University Website: http://www.geog.cam.ac.uk

Director of Studies: Dr Sarah Radcliffe

Number of students admitted each year: 3-4

Introduction

Undergraduate Studies in Geography is one of the largest single-honours Departments of Geography in Britain: about 100 undergraduates are admitted to read Geography every year.

Geography at Cambridge involves undergraduates in a wide range of lectures, practical classes, skills training and field courses, organised around a three-year course (called the Geographical Tripos) which is divided into three parts, with an examination at the end of each year.

The course is taught through a mixture of University and College teaching. Lectures are run centrally by the Geography department and small group teaching (supervisions) are organised by the College Director of Studies. Your weekly work will usually revolve around producing an essay for each of your supervisions, along with lectures for the options you are taking.

First Year

In your first year you study for two examination papers, which correspond to physical and human geography. The main themes introduced at this stage run through the rest of the Tripos. There is no choice at this stage: we think it important for everyone to begin with the same basic grounding. This allows us to introduce you to new areas of the subject that you won't have met before and which you might want to study in more detail in your second or third year.

The course includes components on historical, social, physical and environmental Geography, along with a skills and methods course.

Second Year

In the second year, students currently begin to specialise (if they want to), but we expect them to maintain an interest in the discipline as a whole.  The students take a core compulsory paper, as well as three optional papers. The core paper ‘Living with Global Change’ covers topics including climate change, nature-culture relations, citizenship, virtual nature, global population and tectonic processes. Students then choose three papers from a range of papers, enabling some specialisation in human or physical geography, or the maintenance of a broad geographical training. Human geography courses include Development; Economic Geography; and Landscape, Place and Identity. Physical geography courses include Biogeography; Glacial Processes and Quarternary; and a Hydrology course (rivers, coasts or atmosphere).  Alongside these lecture courses, students continue with skills training and practicals.

Fieldwork

All students are currently expected to participate in a week long field class in the second year. Recent venues have included: Crete, Mallorca, Malta, the Algarve, Morocco and S E Spain. A piece of submitted work produced on the field class forms part of the assessment in the second year.

Third Year

In the third year you can choose whatever combination of papers you like, so that you can either specialise further or maintain a balance across the subject as a whole. You have to select four papers from those offered in a particular year, and you also have to research and write a dissertation of no less than 8,000 words and no more than 10,000 words: here too the choice of subject is up to you.

In the third year, twelve papers are offered in each year. The actual papers offered vary each year, but the following provide some examples of papers recently offered:

  • Geographies of the British Economy
  • The New Europe
  • Historical Geography of the AIDS Pandemic
  • Human Geography of the Arctic Regions
  • Volcanology
  • Glacial Environments
  • Biosedimentary Coastal Systems

College Facilities

Christ's is distinctive amongst the Cambridge Colleges. It offers strong tutorial support to its students as they pursue their academic work, and is able to offer accommodation for three years to all of its undergraduates. The College also provides a modern library, a theatre, sporting facilities, playing fields, social activities and clubs and societies open to all.

Geography

Dr Sarah Radcliffe, Director of Studies

 

 

College Open Days

Undergraduate Admissions Open Days 2012

Wednesday 4 July (all subjects) Booking now open
On Thursday 5 and Friday 6 July the College will be open from 11.00-5.00 in conjuction with the University Open Days. No College booking is required but you must register with the University.
Tuesday 25 September (all subjects) On-line booking will open at the end of July

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