Geography BA (Hons)

Overview

Geography is a diverse discipline that bridges the arts and social and natural sciences, providing a broad education that addresses pressing issues including environmental change, regional and global inequalities and the transformation of global economy and culture. Students obtain a coherent view of the rapidly-changing world and the ways in which society influences and is influenced by it.

The Oxford Geography degree focuses on the interrelationships between society and the physical and human environment. Students are introduced to the full range of geographical topics in the foundational courses, which they can then follow up in more detail in the optional papers. There is considerable emphasis placed on interdisciplinary approaches in the course, with opportunities to explore the cross-fertilisation between geography and other disciplines such as anthropology, sociology, history, political science, economics, earth sciences and biology.

The facilities available at Oxford are among the best in the country, notably the Social Sciences Library (SSL), which holds a geography collection of over 28,000 volumes on its open shelves with many more held in closed stack storage. There are over 100 print journals on the open shelves of the SSL as well as electronic access to over 600 core journals. The department also has well-equipped Geolabs for practical physical courses and individual research projects including the Geography Research and Teaching Labs, the Oxford Luminescence Dating Lab and the Oxford Rock Breakdown Lab.

Fieldwork and international opportunities

The School of Geography and the Environment emphasises the importance of fieldwork since we believe there is no substitute for teaching subjects first hand. In the first year, all students take part in a four-day physical geography field trip at the start of term, as well as local skills-related field days. Second-year students will undertake a week-long overseas residential field course (currently to Berlin and Tenerife). Independent research in the field or in archives is also a key element of the dissertation with around 30% of our undergraduates choosing to do their dissertation overseas each year.

Careers

The broad set of transferable skills means Geography graduates have a wide range of career opportunities. In recent years graduates have proceeded to employment in management consultancy, local and central government, conservation and heritage management, the law, banking, the media, teaching and research.

Karoline, a Migration Policy Officer, says: ‘“Thinking geographically” is still very much part of my work: migration is a matter which can only be properly understood from a multi-disciplinary perspective. Not only is it useful that I was as used to reading studies about migration dynamics as I was to understanding the latest report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change… the very Oxfordian skill to be able to turn out concise written work in super-short timeframes is trained and tested on nearly a daily basis!