Undergraduate Highlights

Our students thrive in a supportive and open learning environment. We are keen to both celebrate their successes and to find ways to pay it forward. We hold an annual photographic competition open to all undergraduate students (paused during the pandemic) and recognise throughout the year those who have made special contributions to the university community and beyond. We also support students seeking scholarships and nominate students for recognition within and beyond the university.

Recent Publications

Tess Howard (2023) "Practical professional, or patriarchal? An investigation into the socio-cultural impacts of gendered school sports uniform and the role uniform plays in shapring femail experiences of school sport." Sport, Education and Society.
- Featured in The Guardian here.
Iona Nixon and Jeremy Schmidt (2023) "Multispecies thought from the shadows: the associated worlds of dog-walking." cultural geographies.
Evie Wilkinson (2022) "Living in harmony with nature: environmental politics, the rights of nature, and avoiding Hothouse Earth." Routes 3(2): 75-84.
Amy Campbell (2021) "llliberal Democracy: the Case of Democratic Erosion." Columbia Undergraduate Research Journal, 5(1).
Tiegan Hannah Ansell (2021) "To what extent can humans be blamed for the end-of-Pleistocene mass extinction of the megafauna?" Routes 2(1): 10-14.
Lily Duffy (2020) "Where are the silt layers in the Albufeira Lagoon (Portugal) sourced from?" Routes 1(1): 109-119.
Charlie Drew (2019) "From maggots to millions: biomimicking the fly to feed humanity from its waste in the 21st century." Journal of Undergradtuate Ethnography 9(2): 3-18.

Dissertation Prize Winners

Each year the top undergraduate dissertations from across the department are nominated for a variety of prizes in human and physical geography. These prizes are adjudicated by working groups of the Royal Geographical Society and other learned societies. We are delighted to announce that those below have received recognition as truly exemplary undergraduate scholarship!

2024 Dissertations

Nominated Prize	Student	Dissertation Title	Result
Quantitative Methods Research Group	Sophie Pretorius	A legacy of Apartheid?’: A GIS - based multi-criteria decision analysis (MCDA) into relative social vulnerability within Cape Town, South Africa'.	Winner!
Space, Sexualities and Queer Working Group	Sophie Reuben	'Boundaries, intimacy and postfeminism: A feminist geographic exploration into OnlyFans'	Winner!
Gender and Feminist Research Group	Lily Weston	“It's a regular thing and it's always going to happen to you": An exploration of sexual harassment and assault on the London Underground through the lens of Rob Nixon's (2011) 'slow violence’.	Winner!
Gender and Feminist Research Group	Emily Horrell	The Geographies of Gestation: A Feminist Investigation into the Potential Impacts of Ectogenesis on Women".	runner up
Latin American Geographies Research Group	Christopher Weber	The Indigenous Other: Critically examining the construction of Bolivian indigeneity within contemporary climate change governance discourse’	Winner!
Carceral Geography Working Group	Kate Callow	Navigating the Hostile Environment: Exploring the Impact of Rising State hostility on Asylum seekers in UK 'Quasi Detention' Accommodation'.	Winner!

2023 Dissertations

Nominated Prize	Student	Dissertation Title	Result
Energy Geographies Research Group	Emilia O'Keefe	The diffusion of clean energy technology: an assessment of domestic solar panel and electric vehicle distribution in England and the factors influencing their adoption.	Winner!

2022 Dissertations

Nominated Prize	Student	Dissertation Title	Result
Geographies of Health and Wellbeing Research Group	Helena Lewis	The global intimate: an exploration into how a yogic breathwork practice is conducive to and resists a biopolitical rationality	Winner!
Energy Geographies Research Group	Saskia Huxham	Reaching carbon neutrality in electric and hydrogen-powered transport by 2045: A case study of resident perceptions and the technical feasibility of implementing a renewable power structure on the Isle of Skye, Scotland	Winner!
Carceral Geography Working Group	Flora Farthing	Re-entry as 'punishment's twin': an exploration of contemporary post-release carceral environment	Winner!
Political Geography Research Group	Thomas Bartlett	A 'post-colonial borderlands approach' to the Northern Province of colonial Sudan, 1897-1956	Highly Commended

2021 Dissertations

Nominated Prize	Student	Dissertation Title	Result
Developing Geographies Research Group	Francesca Rapinet	Damaging discourse or humanitarian heroes? A study of the representations of Third World Women's agency in the context of US involvement in Afghanistan between 2001-2008	2nd Place: Highly Commended
Gender and Feminist Geographies Research Group	Shoaib Ahmed	A feminist examination of women's embodied experiences of sexual desire in nightclub settings: scripts, affects, and forces	Highly Commended
Race, Culture, and Equality Working Group	Edward Gardiner	White landscapes, Black histories: addressing cultural heritage and exclusion in the Lake District	Runner up
Rural Geography Research Group	Anna Souter	Public transport, austerity, and community responses: a case study of Northamptonshire	Commended
British Hydrological Society	Emma Bramley	An investigation into the seasonal, spatial, and interannual controls on streamflow dissolved metal concentration in a continuous permafrost watershed in the Low Canadian Arctic between 2013 and 2017	Runner up
Energy Geographies Research Group	Pascal Tchen	Platformisation in the UK electricity system transition: tracing socio-technical change, digital platforms, and decarbonisation	Runner up

2020 Dissertations

Nominated Prize	Student	Dissertation Title	Result
Space, Sexualities and Queer Research Group	Katy Simms	No one wants to meet the love of their life on Tinder: Investigating the effects of mobile dating apps on love and intimacy and identity negotiations for bisexual individuals	Winner!
Race, Culture, and Equality Working Group	Emma Brown	Making Sense of the Stolen Generation: An exploration into the logic underpinning the removal of Aboriginal children	Joint runner-up
Rural Geography Research Group	Dylan Inglis	Do Basque Speakers Value Nature Differently? A Q value analysis of value systems relating to the forests of the Eastern Basque Country	Winner!
Quaternary Research Association Undergraduate Dissertation Award	Ellie Day	A Sedimentological Reconstruction of the Glacial History of Happisburgh, Norfolk, through Marine Isotope Stage 12	Winner!
British Hydrological Society	James Lockwood	Assessing the transfer of heavy metal contaminants from Yewthwaite lead mines into the Newlands Catchment Area	Winner!
Participatory Geographies Research Group	Harriet Jennings	What to wear? Exploring the sartorial practices of young Bengali women in an age of transnational fashion	Second place

2019 Dissertations

Nominated Prize	Student	Dissertation Title	Result
Geographies of Health and Wellbeing Research Group	Hannah Springford	The Potential of Periods: the role of education and social enterprise in African menstrual poverty alleviation	Runner-up
Social and Cultural Geography Research Group	William Silver	Gordon Matta-Clark’s slices through space: artwork towards a critical understanding of the spatial	Runner-up
Race, Culture, and Equality Working Group	Riyana Dyson	'One foot in each camp': Negotiating a mixed-race identity as a university student	Third Place
Geographies of Children, Youth and Families Research Group	Isabel Locke	The audibility of refugee children: how English language acquisition impacts refugee students	Second Place
Quaternary Research Association Undergraduate Dissertation Award	Madeleine Woods	An investigation into drumlin sedimentology and its implications for drumlin genesis and the glacial depositional history of Anglesey, northwest Wales	Winner!
Alfred Steers Dissertation Prize	Hannah Sellgren	Regimes of Care and Control: Enacting and Contesting Borders in the National Health Service	Honorable Mention

2018 Dissertations

Nominated Prize	Student	Dissertation Title	Result
Developing Areas Research Group	Charles White	Watershed Development and Transboundary Hydropolitics: A Case Study of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam	Runner-up
Participatory Geographies Research Group	Pearl Palfreyman	There are a lot of undertones to being in a wheelchair”: Analysing How Disability Drag Perpetuates Tropes of Disability Onscreen	Winner!
Race, Culture, and Equality Working Group	Nathan White	Black skin, white classrooms: an investigation into British secondary schooling’s effects on black students of Caribbean heritage’s racial identity construction	Joint runner-up
Geographies of Children, Youth and Families Research Group	Charlotte Johnson	Child-friendly Coffee Shops: a `Space of Wellbeing’ for Mothers with Young Children	Co-winner!