The School of Geography at Queen Mary is one of the leading centres of geographical research in the UK. The School was ranked joint first in the 2008 Research Assessment Exercise, with three-quarters of our research rated as ‘world-leading/internationally excellent’.We are recognised by ESRC, NERC and AHRC for full-time, part-time and CASE postgraduate studentships.

Research in Geography at Queen Mary ranges from the local to the global and covers both pure and applied research. We contribute both to international research programmes and collaborate widely with colleagues elsewhere. The geographical scope of our research reflects both the world standing of the School and our commitment not merely to understand the world but to change it.

Research training and PhD studentships

The School of Geography is recognised by the ESRC for full-time, part-time and CASE PhD studentships. Its MSc programmes have been recognised under the ESRC’s 1+3 funding regime, enabling those who wish to continue on from their MA/MSc degrees to doctoral research. The School has a 100 per cent completion record for ESRC funded doctoral research and receives AHRC and NERC studentship funding.

In human geography, research training for MSc and first-year PhD students is provided through the Queen Mary/University College London (UCL) Postgraduate Training Consortium, with members of the Graduate School taking a number of core courses alongside colleagues from the Department of Geography at UCL. This highly innovative and well regarded research training programme enables access to a very wide range of research expertise and facilitates the rapid establishment of an extensive research network consisting of other postgraduate students and staff across the two departments.

An accomplished School

The achievements of the School are based on the highly distinguished and distinctive research accomplishments of members of academic staff, upwards of eight research staff, more than thirty research students and the ten administrative and scientific support staff within the School. Together, we have been remarkably successful in securing research funding - especially from research councils. Since 2001, research funding has increased to £4.4M, with over 60% of awards from research councils. We maintain our wide-ranging and influential participation in the leading scholarly societies in the UK and in the editorial boards of major UK, American and European journals. The School of Geography is the editorial home for Transactions, Progress in Human Geography and, from 2009, European Urban and Regional Studies. Above all, the department’s success is based on doing research in an environment famously characterised by personal interaction and collaboration amongst all its members.

Such characteristics are attractive both to our visiting scholars, including Julie Graham (University of Massachusetts, Amherst), Phil Kelly (York University, Toronto), Katharine Rankin (University of Toronto), Wendy Larner (University of Bristol) and Maria Kaika (University of Manchester), and to Rita Gardner (Director and Secretary of the Royal Geographical Society with the Institute of British Geographers) who is Visiting Professorial Fellow in Geography, as well as to the wide range of other overseas visitors carrying out research within the department.

Professor Cindi Katz, a geographer of world renown from City University of New York who visited in 2008, commented that: “I enjoyed my time ... at Queen Mary immensely. What a department you’ve got! I had wonderful interactions with so many people there, and got terrific and inspiring and incredibly useful feedback on my work in both the research frameworks and more formal sessions, as well as in all the various informal gatherings. I so appreciated ... your colleagues’ generosity intellectually ...”