DGRG Dissertation Prize winner Shefali Sharma-Patel courtesy of Shefali Sharma-Patel
Every year, undergraduate and postgraduate dissertation prizes are awarded by many of the Society’s 31 Research Groups to recognise outstanding research from students working across a variety of fields within geography.
Could your work be awarded a dissertation prize in future years? If you will soon be embarking on your own undergraduate or postgraduate dissertation project, take a look at the work of this year’s winners to gain valuable inspiration and insight into what makes a winning project, as well as an outline of emerging areas of research across the discipline.
Digital Geographies Research Group (DGRG) Undergraduate Dissertation Prize winner: Shefali Sharma-Patel (University of Edinburgh) for her dissertation entitled ‘Resisting the Indian Smart City in times of COVID-19: Evaluating two civic technological projects.’
What Shefali had to say about her work:
“As someone of Indian heritage, I have always been interested in issues that face India. The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted and deepened the deficiencies and inequalities in Indian urban spaces, as well as providing opportunity for the growth of schemes such as the Indian Smart Cities Mission.”
Read more about Shefali’s work.
The Political Geography Research Group (PolGRG) Undergraduate Dissertation Prize winner: Baichuan Liu (Oxford University) for their dissertation entitled ‘To Make Live Yet Let Die: Biopolitics on the Practices of Targeted Poverty Alleviation in China.’
What the judges had to say:
“Using effective interviews and field observation of poverty alleviation policies in two Chinese villages, Liu focuses on land transfer policies, ecological construction and labour resettlement to tease out three features that ‘manifest and reconceptualise’ the existing scholarship on biopolitics and biopower.”
Read more about Baichuan’s dissertation.
Quantitative Methods Research Group (QMRG) Undergraduate Dissertation Prize joint winner: Melissa McAlpine (University of Edinburgh) for her dissertation entitled ‘Detecting the Spatial and Temporal Patterns of Mangrove Damage and Recovery from Satellite Imagery Following Hurricane Irma in Cuba.’
What Melissa said about the inspiration behind her dissertation:
“During my geography degree at The University of Edinburgh I became interested in the impacts of the interactions between humans and the environment, mainly in the form of climate change. Climate change is predicted to greatly alter weather systems, including hurricanes which are predicted to become more severe. I also enjoyed learning GIS and coding techniques to analyse and model earth processes.”
Read more about Melissa’s and joint winner, Hollie Parry’s, work.
View the full list of previous Research Group dissertation prize winners and runners up, and find out more about the work of the Society’s Research Groups, including awards and prizes.
The 2023 prizes will be open for entries from spring next year. Keep an eye on our Research Group dissertation prizes page for further details.