an important area of research due to the buttressing effect which ice shelves provide to grounded ice, regulating ice discharge and therefore ice sheet contributions to sea level rise. Widespread ice shelf collapse on the Antarctic Peninsula since the late twentieth century has resulted in the acceleration and dynamic thinning of previously buttressed outlet glaciers, contributing to a regional mass loss of 23.8Gt yr-1 between 1979 and 2017 (Rignot et al., 2019). Studying the effects of ice shelf mass loss on ice dynamics is therefore important in enabling improved predictions of rates of ice sheet decline. This study assesses the ice dynamic impacts of a major iceberg calving event which occurred in July 2017 on the Larsen C Ice Shelf (LCIS). Through applying offset tracking techniques to Sentinel-1 synthetic aperture radar imagery, surface velocity mapping was used to detect dynamic responses to ice shelf mass loss in the three months following the calving of iceberg A-68, across both floating and grounded ice. The results indicate that velocities in the centre of the ice shelf increased by up to 112.2m yr-1 following calving, though this figure likely encompasses the effects of ocean tides on satellite-derived measurements of ice shelf movement. Surface velocity measurements along nine tributary glaciers to the LCIS indicated no clear dynamic response in the three months following iceberg calving. As such, these results provide empirical support to previous model-based studies, which have suggested that the A-68 calving had little impact on the buttressing transmitted by the LCIS to grounded ice (Fürst et al., 2016; Borstad et al., 2017).

Punishing the Periphery?

Exploring the lived impacts of contemporary austerity on domiciliary care services in rural Norfolk

Through examining the impact of contemporary austerity on the provision of domiciliary care in rural Norfolk, this study takes austerity studies out of their traditionally urban setting. The dissertation combines qualitative research interviews with health and demographic statistics to explore how national neoliberal austerity policies can filter down to have everyday impacts on those giving or receiving care in rural homes. Findings show how through systematic cuts to Norfolk County Council’s funding from central government, austerity was able to add further strain on already pressurised care systems. This has had a range of embodied impacts across those involved within domiciliary care, demonstrating that rural austerity is very real.
Tracing Past Atmospheres of the Arbroath Abbey Pageants, Scotland, 1949-1956

This dissertation traces the affective atmospheres of the historical pageants held annually at Arbroath Abbey between 1949 and 1956. The Arbroath Abbey Pageants were historical re-enactments of the signing of the Declaration of Arbroath. In particular, this dissertation examines the staging of atmosphere by illumination at the Arbroath Abbey Pageants. Two major contributions are made to the study of affective atmospheres. First, I conceptualise ‘atmospheres of enchantment’ as having filled the Abbey during the pageant performances, captivating pageant attendees. These atmospheres are found to have been co-produced not only by illumination, but by meteorology, accident and the agency of individuals present. Second, a Spinozian reading of affect elucidates the feeling of ‘national potential’ that emerged from the Arbroath Abbey Pageants. Specifically, the lighting of a beacon in the Abbey ruins is credited with suffusing the scene with a feeling of potential, possibility and forward movement. This dissertation concludes with a series of methodological and epistemological reflections on the possibility and promise of ‘tracing’ past atmospheres. Whilst the Arbroath Abbey Pageants from 1949 to 1956 are evidenced to show that past atmospheres can be traced, a series of limitations of an historical study to atmospheres are offered. It is hoped that these reflections can inform future efforts to trace past atmospheres in geography and, more broadly, across the social sciences.

: Affect, Atmosphere, Enchantment, Historical pageantry

how do homeless people in Haringey, London experience austerity?

exploring the experiences of Tessa and Lukas

Since UK austerity policies began in 2010, homelessness across the country has risen rapidly, with particularly high increases in London. This dissertation uses ethnographic photoelicitation research with two participants, Tessa and Lukas, to understand homeless experiences of austerity in Haringey, London. To do this, the dissertation coins the term “homeless austerity”, which refers to a distinct experience of austerity for homeless people that characterises life in the austere city. Through a feminist relational understanding of the everyday, this dissertation argues that homeless austerity is a differentiated and unequal experience, but one which can be resisted through everyday practices. This dissertation finds that, in the first instance, homeless austerity is characterised by exclusion from benefits through the inaccessibility of Universal Credit. Crucially, this exclusion from state support, wherein neither Tessa nor Lukas received benefits while they were rough sleeping, significantly impacted their everyday experiences. Indeed, this dissertation finds that experiences of austerity for Tessa and Lukas are varied and differentiated, characterised by experiences such as worry and exclusion. Furthermore, these experiences are unequal as they are premised on intersectional inequalities, where the overlap of race and gender leads to processes of home (un)making in shelter spaces. Yet, crucially, these differentiated and unequal experiences can be resisted through quietly political practices which are crucial to Tessa and Lukas getting by during homeless austerity. This dissertation reveals the need for economic geographers to broaden their epistemologies and methodologies to incorporate economic experiences at microgeographical scales to add nuance to larger-scale understandings of the economy.
Investigating the effect of supraglacial debris-cover on modelled ablation using an enhanced positive degree-day approach: Mer de Glace, French Alps. Many retreating glaciers are characterised by increasing supraglacial debris-cover, but the effect of debris-cover on surface ablation rates is rarely included in models of glacier evolution. This study investigates how supraglacial debris-cover affects ablation rates using a positive degree-day approach, which is more widely applicable than physically-based models due to low in-situ data requirements, alongside satellite remote sensing and numerical modelling. This is conducted on the debris-covered tongue of Mer de Glace, France’s largest glacier. This study finds supraglacial debris-cover increased at 0.76-78p.p./yr between 1985 and 2020, from about 45% to over 70%. This rapid increase emphasises the importance of understanding how debris-cover affects ablation rates. Derived degree-day factors for clean and debris-covered ice are 5.8 and 3.3mm d-1 °C-1 respectively, suggesting debris-cover strongly reduces melt rates at the point-scale. Accounting for potential direct solar radiation (PDSR) is insignificant, likely because there is little summer-long variation in PDSR receipts across the tongue. Debris-cover reduces modelled glacier-wide summer ablation by 18.3% (1985-94) and 24.5% (2003-12), suggesting a substantial and increasing glacier-wide melt-reducing effect of debris-cover. Modelled ablation is most sensitive to temperature change, closely followed by debris-cover change, and relatively insensitive to glacier retreat and thinning. Overall, modelled mean summer ablation increases by 0.30m w.e. between the two periods. This study concludes that supraglacial debris-cover on Mer de Glace substantially reduces modelled melt rates at the point- and glacier-scale, reducing mass balance sensitivity to climate change, but this is insufficient to prevent increasing melt rates as temperatures rise. This suggests models may overestimate mass balance sensitivity to climate change unless they adequately account for debris-cover. However, further study is required to establish how supraglacial ponds and ice-cliffs and spatially variable debris thickness affect glacier-wide melt rates, which could not be considered here due to a lack of in-situ data.

THANK GOD IT’S THURSDAY?

Critically exploring the work-life balance business case of the four-day week

This dissertation explores the work-life balance business case of the four-day week (4DW) in small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in the UK. This dissertation finds that implementation of the 4DW has increased dramatically in CEO-led SMEs in the UK over the last two years, specifically in creative and fast-paced industries. Flows of information about the model have proliferated between firms in similar geographies and industry spheres. Despite the model’s rising use, business motivations for adopting the 4DW, alongside impacts on employees have not been properly addressed. This dissertation utilises a work-life balance (WLB) business case lens to a) assess business motivations for, and impacts of, adopting the model and b) uncover how the model impacts everyday employee experiences of WLB. This dissertation finds that business leaders adopting the 4DW must foresee financial reward (through recruitment, productivity and better job performance). Secondary to this comes their altruistic desires to improve the WLB of their employees. Amongst employees, there is almost universal support for the model, but for various reasons. The impacts of the 4DW were dependent on life-course; individuals with significant work-life conflict used the model for better balance, but most workers used their day off to take on extra paid work. Therefore, the relationship between the 4DW and improved WLB is not linear: this finding should be considered by actors advocating for and implementing the 4DW going forward.

Navigating (Il)legal Art

Producing Street Art in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets

Situated in the rapidly growing street art scene of the London Borough of Tower Hamlets, this dissertation attempts to unite literature of legal geography and gentrification to offer a critical geographical analysis of the production of street art in East London. A recent policy introduced by Tower Hamlets Council effectively legalises what it terms to be ‘street art’: employing a policy analysis, complemented by ten interviews with artists, local residents and the lead policymaker, as well as a bespoke derivative of photo elicitation that draws upon the work of Andron (2017; 2018a), I adopt the analytical schema of legal geography to interrogate the construction of ‘street art’ on legal terms. I organise my findings into the conceptualisation of three frontiers. Firstly, I find that legalisation semiotically and discursively demarcates a legal frontier (Blomley 2003a) between street art and graffiti such that graffiti contests property and street art complements property. Secondly, I find that legalisation produces street art by actively favouring work that is perceived to have economic value, mobilising a gentrifying frontier between street art and the graffiti that threatens street art. Finally, I draw upon radical spatial theory to contend that legalisation operationalises these frontiers spatially, to produce the ‘right’ spaces for street art in the context of the late-capitalist, postmodern city. Overall, this dissertation finds that the legally objective production of ‘street art’ is a form of legal reproduction, casting a spatial objectivity sometimes in contention with artists’ re-imaginings of urban space. I argue that legal geography can perceptively account for the production of street art in such a way, but that more research is needed in the geographical discipline to form a sustained engagement with the contemporary governance and production of late-capitalist urban aesthetics – I call, that is, for a legal geograffi.

Pristine Landscapes, Deep Ecology, and More-than-neoliberal Conservation: The Contested Construction of Douglas Tompkins’ Wilderness Parks in Chilean Patagonia

This critical review essay explores the variety of ideologies and practices which have influenced conservation efforts in recent years. It traces the development of the conservation movement over the 19th and 20th centuries, with an emphasis on how early protected area management was motivated primarily by a desire to construct and preserve an imagined wilderness. It then highlights the dominance of current conservation literature by a ‘neoliberal conservation’ approach which argues that modern conservation is defined by the commodification, enclosure, and privatisation of natural resources, the supremacy of markets, and the rollback of the state. However, it seeks to draw attention to the limitations of such an approach which obscures the more varied and place-specific means by which humans value nature and engage in conservation efforts. To do so, it identifies Chile as one of the most fundamentally neoliberal states in the world yet one which continues to interact with conservation in diverse, unpredictable, and often contradictory ways. Specifically, it demonstrates how the legislative and administrative bodies of the Chilean state continue to play an active role in private conservation through their regulation of its market economy and property regime. Finally, it outlines the case of Douglas Tompkins to highlight the continued plurality of approaches to conservation which Chile’s neoliberal model invites and the profound local and national conflicts these can generate. It concludes that while some aspects of conservation have certainly been neoliberalised, this has not been a universal experience, nor one which justifies the absence of other ways of valuing and conserving nature from contemporary conservation literature.

The 9 year aftershock: The long-term impacts and effect cascades triggered by recovery efforts following the 2011 Christchurch earthquake

This study investigates the recovery process in Christchurch following the 2011 earthquake.

Specifically, it will investigate how recovery efforts over the past nine years have propagated the direct effects of the earthquake and triggered secondary impact cascades – a novel approach within post-disaster research. It will analyse the social dynamics of these cascading effects, and how they can lead to lasting change within communities. In order to effectively carry out this analysis the following research questions will be explored:

(1) Where has the focus of recovery been?

(2) How have recovery efforts caused and propagated cascading effects?

(3) Post-disaster Christchurch – business as usual or the new normal?

Primary data was collected through semi-structured interviews with those who have been directly involved in the recovery process, and coded in order to draw out themes that contribute to the current literature.

Overall, this study will show that there is a general lack of understanding with regard to the social dynamics of recovery-induced effect cascades in the aftermath of the 2011 Christchurch earthquake. It highlights that the effects caused and propagated by recovery strategy, and decisions made at government level, can have lasting effects on communities if they are not realised. This study intends to provide a foundation for future work within the field of post-disaster recovery and cascading disasters. It advises that the complexities and impacts of recovery in practice need to be better understood by both the research community and by authorities, in order to achieve more effective long-term recovery and prevent lasting damage to vulnerable communities.

Hybridised citizenship in an off-grid community: A study of citizenship formation and practices in Scoraig

In recent years, new concepts have emerged in citizenship studies such as ‘post-national citizenship’ and ‘everyday citizenship’ to explain the quickly evolving state of citizenship. The traditional understanding of citizenship as the relationship between an individual and the nation-state, defined by a set of rights and obligations, has been unsettled in recent decades by global trends of neoliberalism, migration and globalisation. Simultaneously, individuals and groups becoming disillusioned with the current socio-political setting are seeking out alternative ways to live, and creating alternative communities in order to do so. This dissertation studies one such alternative community, based on the peninsula of Scoraig in Scotland, to investigate how rejecting the mainstream and choosing an alternative lifestyle impacts citizenship. Based on 3 weeks of ethnographic research in Scoraig, this dissertation investigates first how and why members of this off-grid community identify as alternative, then explores the construction and embodiment of their citizenship using the lenses of the community and the everyday. It aims to understand the complexities of Scoraig citizenship by considering the agency of residents in its production, in order to deconstruct the binary understanding of mainstream and alternative citizenships. Based on these areas of investigation, this dissertation argues that Scoraig citizenship is neither mainstream nor alternative: rather, it is a hybridisation of aspects of both of these types of citizenship.

A tribute to my mother – Investigating invisibilities and ‘sandwiched’ mothers in austerity – Gateshead

Listening to the stories of ten mothers aged 45 – 65 living in Gateshead, I explore how austerity reinforces the gendered, demographic, and neoliberal pressures they face. Their stories of survival, resistance, acceptance, and love echo the experiences I have witnessed as a daughter living in the area throughout my life. ‘A Tribute to My Mother’ documents the stresses this cohort face by investigating the conscious, and unconscious, weaponisation of their care work by the austere state. Using the care ecology framework by Bowlby and Mckie (2018) I discover how a mother’s individual caring-scape can heighten and limit, but also fail to address, the embodied violence of austerity (O’Hara, 2014). Finally, I make a case for more personal and intimate research in which the participants’ connection to the researcher is one of value and necessity in uncovering highly personal data. Only then can we make visible how national and international change affects people and societies at their roots. Through this process, previous invalidities become valid considerations for investigating ‘sandwiched’ mothers and the pressures they endure.

“Heavens below”: Excavating Roland Paoletti’s underground spectacle of (post?)modernity on London’s Jubilee Line Extension

This dissertation seeks to evaluate how spectacular underground urban spaces can be produced, through a detailed examination of the “heavens below” of the Jubilee Line Extension project [‘JLE’]. Drawing from the increasing interest amongst geographers in volumetric urbanism and subterranean geopolitics, as well as established urban theory on architecture and postmodernity, this research investigates the role of volumetric underground excavation in the ability for architects to deliver ‘bold and beautiful’ public designs. Through 15 in-depth elite interviews with JLE project members, as well as extensive written and photographic field notes from the stations today, an evaluation is undertaken as to how such spectacular urban spaces successfully arose.

Firstly, it will analyse how disruptive Thatcherite reforms to London Regional Transport led to the geopolitical employment of a new urban expertise from Hong Kong’s MTR authority – an engineering expertise bringing with it to London a distinct, volumetric culture of excavating urban space underground. Alongside this, it will then analyse the philosophy of flamboyant modernism underlying chief architect Roland Paoletti’s radical vision for the 11 stations, evaluating the extent to which this aligns with Levenson’s (2002: 233) contention that millennium architecture in London 2000 represents “complicated tones of modernism-within-postmodernity”. Finally, it brings these cultures of engineering and architecture together to assess the extent to which volumetric urbanism facilitated or not Roland Paoletti’s vibrant architectural vision for underground urban fabric. Collectively, these demonstrate that delivering such ‘bold and beautiful’ modernist designs isn’t just influenced by political and cultural moments in civic history, but also by a discrete subterranean geography of the city.

Measuring retreat of the Penny Ice Cap, Southern Baffin Island, since the Little Ice Age

This project uses the new Arctic DEM dataset of 2 m resolution Digital Elevation Model (DEM) imagery to identify 98 Little Ice Age (LIA) moraines around the Penny Ice Cap (6300 km2), Southern Baffin Island. Using Landsat imagery, outlines of the ice cap are created for different years (1985, 1997, 2006 & 2019) by automatic delineation of ice, from which the retreat distance can be measured. When combined, the two provide an estimate of the spatial and temporal variation in rates of retreat around the Penny Ice Cap over the last 140 years. Averaged across the icecap as a whole, the rate of retreat was calculated as 6.4 m yr−1 for LIA-1985, 8.3 m yr−1 for 1985-1997, 15.0 m yr−1, for 1997-2006, and 14.3 m yr−1 for 2006-2019. Further analysis of the spatial variation shows rate of retreat to be highest for glaciers in the south and lowest for glaciers in the west. Much of this variation likely relates to the behaviour and characteristics of valley glaciers compared to ice cap outlet glaciers and their spatial distribution around Penny Ice Cap. The results also show rate of retreat to be highest for larger valley glaciers measured by area, size of drainage basin, and length.

Social Contact & the Social Contract : Understanding the Reality of Refugee Integration Policy & Practice in Stockholm, Sweden

In the advent of the 2015 so-called ‘migrant crisis’ geopolitical tensions have captured the imaginations of citizens, political institutions and the media alike, altering the political landscape of Europe. Long heralded as an ‘inclusive and welcoming country’, in 2016 Sweden took in more refugees per capita than any other European country. This dissertation assesses the reality for refugees following arrival in Stockholm, highlighting the barriers that pose a challenge to effective and long-term integration. Through an ethnographic study comprising of interviews, participant observation and ethnographic walks, this paper emphasises the unintended consequences of state policy and societal norms on refugee integration.

Drawing on observations of civil society projects a discussion of their crucial role in mitigating integration barriers demonstrates NGOs unique and beneficial positionality, particularly in relation to the perception of integration as a ‘two-way process’. The research highlights grassroots initiatives as crucial, encouraging meaningful social interaction which teaches the unsaid ‘social contract’. This knowledge works to empower refugees, providing the resources and networks needed to access their rights and enact their right to the city. The importance of utilising this status to build trust and meaningful social connection between refugees and the host society is emphasised. Advocating a more holistic approach to refugee integration policy and practice this dissertation demonstrates that the multi-faceted and complex nature of integration demands a more cohesive and collaborative dialogue between state and civil society to enable integration policies of effect, reach and longevity.

If it bleeds, it leads: the changing nature of Red Nose Day appeal videos from 1985 to 2019

Debates about visual representations of international development have received much scholarly interest. Controversy over the use of images of suffering is a long-standing and emotional dispute that calls into question the commercialisation of pain and the pornography of poverty. This dissertation builds on the well-established literature, by turning academic attention to Red Nose Day appeal videos for the first time. The changes in the videos from 1985 to 2019, with regards to the uses of celebrity advocates, representations of children and presentation of development solutions are investigated through a content and discourse analysis. This dissertation comes at a watershed moment for Comic Relief and for Red Nose Day appeal videos. Recent debate and discussion about representations of development is contextualised and explored through a Twitter analysis of the #StaceyDooley row. There have been significant shifts in the Red Nose Day appeal videos since 1985 and an acceleration of such changes in recent years. With a transition from sad to glad appeals, a celebrity step-back and an acknowledgement of complexity, Comic Relief enters a new representational regime. This has considerable implications for wider and related discussions, including compassion fatigue and the white saviour complex.

How green is the Green Line? An investigation into air pollution in the London Underground

This investigation aims to study the air quality to which commuters are exposed when using the London Underground system. Pollutants PM2.5 and nitrogen dioxide (NO2) are used as key indicators of air quality, with the former chosen due to its size fraction relevance to deep lung penetration and respiratory disease (Xing et al., 2016), and the latter for its prevalence in pollution discourse. The study characterises both spatial and temporal aspects of personal air quality exposure along the route of the morning commute and throughout the working week. Two key influences are considered: the ‘carriage effect’ and the ‘commuter effect’. The carriage effect produces an internal micro environment within the carriage, creating a sealed environment which can either act to increase or reduce air quality compared to that outside of the train. Commuter behaviour results in the speculated ‘commuter effect’ with individual passengers acting as both sources and redistributors of PM2.5.

Creating an atmosphere in space: architecture and sound in the production of affective atmospheres

People colloquially speak of a building, stadium or lecture theatre as having an atmosphere; public space is no different. Urban literature has thus far failed to look beyond the positivist sensibilities of public space, overlooking its affective qualities; meanwhile, atmospheres are yet to be extensively analysed from a constitutive perspective, choosing to focus instead on their political implications. By focusing on Millennium Park, Chicago, this dissertation considers the ways in which a shifting flow of atmosphere is generated by architectural design, spatial arrangements, acoustic attunements, and bodily interactions. This dissertation therefore explores the emergence and staging of affective atmospheres in Millennium Park, bringing architectural and acoustic literatures of atmosphere into dialogue to offer a contemporary reading of affect. Driven by Böhme (1993) and influenced by Anderson (2009), affective atmospheres are understood as the spatializations of affective qualities and explored via multimodal research methods. I utilise mobile methodologies and integrate audio-visual methods into the writing process to attempt to capture and translate the inherently fleeting, ephemeral nature of atmospheres. This dissertation finds that attempts to engineer affective atmospheres only succeed at ‘stabilising’ affect. While the Park’s design provides the spaces for specific atmospheres to emerge, such that it is filled with the potential to affect, unpredictable actions, sounds and interpretations mean that the Parkshapes, butdoes not determine the atmosphere. Of particular importance is the arrival of human bodies who are shown to charge and reorientate atmospheres in ways that eschew design intentions, reiterating its fragile and provisional nature. Secondly, atmospheres are found to be compositional, emerging at the intersection of multiple stimuli as a product of many sensations woven together and sensed holistically. Architecture and sound are shown to be important but partial generators of atmosphere. I therefore call on further research to adopt similarly multi-sensory analysis and emphasise the need for experimental methods.

Key Word(s): affective atmosphere; affect; architecture; sound; phenomenology.

An examination of the role of place in influencing terrorism fears – Manchester Victoria Station

This dissertation explores how terrorism fears are influenced by place, with the research focussing on Manchester Victoria Station. The station was host to a terror attack on New Year’s Eve 2018, whilst also being heavily impacted by the terror attack at the neighbouring Manchester Arena in May 2017. Thus, the station can provide an interesting locus in which to explore the relationships between place and terrorism fears. Using data from sixteen in-person interviews with station users, station shop owners and key stakeholders involved in the station’s security operations, I find that terrorism fears are strongly influenced by place features, situated experiences and identities at Manchester Victoria. I demonstrate that the visibility of securitised features and the publicness of the concourse are important in shaping fear, whilst the Arena attack memorial can conjure various geographical imaginations and forms of socialisation that affect fear. I also show that the relative visibility of terrorism and everyday crime in people’s experiences at Victoria can influence vulnerability perceptions, whilst situated identities can be significant for how the station users understand, respond to and resist fear-inspiring events. Overall, the findings illuminate the operation of a number of common yet competing imaginaries of the station that influence people’s terrorism fears. Thus, this dissertation provides an empirical focus for feminist geopolitics scholarship, responding to calls for research to explore how people experience place in the aftermath of terrorist incidents.

Breaking laws, breaking norms? – An investigation into post-feminist performances of female identity and empowerment in an age of rising knife crime.

Drawing on the experiences of 12 young women, and insights from 6 adults in the youth services profession, this dissertation seeks to explore whether conventional gender identity norms are being overturned by women’s increasing involvement in knife crime. It deploys a Foucauldian-feminist theoretic of power to consider female criminality as both a submission to and subversion of male control over the body in public space. Acknowledging the female body as a site of contested gender realms, this dissertation starts by analysing the rise in women’s knife crime as a form of feminist resistance against idealised versions of femininity and male power. Looking beyond existing literature on feminist materiality, it draws attention to the knife as a new feminist artefact and the agency it has in advancing the contemporary feminist agenda. Alongside a rising feminist agenda, it traces the scalar nature of institutionalised patriarchy to demonstrate the persistence of disciplinary techniques dictating appropriate gender performances in what has been termed the ‘Victorian Present”. While knife crime offers opportunities for resistance, it becomes evident that long-established gender relations continue to structure the lives of the young women interviewed. Their identities are shaped in contradictory ways and this tension works to highlight the complex nature of contemporary gender politics. Whilst it is commonly accepted that we are living in an increasingly feminist era, literature is yet to study this through the contemporary rise in female knife offenders; through a unique approach to feminist geographical study,this dissertation seeks to add to activist scholarship, recognising the need within both academia and policy for deeper discussions about gender culture.

Content Notice: Physical violence, knife crime, gang violence and exploitation, explicit language.

Transformation or Embodied Violence? – The Impact of Contemporary Austerity on Worcestershire Library Service Employees

This project examines the impact of contemporary austerity on employees of Evesham, Redditch, and The Hive libraries in Worcestershire. Semi-structured interviews are used to investigate how austerity has affected Worcestershire Library Service employees’ roles and emotional experiences in their job, putting these voices in critical conversation with local, national and international logics of austerity. In contrast to neoliberal logics of austerity which describe library service changes as promoting necessary efficiency and positive ‘transformation’, frontline staff perspectives highlight: ever-increasing workloads and responsibilities; increasing numbers and needs of vulnerable service users; declining wages and workers’ rights; increasing feelings of discomfort, frustration, stress and distress; and melancholic and pessimistic affective atmospheres. This reinforces contemporary understandings of austerity as violent, and extends these theorisations to emphasise the important embodied, emotional aspects to this violence, and the nuanced role of public servants as perpetrators, protectors and victims in these violent conditions. An emphasis on Worcestershire highlights the important, often overlooked, impacts of austerity in rural areas, and areas where cuts have been less severe. It is argued that in order to tackle the continuous revival of austerity as a powerful economic idea, the quiet politics of WLS staff must be made loud and austerity must be reframed as a form of embodied violence.

Bodies, borders and bugs: a discourse analysis of the Zika virus in news media

No abstract available.

Investigating trends in thermokarst lake cover in the continuous permafrost zone: A new remote sensing approach.

Arctic environments are an urgent area of scientific research, due to their high sensitivity to rising global temperatures. Thermokarst lakes are a crucial element of Arctic environments, as they modify the stability of permafrost and release greenhouse gases. Shifts in thermokarst lake cover have been identified across many Arctic ecosystems, and are often attributed to climate change. However, future shifts in thermokarst lake cover are largely unpredictable, because observations to date have been based on infrequent sampling intervals. This is due to long standing methodological issues, including data availability and long processing times. By implementing a new methodological approach based in Google Earth Engine, this study investigated trends in thermokarst lake cover in two continuous permafrost regions at an annual resolution. At the Tuktoyaktuk Peninsula, lake area showed negligible change over the 2013-2019 period, whilst lake number decreased (-12%). At Central Yakutia, both lake area and number increased (+24% and +22%, respectively) over the 2013-2019 period. At the Tuktoyaktuk Peninsula, interannual variability in lake area was significantly related to interannual variability in snowfall (R-squared 0.73). This was attributed to the effect of precipitation on the water balance and surface ponding. At Central Yakutia, interannual variability in lake area was related to interannual variability in temperature (R-squared 0.31). Furthermore, it was suggested that lake area may not be exclusively controlled by the climate. This study was one of the first to investigate thermokarst lake area change at an annual resolution, and continued investigations under this new methodological approach could aid our ability to predict future changes in thermokarst lake cover. This could help us constrain the contribution of thermokarst lakes to the global greenhouse gas budget, and revise emissions targets to mitigate the effects of global warming.

An Historical Geography of Tap Dance: Tapping into American Culture, Identity and Race Relations This dissertation examines a widely unexplored field in geographical scholarship – tap dance in America. It analyses ‘an’ historical geography of tap dance, as there are many ways in which this narrative could be told and many voices which are often excluded and left unheard. From a cultural and historical perspective, this dissertation traces tap dance back to its colonial origins, through its evolution into popular culture in the 20th Century, and analyses tap’s unique position in contemporary society today. Tap dance offers a lens into America’s complex history of colonialism, race, class, and gender to name a few, as tap dancers and historians argue tap represents American identity, forming America’s ‘indigenous’ dance. This study examines an intriguing historical geography through three scales: the body, sites and spaces and racial performance/performing race. The body has become a well-established focus in cultural geography, tying bodily movement and dance into non-representational theory and the broader social, cultural and political contexts in which bodies move. Simultaneously, the bodies of tap dancers have been included and excluded from particular sites and spaces in which tap has been practised and performed. This illustrates a variety of place-based geographies across the American North and South, in America’s urban centres, and more recently, across the globe. Finally, tap’s history in America cannot be analysed without reference to race. I argue tap has been shaped by historical race relations, such as conforming to the ‘racial performance’ of stereotypes, e.g. blackface minstrelsy, whilst in other cases contesting race relations to create a more inclusive community, through ‘performing race’ in the everyday. This study concludes that tap dance is a unique bodily movement which has played an important role in America’s history, predominantly working as a force to bring people together from different countries, ethnicities, genders, classes and socio-economic backgrounds, rather than just as a product of these complex geographies.
“It still feels like a pit village” – Affective atmospheres of mnemonic duration and perturbation in the post-industrial landscape of Clipstone Village, Nottinghamshire

Post-industrial landscapes have a feel. A feel of the past. Clipstone Village, North Nottinghamshire, is no different. To analyse this feeling, this dissertation will construct a heuristic framework from a Bergsonian conceptualisation of the co-existence of past and present in duration, in dialogue with Deleuzian and Guattarian understandings of affect as hazy and atmospheric. I use the terms ‘affective mnemonic intensities’ to capture the affective register of duration, and ‘affective atmospheres of duration’ to capture their diffusity. I mobilise vital methodologies to embrace, rather than obfuscate, the inherently unpredictable, ‘not-quite-graspable’, ephemeral affective mnemonic intensities, attuning to their atmospheric perturbations. These methods offer a non-superficial glimpse into the nonrepresentational ‘background’ of lived experience. With such insight, I argue that an affective atmosphere of duration is operative in Clipstone. Following Schmitzian notions of dynamic gestalt (Gestaltverläufe), my interlocutions confirm that a Bergsonian habitual memory pours out spatially and circulates around the village. The feel of the past is one of contracted virtuality and refrained affect. However, this is in tension with the excessiveness of the virtual past, always cutting in. Such excessiveness creates affective mnemonic intensities that perturb affective habitual refrain in the form of either: i) traumatic ‘pure memory’ actualization of the 1984-84 miners’ strike or redundancy; or, ii) emancipatory ‘involuntary memory’ (mémoire involontaire). Affective mnemonic perturbations form ‘pockets’, dyadic ‘spheres’ or assemblages of enclosed atmospheric disruption which splinter and fragment collective flow. Affective atmospheres of duration are therefore operative at an osscilative threshold: between affective co-constitution and perturbation. Habitual contraction of the virtual flow is always unsettled by encounter. This is the organization of affective life and duration in the postindustrial landscape of Clipstone. This is how the past inheres, folds and gnaws into the present, affectively (dis)organizing/(un)structuring life as it flows. I conclude by reflecting on the ethical implications of these findings for future research.

Key word(s): affect, affective memory, affective atmospheres, post-industrial landscape

Anticipating ‘The Big One’: Everyday Perceptions and Understandings of Earthquake Risk in San Francisco

Situated alongside the infamous San Andreas fault network, the city of San Francisco is prone to experiencing earthquakes. Most frequently, these are of a low magnitude and hence result in minimal impacts. However, forecasting models suggest that there is a high chance that the city and the wider Bay area will experience a magnitude 6.7 or higher earthquake within the next thirty years, with some seismologists and the media also alluding to the possibility of a future earthquake of magnitude eight: ‘The Big One’. This dissertation will explore the extent to which earthquake risk has become an accepted and normalised part of everyday life for residents in the city and will examine whether the population of San Francisco are physically, structurally and socially prepared for a potential ‘Big One’.

The extent of individual earthquake risk preparedness has been shown to be closely tied to risk perceptions, which vary widely amongst residents. As such, this dissertation will explore three key factors which influence this spatial variability: earthquake experience, subconscious risk acceptance or denial, and cognitive understanding of seismic processes. Ultimately, not one single factor can be used to explain all of the observed variability, with risk perceptions being highly complex, and different factors affecting members of the population in varying ways. Effective communication is essential to guarantee risk awareness amongst the population and ensure preparedness actions are adopted.

Morals and Mignonette, or the use of flowers in the regulation of women, children and the working classes in late Victorian London This dissertation explores the deployment of flower missions, flower shows, and window gardening in late-Victorian efforts to elevate the moral and material condition of London’s working poor. Through an archival investigation, predominantly of pamphlet literature from the 1860s-90s, I extend Foucault’s anthropocentric conception of ‘biopolitics’ to encompass all life in the consideration of flowers as non-human agencies, constitutive of environments and their inhabitants through their human attachments. This dissertation identifies three themes key to the understanding of the use of flowers in this period: moral, pedagogic, and civic botany. The construction of a ‘moral botany’ in early-nineteenth-century literature popularised the notion that flowers could carry meaning beyond their ornamental value and thus become useful. This attribute was widely utilised by social reformers who employed flower shows as biopolitical instruments in order to discipline the desires, habits, and behaviours of the working poor and their children as ‘future citizens’. I argue that these projects were heavily gendered as a result of the traditionally ‘feminine’ associations of flowers, as well as the perceived position of women as ‘closer to nature’, with the effect of placing responsibility for the moral defence of the family upon the shoulders of the woman. Floral reform movements were also influenced by late-nineteenth-century fears of racial degeneration. As such, the promotion of floriculture amongst the working classes not only worked at the scale of the individual body, but also in the improvement of the condition of the population as a whole. It concludes that the mobilisation of flowers played a vital role in the moral regulation of women, children, and the working classes, necessitating the inclusion of plant life in conceptions of biopolitics.
Tephra retention and changing vegetation structure in Iceland

Recent studies of tephra layers (deposits of pyroclastic fragments produced during a volcano) suggest that the morphology of preserved layers can act as high resolution proxy records for ancient vegetation patterns. Tephra layers provide isochronous markers within time sequences and their form reflects the surface stability, height and spatial patterning of the vegetation on to which it fell. This dissertation will explore the relationship between tephra deposition and vegetation structure at the boundary between open grassland and closed woodland in Iceland. Tephra depth, vegetation characteristics and edge conditions will be investigated to model how changing vegetation structure predicts tephra depth.

Preface:
This project has shifted focus slightly from the original abstract. My original aims have not changed substantially, but during the fieldwork, it became apparent that I would be unable to investigate edge effects and transitions in vegetation type as intended because no suitable sites were located. This meant that my analysis became more comparative; investigating the relationships between and within sites of different vegetation structure rather than across vegetation transitions.

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Rachel Wibberly UG award

Geography's 'Best Undergraduate Dissertation' award winner reflects on her journey

Rachel wibberley.

Geography graduate

05 November 2020

Rachel Wibberley, 2020 BA Geography graduate, was awarded 'Best Undergraduate Dissertation' last academic year for her outstanding research on gender pay gap inequalities in London’s financial services sector. She's written a blog reflecting on her time at King's, why she chose her dissertation topic and what she is up to now.

I decided to study a BA in Geography at King’s in order to gain the analytical and technical skills needed to understand real-world development issues. I knew that I was keen to pursue an international policy route within my degree and the breadth of the course at King’s meant that I could use complex data sets to better understand the interactions between humans and their environments, whilst gaining practical experience in policy writing to facilitate positive change.

Alongside my degree, I took an interest in international gender and development issues and was even given the opportunity to represent young women in the UK at the UN Commission on the Status of Women and the UN Human Rights Council. My dissertation, or Independent Geographical Study (IGS) as it’s called in the Department, presented the perfect opportunity to develop this interest by exploring the knowledge gaps within current literature on gender inequalities and adding value where I felt it was needed the most. I decided to focus my IGS on an issue that will continue to impact every woman in the world until sufficient progress is made – the gender pay gap.

Stagnant gender gap progress suggested that monitoring had not gone far enough in generating substantive progress towards gender equality – a fundamental human right. My IGS attempted to draw upon qualitative evidence from female employees in London’s financial services sector, alongside corporate narratives to explore the impacts of surveillance on everyday attitudes and behaviours. The study revealed that the narrow parameters of traditional monitoring theory and practice are limiting the progression of gender equality and it supported policy recommendations to drive cultural change.

Despite the coronavirus circumstances during my final term, I really enjoyed writing my IGS. Settling on an idea was the hardest part. I think the key is to not get bogged down with finding a ground-breaking gap in the literature but to add your analysis to an area you are genuinely interested in. This way the process becomes much more enjoyable.

Rachel Wibberley Dissertation close

Rachel with her award-winning dissertation

I conducted the bulk of my literature review research between February 2019 and December 2019. I reached out to potential participants on LinkedIn and conducted my interviews in the first term of my final year. I used the Christmas period to write my literature review and then used the final term to conduct my analysis and write the remainder of my dissertation. I spent several weeks editing my IGS before the final deadline, creating countless drafts in order to get it within the 10,000-word limit and ensure it read well. I submitted it and I hoped for the best.

When I received my mark I cried happy tears! I refreshed the result several times just to be sure that it wasn’t a mistake in the online system. I then read the examiners feedback and was blown away by the positive comments. I felt relieved that the year of hard work that went into my IGS had completely paid off and ecstatic that I had created a valuable piece of research.

More recently, I found out that I won the award for the best overall undergraduate dissertation. Again, I was in complete disbelief. Throughout university I often doubted myself before essay submissions and I think that receiving this award has instilled confidence in my own ability to produce quality research. This confidence has helped me within my current role as a policy executive, where I am working in a policy institute to produce a report on international gendered health inequalities.

I owe a lot to my wonderful IGS supervisor, Professor Cathy McIlwaine, who provided invaluable advice, expertise and support throughout the writing of my IGS and has since encouraged me to apply for postgraduate study. I hope to study for a Masters in the next couple of years. Following that, I would love to work in international development within an international organisation.

Read Rachel's Dissertation

‘No reporting about us, without us’: Exploring the Impacts of UK Surveillance Practices on Gender Inequality in London’s Financial Services Sector.

  • Wibberley, Rachel 2020 (4.38 MB PDF)

In this story

Cathy McIlwaine

Cathy McIlwaine

Vice Dean (Research), Faculty of Social Sciences and Public Policy

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Dissertation Help UK : Online Dissertation Help

Best 53+ Geography Dissertation Topics in 2023

March 17, 2020

Dr Jana Martiskova

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Table of Contents

Geography Dissertation Topics:  Geography is one of the fascinating subjects. The students of geography learn about different parts of the earth is its surroundings and its environment. Be that as it may, with regard to writing a thesis, similar fascinating things transform into an overwhelming circumstance.

The way toward choosing the correct topics for geography is rushed for individuals who have less comprehension of their undertaking and its title. Along these lines, our specialists who are aware of all the know-how of the specific subject have chosen appropriate geography dissertation topics as indicated by your particular demands.

Related Posts

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Best Geography Dissertation Topics To Get Your Rusty Creative Cells Back Working

If you want geography dissertation topics to be the best turnout topic for your dissertation that is just out of this world then you are in luck. You have entered the one-stop article base that is going to give you great examples of geography dissertation ideas.

These topics have been compiled by a geography professor so now you can get a slight understanding as to what kind of  Topics your geography dissertation topics advisor would favor!

These topics have been specifically broken down into a list of a questionnaire to simplify your need for search in the required geography dissertation topic that you wish to write on.

  • How is deforestation affecting the stability of various mountains?
  • How is global warming affecting the lives of human beings living on the face of the plane?
  • What part does GIS or Geographical-Information-System, plays in evaluating a place’s coordinates?
  • Which is the most convenient way to steer a ship? The stars or the sextant?
  • How does coastal erosion take place?
  • Which type of coastline is more populated? The sandy coastlines or the open coastlines?
  • The effect of floods on people living near the banks of rivers?
  • How does flood affect the economy of a certain area?
  • The effect of landslides on people living in hills and the main reasons behind it?
  • Which part of the world sees the most landslides and why?
  • What causes earthquakes?
  • What factor causes the change in the climate of an area?
  • How do ocean currents influence the weather of an area?
  • How is sextant related to the ship’s position?
  • On what principle does relativism work?
  • What is urban landscaping and how does it work?
  • What steps can create a sustainable environment?
  • How is urban geography changing through the decades?
  • How does a lake affect the temperature of the neighboring areas?
  • What is the ecological value of a forest to the government of that country?
  • What are the alternative ways to stop global warming?
  • How can the conservation of natural resources help in this problem?
  • Has the international community developed some good strategies on this issue for helping global warming?
  • What methods could help in stopping the deforestation problem in polluted countries?
  • Can non-natural resources help in supporting and conserving the natural resources of a country?
  • How can man-made technology help in stopping the increasing global warming?
  • Can the support from the developed countries help the developing countries to fight the problem of starvation?
  • How much can the dependency on non-natural resources reduce the pressure from natural resources in supporting global warming?
  • How can man-made resources help to bring balance in global warming with its cost-effective policies to relation with the natural resources of a country?
  • What are the effects of the support system of natural resources by means of non-natural or human-made substitutes to help build a strong defense against global warming in developing countries?
  • What measures should be adopted by the developed nations to reduce the overconsumption of power resources to reduce the pressure on global warming?
  • How has global warming affected the tendency of an increase in deforestation and desertification?

Above is the best list of geography dissertation titles if you need more help regarding your geography dissertation topics, fill out the form below and get a unique topic along with a topic brief on geography dissertation from experts.

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The study of the Earth and its features, inhabitants, and phenomena.

Dissertation ideas

I am in the second year of uni and now deciding what we want to do for our dissertation! (Scary stuff)

I've got a few ideas - but they mostly slide into psychology

This is because I now know I want to go into criminology in the future and learn about what makes a killer etc...

Anyway! Can you guys help me with ideas :)

As you can tell I am heavily influenced with what goes on in the brain! And I am also interested in sex and the taboo behind it

One idea I have is 'how we think of sex work'. Exploring how men are more likely to be open to the idea (why? Interview people etc). How your sexuality effects this. Age? If rural areas are less likely open as they are less likely to come across prostition etc.

Anyway2! Please comment as much as you can to help me!

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Geography Dissertation Ideas 2023 UK

good human geography dissertation ideas

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Essay & Research Topics for Geography Dissertation based on Physical Geography

You can take help in your Geography assignments by asking Students Assignment Help uk to Make My Dissertation. We have provided topics help to the students for free of cost with the help of our assignments helper.

Geography dissertation ideas:

Here is the list of free topics ideas help for a Physical geography-based dissertation.

  • What are geosynclinals’ force and explain the theories behind it?
  • Difference between Metamorphic, sedimentary rocks. How they are formed.
  • What is the cause of the earthquake, discuss the plate tectonic theory.
  • Different Mountain ranges in the world and their origin.
  • Which is the oldest Mountain range in World? Substantiate your answer.
  • The process of the formation of coral reefs and their use.
  • Different types of landforms according to the height of the place.
  • Major geographical barriers to culture development.
  • What is the principle of continental drift theory and why it is important nowadays?
  • What is there in the core of the earth and how deep it is?

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Social Geography Topics for Dissertation

Assignment help for writing a dissertation could be availed by Students Assignment Help uk through Cheap Assignment Help. We are giving free topics help in geography assignments as well. I f you are curious to choose your topic under the supervision of our experts, go through any following topic.

  • How people vary from region to region due to geographical variation.
  • Why the needs of every culture change with distance.
  • What types of physical variations could be seen in people based upon their region?
  • Effect of physical landforms on the life of people.
  • How variations in different regions help to maintain different species of animals, includes the concept of biodiversity.
  • Drawbacks of physical differences in different places.
  • Is it good to overcome the variations that belong to different regions due to their topography?
  • Type of diseases humans confronts on the basis of their geographical location.
  • Why do people living in the hills have a high count of red blood cells as compared to those living in plains
  • Differentiate physical and anatomical variations; also discuss the effect of the environment on changing them.

Research-based Geography Topic for Dissertation

Students Assignment Help uk to edit the geography assignments provide Dissertation Editors Help to the students. Here are some dissertation topics based on research in the field of Geography.

  • Which is the latest theory which is accepted by the scientist for the origin of earth?
  • How to know the type of rocks; discuss the process of rock formation.
  • How vegetation of different regions varies due to geographical differences.
  • The latest research in the field of Geography and its significance to humans.
  • What is the major international convention that deals with Geographical issues?
  • Why do we get dense vegetation as we move towards poles.
  • What are different time scales and what do they represent.
  • Best way to understand various natural casualties in advance to get alert.

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Dissertation topics on Economic Geography

Economic geography relates to the study of economic activities with respect to geographic terms. We have a wide range of dissertation topic lists in economic geography, some of which are displayed below. Have a look-

  • Challenges and impact of the recession in the UK with an economic perspective
  • With the help of systematic analysis, understanding the network of global production
  • The economic impact of migration from developed to developing nations.
  • The connection of economic geography with economic sciences
  • In shaping national economies, the role of industrial institutions
  • the role of economics sectors on national growth

Interesting Dissertation topics in Human Geography

Human geography is an academic topic that covers a wide range of titles that deal with how humans and geography get linked. Some of the amazing and trending dissertation topics in human geography are listed below-

  • How different nations deal with health epidemics
  • Measuring the standard of living in different countries
  • Compare urban and rural settlement patterns
  • An analysis of electoral voting patterns
  • Problems associated with high population densities

Historical Geography Dissertation topics

Historical geography studies history with a connection to its geographical terms. If you need assistance with the titles and dissertation topics relating to historical geography then look at below listed topics-

  • The development of Chicago as a city during the nineteenth century
  • Identification of a distinctive Geo-cultural identity with analysis of historical geography.
  • The changing nature of urban geography and governance
  • Study of urban geography with its main weaknesses and strengths

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  1. Geography Dissertation Topics

    Topic 3: Geography: Determining the Effects Caused by Natural Calamities on a Region. Topic 4: Evaluating the Ecological Value of the Forests. Topic 5: Comprehending the Security of Nutrition and Food in Geography. Topic 6: Geography Empathises with Environmental Protection. Topic 7: Importance of Water Conservation.

  2. 162 Geography Dissertation Ideas To Impress Your Teacher

    A good geography dissertation should have several clear sections as follows: Choosing a topic: Your dissertation should have a unique, engaging, and relevant topic. Therefore, finding a title for your geography thesis should be your first step in the dissertation writing process. ... Human Geography Dissertation Ideas. Human geography is vital ...

  3. 146 Exquisite Geography Research Topics To Write About

    Examining the role of geography in natural disaster management. Studying the cultural landscape of a specific region. Analyzing the geography of food production and distribution. Exploring the impact of transportation on urban development. Investigating the geography of renewable energy sources.

  4. PDF Your Human Geography Dissertation

    1 Your human geography dissertation: An introduction 1 Becoming a geographer 1 ... and ideas we subscribe to, will shape the ... All good dissertations have two connected components - a strong empirical focus (what you study) and a solid, appropriate philosophical grounding (how you study it). Appreciating how you think about the world will

  5. Top 50 Geography Research Topics [Revised]

    Human Geography Research Topics. Urbanization dynamics in developing countries. Social and economic impacts of gentrification in urban neighborhoods. Migration patterns and trends in Europe. Cultural landscapes and identity politics in contested territories. Gender disparities in access to resources and opportunities in rural areas.

  6. UG dissertation examples

    Human Geography dissertation examples. Mapping literary historic descriptions of Loch Lomond. Sense of place and changing use of public green spaces in Dundee. Social conflicts about ecological restoration of agricultural lands in Scotland. Land reform and sustainable development in the Western Isles of Scotland.

  7. Your Human Geography Dissertation

    Your Human Geography Dissertation breaks the task down into three helpful stages: Designing: Deciding on your approach, your topic and your research question, and ensuring your project is feasible. Doing: Situating your research and selecting the best methods for your dissertation project. Delivering: Dealing with data and writing up your findings.

  8. Your Human Geography Dissertation: Designing, Doing, Delivering

    Your Human Geography Dissertation breaks the task down into three helpful stages: Designing: Deciding on your approach, your topic and your research question, and ensuring your project is feasible. Doing: Situating your research and selecting the best methods for your dissertation project. Delivering: Dealing with data and writing up your findings.

  9. Good Human Geography Dissertation Ideas

    This document discusses dissertation writing assistance for human geography students and provides potential dissertation topic ideas. It summarizes that writing a dissertation can be an overwhelming process, but help is available from services like HelpWriting.net, which has experienced writers knowledgeable in fields like human geography. It then lists 10 potential dissertation topic ideas in ...

  10. 10 Topics For Writing A Dissertation In Human Geography

    Write about the micro-regional geography of a particular island. Write about the pollen evidence that exists for a particular climate change in your area. Discuss the culture and the habitat of a mountain range or the role that wood plays in the economy of a local wood-based state. Discuss the oyster industry of a coastal region.

  11. Writing a Human Geography Dissertation

    It's now time for the hard bit; the write up. Whilst 10,000 words seems like a mountain to climb right now, I've had useful advice from tutors and previous students on how to break it down into manageable sections. One tutor recommended "How to do your dissertation in geography and related disciplines" (Parsons and Knight, 2nd ed.)

  12. 27 Innovative Human Geography Dissertation Ideas

    Compare their economies, developmental system and ecosystems. Write a review on urban Geography citing strengths and weaknesses. Study various parts of cities and spatial reconstitution in terms of post industrial era. Write a dissertation on ecological hazards as a result of coastal erosion. Discuss the preventive measures to be opted.

  13. Urban Geography Dissertation Topics & Titles

    Urban Geography Dissertation Topics & Titles. Published by Owen Ingram at January 6th, 2023 , Revised On March 22, 2023. Urban geography is a growing field of study that provides learners with a comprehensive understanding of how cities, towns and other human settlements develop and change over time. As such, it can be an incredibly rewarding ...

  14. Geography Dissertation Topics

    Example urban geography dissertation topic 3: The changing nature of urban geography and governance - a study of Rio de Janeiro. According to Dear and Dahmann (2008), urban politics are being reshaped by the geographies of postmodern urbanism. Using Rio de Janeiro as a case study this thesis seeks to test the reliability of this hypothesis.

  15. Geography Dissertation Topics (26 Examples) For Research

    List of geography dissertation topics. Identifying the factors that cause changes in the climate of an area. Examining the concept of coastal erosion and how it takes place. Studying the effects of natural calamities on the people living in nearby areas. To investigate how natural disasters and calamities affect the economy of the countries.

  16. Department of Geography, Cambridge » Electronic dissertations

    A selection of dissertations from recent undergraduate students, and MPhil Conservation Leadership placement reports*, are now available for reading access online. We regret to announce that paper copies of dissertations submitted prior to 2020 are not included in this service. Paper copies of dissertations between 2015-2019 can only be viewed ...

  17. Geography's 'Best Undergraduate Dissertation' award winner reflects on

    Rachel Wibberley, 2020 BA Geography graduate, was awarded 'Best Undergraduate Dissertation' last academic year for her outstanding research on gender pay gap inequalities in London's financial services sector. She's written a blog reflecting on her time at King's, why she chose her dissertation topic and what she is up to now.

  18. Best 53 Geography Dissertation Topics & Research Ideas

    Doctoral. £60.95. You will get the topics first and then the mini proposal which includes: An explanation why we choose this topic. 2-3 research questions. Key literature resources identification. Suitable methodology including raw sample size and data collection method. View a Sample of Service.

  19. Dissertation Ideas Human Geography

    Dissertation Ideas Human Geography - Free download as PDF File (.pdf), Text File (.txt) or read online for free. Scribd is the world's largest social reading and publishing site.

  20. Human geography dissertation ideas, help!

    Human geography dissertation ideas, help! A. Harriet_K. I am trying to brainstorm and find a good, feasible and original dissertation topic but am finding it difficult with no-one really to discuss it with. My main area of interest is place identity in a specific region of bristol and i was thinking about potentially going down the route of ...

  21. Human Geography Dissertation Idea

    Human Geography Dissertation Idea. gfclappah. Hi all, I am currently in my 2nd year and need to come up with a dissertation proposal. At present i have in mind studying the north south divide and looking into whether the gap is closing or widening. For this research i plan to look at secondary data via gov stats. Ask the public of there opinion.

  22. Dissertation ideas : r/geography

    The much bigger problem I see is actually the connection to geography. I admit that I am not an expert in human geography, but the only vaguely geographic question OP provided is the "rural areas" parts. The rest, except maybe the demography-related stuff, is not a good topic for human geography, at least not for a bachelor's thesis.

  23. Geography Dissertation Ideas 2023 for UK College Students

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