Postgraduate

• General information
• Research strengths
• Research quality indicators
• Postgraduate resources
• Scholarships/studentships
• Career opportunities
• Further information

General information

The Department of Geography is one of the world’s leading centres for geographical scholarship and postgraduate study.

Top

Research strengths

Geography has been taught at Queen Mary since 1894, making us one of the oldest Geographydepartments in the UK. The Department is home to some 250 undergraduates, 60 graduate students, and 40 research staff and faculty. Research is organised around five main themes reaching across the breadth of the discipline. In human geography,graduate students and staff work within threeresearch themes: Culture, Space and Power; Economy, Development and Social Justice; andHealth, Place and Society. In physical geography, research coalesces around two themes: Environmental Change, and Hydrological, Hydrochemical and Fluvial Processes. These themes are by no means mutually exclusive, and we are equally supportive of research that reaches acros them. Further support for cross-disciplinary andmulti-disciplinary research is provided through the Department’s research centres. The Centre for Micromorphology, a joint initiative with Royal Holloway, University of London, provides world-class facilities for the examination of sub-glacial environments using thin section micromorphology. The Centre for Aquatic and Terrestrial Environments involves interdisciplinary collaboration between hydrological and fluvial research in the Department and the School of Biological and Chemical Sciences at Queen Mary. The City Centre: Researching City Lives and Connections builds on urban research across the human geography themes, and develops links to other research at Queen Mary and outside the academy.

Top

Research quality indicators

The Research Assessment Exercise

In the most recent Research Assessment Exercise (2008) the Department was ranked joint first (with Oxford, Cambridge, Bristol and Durham) amongst the UK’s 49 Geography departments, with 75 per cent of research activities rated world leading or internationally excellent. Assessors singled out the ‘conceptual sophistication, methodological rigour and sustained empirical enquiry’ that is a hallmark of research in the Department and were especially impressed by the strength of research across all five of our research themes. Assessors also praised the Department’s ‘vibrant research culture’, and the ‘excellent integration of established staff, postdoctoral researchers and research students’. This success is underpinned by a clear and effective research structure, and a strong record in attracting high quality staff and students, as well as research income. Between the previous (2001) and most recent Research Assessment Exercises, the Department has gained nearly eight academic staff, doubled the size of its Graduate School, and increased its research grant income nearly threefold (to over £4.4 million).

Projects, funding, research grants and awards

Over the last few years the Department has seen a significant increase in its research grant income, with an unusually high proportion of this income coming from the prestigious British Research Councils. Recent highlights include:

• AHRC (£61,036) Dr Alastair Owens – ‘Living in Victorian London’
• ESRC (£240,670) Professor Jane Wills – ‘Global cities at work’
• Leverhulme Trust (£143,608) Professor Alison Blunt – ‘Diasporic cities’
• NERC (£650,000) Dr Kate Heppell - ‘Implications of groundwater-surface water connectivity for nitrogen transformations in the hyporheic zone’.
• NERC (£283,203) Dr Lisa Belyea – ‘Geochemical control of organic mater turnover in peatlands’
• NIHR Fellowship (£225,000) Dr Steven Cummins – The social and physical environment, diet and physical activity

The high esteem in which members of the Department are held within the discipline is reflected in the number of staff who edit (Transactions of the IBG, Progress in Human Geography, Geography Compass, Cretaceous Research) or who are on the editorial boards of Geography’s most prestigious academic journals (Boreas, Journal of Quaternary Science, Cultural Geographies, London Journal, European Journal of Urban and Regional Studies, Society and Space, Antipode).

The Department also prides itself on taking its research beyond academia, working with a wide range of international, governmental and non governmental agencies to shape policies and politics beyond the academy, for example: the US Cancer Institute, Department of Health, National History Museum, The World Bank, and Canadian Government’s Homelessness Directorate. In 2008 the Department was honoured with the award of ‘Best Academic Centre’ by London Citizens (a grassroots charity consisting of over 100 civil society organisations working for social, economic and environmental justice in London) in recognition of the calibre of its ‘research and analysis of thechanges that have taken place to work,community and family life’ and for joining ‘hands with [your] neighbours [to] change and challenge the market forces that can destroy the bonds that keep civil society together’.

Top

Postgraduate resources

Research students are an integral part of the Department and we offer a thriving and supportive research milieu for our research students. This includes a weekly seminar series and regular reading groups in which staff and students explore the most recent developments in the discipline. In addition MA/MSc and PhD students in human geography attend our bi-termly Research Frameworks meetings - a discussion group convened around the work of distinguished visitors. MSc and PhD students in physical geography can take advantage of the Department’s Physical Geography Discussion Group, providing regular meetings where staff, postdoctoral research assistants and postgraduate students present and discuss new ideas and preliminary research findings in a friendly and informal atmosphere.

Our graduate students enjoy desk and computing space in dedicated graduate offices with networked computer facilities, and access to the departmental research facilities including specialist computers and computing software for statistical data analyses, geographical information systems, desktop publishing and the processing of video and electronic images. Those undertaking research in physical geography and environmental science have access to some of the best laboratory facilities of any geography department in the UK, both in the Department itself and through access to the School of Biological and Chemical Sciences, and facilities in the Centre for Micromorphology and Centre for Aquatic and Terrestrial Environments at Queen Mary.

As a graduate student in Geography, you will also be part of Queen Mary’s Humanities and Social Sciences Graduate School, providing access to the Lock-keepers Cottage Graduate Centre and the further support and training offered by the Graduate School.

Top

Scholarships/studentships

In 2009 we awarded two College Masters Bursaries and two College Research Studentships. Bursaries pay domestic fees and are available to applicants to any of our Masters programmes. To be eligible for a bursary you must first have been accepted on to a MA/MSc programme. We also awarded two College Research Studentships. These pay both domestic or  overseas fees, and a maintenance allowance set to match the British Research Councils’ maintenance grant, for a period of three years. If awarded a College Studentship you will be required to undertake teacher training in year one of your studies, and a few hours of teaching each week in years two and three. Studentships are open to all applicants to our PhD programmes in human and physical geography. For human geographers, the Department’s Geography, Cities and Cultures, and Globalisation and Development Masters programmes, and human geography PhD programme, all hold ESRC recognition. The Department also has a strong record of securing ESRC and AHRC collaborative studentships and has access to AHRC studentships (for both Masters and PhD students) through the College’s Block Grant. For physical geographers, the Department holds fully funded National Environment Research Council (NERC) Algorithm Studentships, and has a strong record in attracting NERC CASE Studentships.

The precise number of studentships available for Masters and PhD work in the Department, and the deadlines for applications, varies each year. An up-todate list of studentships, application procedures and deadlines, is available on our website [new window]:

For further information on graduate programmes, funding opportunities in the Department or to request a PhD or Masters brochure please contact:

Jennifer Murray
Postgraduate Administrator,
email: j.c.murray@qmul.ac.uk
Tel: +44 (0)20 7882 8165

Top

Career opportunities

The Department of Geography has established links with a variety of bodies and organisations within the working world including international trade unions (for example International Transport Workers’ Federation), community organisations (for example London Citizens), and regional and international governmental agencies (for example Organisation of Economic Cooperation and Development, Thames Gateway, the National Health Service). We have links with Medical and Biomedical Science departments at leading London Universities and ESRC-funded London Women and Planning Forum, AHRC-funded Border/lands website and exhibition. Our links with conservation and resource management organisations include Centre for Hydrology and Ecology, Dorset and Wallingford, Countryside Council for Wales, Environment Agency, HR Wallingford Ltd, and Natural England.

What our students go on to do

Taking advantage of these connections, ourpostgraduates have followed a range of careers in different sectors and a number of countries. Several former PhD students, from both our human geography and physical geography programmes, are following academic careers as lecturers or research fellows in the UK, Europe, the US, Mexico and New Zealand. Other former students have utilised their research skills outside academia in the UK, Europe
and Africa. Positions include freelance work and employment with; business corporations, the UN, the Royal Geographical Society, and Dutch Geological Society. Students from our Masters programmes have continued on to pursue PhD studies, while others have taken their skills to private and public sector employment Careers followed by recent graduate studentsinclude:

Academia

• Andy Cook – Research Fellow, Lancaster University
• Rob Higham – Research Councils UK Academic Fellow, Institute of Education University of London
• Jane Holgate – Researcher, Working Lives Research Institute, London Metropolitan University
• Aoibheann Kilfeather – Post-doctoral Research Assistant Durham University
• Pete Walton – Climate Impacts Programme, University of Oxford
• Ailsa Winton – Research Fellow, Department of Social Geography, Institute of Geography, The National University of Mexico (UNAM)

Government

• Andrew Lincoln – research/policy support in the Department for Education and Skills (DfES)
• Lanto Jones – analyst, Her Majesty’s Treasury

Non-Government Organisations

• Jeremy Anderson – Strategic Researcher, International Federation of Transport Workers
• Marcel Bakker – Geologist with NITG-TNO, Dutch Geological Survey
• Lydia Bruce-Burgess – Technical Specialist Development Control, Environment Agency
• Stewart Clarke – National Macrophyte Specialist, Natural England
• Martin Cooper – Freelance Researcher, New Economics Foundation
• Helen Dangerfield – Geomorphologist, Royal Haskoning
• Carolyn Gaskell –Research Director, Kids Company
• Lina Jamoul – Community Organiser with the Industrial Areas Foundation, Chicago, USA
• Colm Jordan – Geologist with British Geological Survey
• Edlam Aberra Yemeru – Human Settlements Officer, UN-HABITAT in Nairobi, Kenya

Top

Further information

Top