Geography
Why study Geography at Emmanuel?
Emmanuel is one of the largest colleges in terms of the numbers of Geography undergraduates, and the college is enthusiastically supportive. Directors of Studies duties are shared between Philip Howell and Alex Jeffrey, university professors who teach in the Department across all three years. Their specialisms lie mainly in human geography, but supervisions are always shared in the Department of Geography, and physical geographers are provided for by reciprocal arrangements.
Emmanuel is centrally located and conveniently situated for geographers. It is very close to the busy Geography Department in Downing Place and also to the Scott Polar Research Institute on Lensfield Road. With a typical cohort of 6-8 undergraduates every year, we have a large Geography community, including many postgraduates and postdocs, and others with a Geography background.
We are very keen to foster a sense of community amongst the Geographers, starting with induction events for ‘freshers’ early in the first term, but continuing through the three undergraduate years. We aim to make College a fun and productive environment for Geographers new and old. We know that social events are an opportunity for undergraduates to get to know each other and to help each other out: Emmanuel and Geography undergraduates are friendly, collaborative, and supportive.
The college also provides regular funding to assist geographers, especially with their dissertation research. In recent years Emmanuel students have carried out projects on the politics of immigration in Ireland, raptor conservation in the country of Georgia, the significance young adult apocalypse fictions for Anthropocene anxieties, remote sensing of forest vegetation in Sweden, sport and development in South Africa, herbal medicine ecotourism in Vietnam, sea-level policy in the Netherlands, predator reintroduction in the Scottish Highlands, the organic food movement in San Francisco Bay … and very many more topics in the UK and much further afield, including the law of outer space!
How will my day be organised?
As a geographer no two days are quite the same. Your tuition will be divided between lectures in the Geography Department, practicals in a computer suite, laboratory work in the teaching labs, and supervisions which could take place in Emmanuel or other colleges, or anywhere across the University of Cambridge. The lectures explore key ideas and scholarship in a given field, while the supervisions give you the chance to discuss your thoughts with academics and peers. In the practicals you will be working through things like coding problems and GIS questions, and in lab classes your will be sorting and analysing samples. Alongside these day-to-day activities you will also be taking part in fieldwork, in the first year in a trip to the Brecklands of eastern England, in the second year on one of the compulsory residential trips (recent destinations include Norway, Gibraltar, Dublin, and Morocco), or in the third year with day trips connected to your course choices. Over the course of the second and third year you will also be working on your dissertation, a 10,000 word project you will design and complete with the assistance of an academic supervisor.
What might a typical day be like studying Geography at Emmanuel College?
A typical day may involve getting to a lecture in the Department in the morning, which is a short commute of five minutes, working in the well-stocked and relaxed Geography library until lunch, hopping back across St Andrews’s Street for lunch in Emmanuel, then perhaps a supervision in the afternoon. After this you could choose to work in Emmanuel Library or Fiona’s café, or perhaps there is a seminar you would want to catch in either the Scott Polar Research Centre, in the Geography Department, where the Cambridge University Geography Society invites distinguished speakers, or perhaps across town in the Centre for Research in Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities (CRASSH).
What qualities do successful Geography students have?
As a prospective geographer we take it as read that you have a curiosity for the complex, interlaced systems and networks we understand as the world around us. You will be keen to develop interest at the intersection of the natural sciences (physical processes and environmental systems) and the social sciences (the social, cultural and political systems that shape the world), as so many questions involve the different aspects of the discipline. We do not expect you to know everything, or to treat every subject with equal interest, and we welcome hearing from you about specific topics that speak to you and that you have followed up independently. At interview, you will be asked about readings, data, maps and charts that explore some of these themes, and we want to hear how you think and share your passion for the subject.
Where could a Geography degree lead?
Geographers go on to have exciting and varied careers, and at Emmanuel we seek to help them every step of the way. Geographers tend to be extremely employable graduates – largely a reflection of the breadth of the course and the wide variety of skills that are developed through the study of the degree. From Emmanuel we have had students in recent years go on to work in the civil service, business management, finance, environmental NGOs, law, teaching, and the media, besides further degrees and academic careers. Further information on Cambridge Geography careers can be found here:
Professor Philip Howell
BA, PhD (Cantab.)