Society’s grants for students selected

^{2023 Geographical Club Award recipient Charlotte Curry taking topographic shielding measurements while sat on a moraine boulder in the Salto del Olivares, Chile. Image courtesy of Christiaan Diemont.} 

We are pleased to announce this year’s projects selected for funding through our grants for undergraduate, master’s degree and PhD students, supporting geographical field research into topics across the discipline.

Postgraduate Research Awards

The Postgraduate Research Awards are given to individual PhD students to help them establish themselves in their particular field. These grants support projects on topics across the full breadth of geography.

As part of this scheme, the Geographical Club Award has been awarded to Bruno Friedel (University of Oxford) for research investigating the experience of different urban co-housing groups in the UK and Australia in their attempts to access land, and to Charlotte Curry (University of Sheffield) for work to understand the consequences of climatic warming and commercial mining on Chilean glaciers.

See the full list of recipients of this year’s grants, including the postgraduate Albert Reckitt Award and Dudley Stamp Memorial Award.

Frederick Soddy Postgraduate Award

The Frederick Soddy Postgraduate Award supports PhD students carrying out research into the social, economic and cultural life of a region, anywhere in the world. This year, the award will support three students: Bharath Ananthanarayana (University of Exeter), Sarah Oakes (University of Leeds) and Medha Mukherjee (University of Oxford) undertaking work on the topics of ginger cultivation; bioheritage and indigenous knowledge; and equitable access to drinking water services, respectively. Read more about their projects.

Henrietta Hutton and Monica Cole Research Grants

This year’s recipients of the Henrietta Hutton Research Grant are Michelle Taylor (University of Aberdeen) for research investigating the diversity and function of Caribbean coral rubble beds, and Innes Manders (University of St Andrews) for work mapping mountain woodlands in Norway, with applications for reforesting in the Western Highlands of Scotland. This year’s recipient of the Monica Cole Research Grant is Gwyneth Rivers (Sheffield Hallam University) for research reconstructing the deglaciation of the Fennoscandian Ice Sheet.

Geographical Fieldwork Grants

This year, Geographical Fieldwork Grants for teams of undergraduate and master’s degree students undertaking geographical fieldwork have been awarded to:

• Jessica Chavez, Coral Humbar, Hannah Cioci and Sophie Bruder (Oxford Brookes University) for the project Ecosystem services and biodiversity within community-based forests in Bali

• Oscar Turner, James Chapman and Agnes Liddell (University of Oxford) for the project Amu Darya: an oral history of the Aral Sea crisis

• Matthew Nicholson, Laura Brierley, Maisie McCormack, Shaun Farrell and Dominic Rees (Newcastle University) for the project The anthropogenic and climatic impacts in Longyearbyen and Longyearbreen

• Raphaela Betz, Patrick Robichaud, Victoria Taylor, William Wallock and Sofi Waterer (University of Oxford) for the project Sustainable water management in West Bengal, India

• Sneha Maria Varghese, Simran Pal Kaur and Hamza Abdullah (London School of Economics) for the project Social justice is climate justice: theorising from Delhi

• Niamh Hope, Lucy Whittles, Kathryn Davies, James Downing, Harley Geraghty and Harris Green (Newcastle University) for the project Gepatschferner glacier and River Fagge expedition

The Geographical Fieldwork Grants are generously supported by a number of donors including The Jeremy Willson Charitable Trust, Neil Thomas Proto, the Peter Smith Award, Frederick Soddy Trust, HR Mill Trust Fund, Gumby Award and Edinburgh Trust.

Fieldwork Apprenticeships

These awards give students who would otherwise not have the opportunity experience of working on a research project led by an academic member of staff at their university. The awards are supported through a generous donation from John and Anne Alexander and the Hepworth family.

This year’s recipients are Tom Burton (University of Reading), who is joining a team researching microclimates of agricultural terraces in Peru, Iona Reay (Royal Holloway, University of London) who will be exploring ancient human environmental interaction in the Apennine region of Italy, and Elisenda Henderson and Jamie Todd (University of Oxford) who will be joining the DRY-CAB project investigating the role of the Congo Air Boundary.

The next deadlines for the Society’s grants for students begin in November 2023 for projects to take place in 2024 and early 2025.

Find out more