Compass Magazine

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Geographers are uniquely placed to explore and understand the dynamic world around us.

Whether it’s human, physical or something in between, a geographical perspective spans space and time, tackling challenging questions and teasing out interactions.

Geography as a discipline has come a long way from just maps and globes, and today covers such a diverse array of phenomena it is difficult to believe that they can all be brought together under the umbrella of Geography.

Compass is a new and exciting platform for such threads to be pulled together, discussed and questioned. Inside this first issue, which is broadly themed on environmental sustainability, Cambridge geographers tackle current political and environmental debates, share experiences of climate protests and investigate how the university is embracing eco-friendly schemes.

photography competition, the winner of which is displayed on the front cover.

The participation and enthusiasm behind this first issue is fantastic and the Compass team has worked hard to bring the publication into existence. I would like to thank everyone who has helped turn the idea into a reality and I encourage more people to get involved to ensure the continued development and success of Compass. Happy reading!

If you are puzzled by the dissertation, wondering how to nail that essay or planning for the next transition, Compass can point you in the right direction (pardon the pun) with learning tips and advice from current students, lecturers and alumni. Beyond the lecture theatre geographers at Cambridge are pursuing diverse research as well as travelling Hannah Gillie to exciting places, a snapshot of which is Editor-in-Chief provided by Geographers in Action, the travel section and exhibits from the Compass

2015/2016 Compass Committee 2

Contents April 2016 Volume 1. No 01

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The Climate March Student protesters share their experiences and opinions of the 2015 Paris and London Climate Marches.

Geographers in Action

From gender inequalities to fan-fiction, Luke Dell explores the vast, interdisciplinary nature of Geography.

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Learning Tips

Lecturers impart their wisdom on how best to study, read and revise.

Production Editors: Hannah Gillie Alice Guillaume Sally Jenkinson Siobhan Eastman Daniella Mae BriscoePeaple Ellie Matthews Peter Rutzler Charles Martland Editorial team: Luke Dell Emma Harper Nina Grossfurthner Richard Skipper

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12 Dissertation Demystified

If you are starting to think about your dissertation here are some helpful accounts and words of wisdom from Dale and Rob.

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CUGS Year Review Hear about the various events hosted by the society this year from your 2015/2016 President Laura.

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A Geographer’s Analysis

Next Steps

Reassuring words and a geographer’s toolbox from Emma Harper, and words of advice from geography alumni.

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Sections

Procrastination Section

Rohit, Joe and Isabel tackle current debates regarding politics, rewilding and nuclear power.

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Beyond the Bubble Whether for research, volunteering or holidays, geographers are always eager to travel the world. We explore some of their experiences.

Escape your work with some geography related fun.

Annabel Cleak Simone Pang Isabel Dewhurst Contributors: Laura Whalley Rohit Bhansal Joe Horrcks-Taylor Angus Satow Adam Williams Chris Chung Charlotte Slaven Zoscha Partos Dr Alex Jeffrey Euan Godbold U.H

Catherine Chang Dale Walmsley Rob Beresford Dr Alice Evans Dr Harriet Allen Dr Steven Boreham Dave McLaughlin Rosie Hoggmascall Samantha Benson Ania Gruszczyńska Dominic Waughton Salwa Elhala-wani Gabriella Lobb John Wallace Alastair Neilson Simon Faulkner

Beau Zilesnick Marketing and printing: Hannah White and Dominic Weir Logo Design: Hannah Gillie and Izzy Hoggmascall Photographers: Tessa Callendar and Joe Binder

On the cover: ‘Earth Our Home’, By Alex Shuttleworth Got an idea?

Contact us at cugsmagazine@ gmail.com or head to the Compass Facebook page

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CUGS Year Review Hello Geographers, Thank you for taking the time to read the first edition of Compass. This magazine marks the end of another fantastic year for CUGS and I would like to thank all of my committee members for their hard work and tremendous dedication throughout the year. It has been an absolute pleasure working with you all and the best part has been getting to know you all better as fellow geographers and friends.

Having been a member of the committee the previous year, being CUGS president this year has been a privilege for me as I have been able to continue the work of the previous committee but also, more importantly, lead the society down new and exciting paths for the future.

its grand unveiling at the CUSU Freshers’ Fair in October. This year HUGS from CUGS was introduced so that CUGS could help you fight those week five blues in the best way possible known to man (and woman) – chocolate! Also, since the introduction of the voluntary charitable donation on all new membership payments and Christmas Dinner tickets, £58 has been raised for the Save the Children Syria Crisis Appeal so thank you very much for your donations. Finally, the foundations for a really successful CUGS access initiative were laid and Andre became the society’s first Careers and Access Officer and his hard work in producing the CUGS Alternative Prospectus will have hopefully encouraged many potential geography applicants to apply.

CUGS Year Review

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This year has been another very successful year for CUGS and I would just like to take this opportunity to share some of our achievements with you. Most excitingly, CUGS entered the 21st Century this year with the arrival of online banking – a technological phenomenon which I am sure no one is more relieved about than the ENTs Officers and the Treasurer. Amazingly, the days of sitting outside the department collecting cheques will soon be over! We also invested in a CUGS table cloth and banner which put all other student-run subject societies to shame at

Our events are the highlights of the CUGS calendar and this year has seen the society organise and host more insightful speakers’ talks, informative careers evenings, and enjoyable social events. Despite the weather, the Castaway with CUGS Garden Party was a huge success and the ENTs Officers did a fantastic job in transforming Trinity Hall into a tropical paradise.

In November, CUGS got everyone into the festive spirit (albeit very early) at the annual CUGS Christmas Dinner which was hosted by Newnham College in one of the most beautiful halls in Cambridge. This

Review

year, your Speakers’ Officers have recruited some of the most high-profile speakers that the society has ever welcomed and I must thank them all for taking the time to come and speak to you all - Cathy Dean (Save the Rhino’s International Director), Justin HallTipping (CEO of Nanoholdings LLC), Stuart Elden (political geographer), Matthew Price (BBC News and Today correspondent), Iain Stuart (the God of Geography), Klaus Dodds (political geographer) and Doreen Massey (economic, Marxist, cultural and feminist geographer – she’s done it all)!

Finally, I would also like to thank EY for their continued support and generous sponsorship of the society, without which we would not

have been able to build such a fantastic society for our members.

I hope you enjoy reading the first edition of Compass – all credit and praise must be given to Hannah as it is through her vision, hard work and dedication that this has all been made possible.

CUGS love, Laura The very proud outgoing president of CUGS 2015-2016

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A Geographer’s Analysis Why the Conservative Party won the UK 2015 General Election

By Rohit Bhansal

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he 2015 UK election represented an earthquake in British Politics. Aside from the failure of the polling industry to predict the result, the election was marked by a number of record breaking phenomena.

Firstly, the election marked the first time that the 3rd party in British politics wasn’t the Liberal Democrats or its predecessors since 1945 due to the success of the SNP in Scotland. However the focus of this article will be on the unexpected success of the Conservative Party. David Cameron became the first Prime Minister to continue in office immediately after a full term with a larger popular vote share for his party since Lord Salisbury in 1900. Furthermore, between the 2005 and 2015 elections, David Cameron increased the Conservatives’ number of seats by 120, greater than even what Margaret Thatcher managed. How did Cameron’s Conservatives achieve such stellar successes and defy the odds, particularly against the backdrop of austerity?

Coventry City Council (Flickr)

One of the key reasons why the Conservatives won was the superiority of their brand image and the discipline with which it was applied, focusing clearly on their two strongest issues of economic competence and leadership. Lynton Crosby, the Conservatives’ Australian campaign manager, can be credited for the development of key election messages tested in focus groups and then relentlessly repeated throughout the campaign. The Conservatives were the party of economic competence or the “long term economic plan”; each election message was a variation of this winning theme. Crosby didn’t tolerate any deviation from this key Conservative brand

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in an era in which branding is so important, as most of the general public make up their minds about which party they will vote for based on the feel and look of a party and the image given off by the party leader; UK elections have almost become presidential. David Cameron and his party projected an air of competence and stability.

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One of the key reasons why the Conservatives won was the superiority of their brand image and the discipline with which it was applied

A major reason for the superior Conservative campaign was their increased focus on micro targeting techniques, specifically since their success in Obama’s 2012 election campaign. Micro targeting involves gathering data on individual voters and then specifically targeting them. The Conservatives had learnt from their mistakes in 2010 and knew the importance of focusing on the target audience and swing voters that would decide the election.

In order to gather data on voter types and behaviour, the Conservatives developed a radically new mass canvassing survey to be used on doorsteps in order to identify specific types of voters in minute detail. Instead of using lettering, the Conservatives switched to a 1-10 scale and asked individuals how likely they were to vote in a particular way. This new survey reflected the modern, multi-party state of British politics so that someone might be a 7 out of 10 Tory voter, a 9 out of 10 UKIP voter, but a 1 out of 10 Labour voter. All this data for multiple variations of voters would then be fed into the central election canvassing database called VoteSource which would then develop algorithms to determine how to target a specific group of voters. For the previous example, a UKIP voter who hated the idea of a Labour government above anything would be targeted using a “squeeze message” through mail, social media or e-mail warning that Ed Miliband would walk into Number 10 if they

Analysis

didn’t vote Conservative. These types of squeeze messages were crucial in convincing Liberal Democrat voters to back the Conservatives in the South West, which was the key source of the majority.

The Conservatives really identified the lucrativeness of micro targeting voters on Facebook. A sizeable 55% of the UK population uses Facebook with the fastest growing age group being the over 55’s; compared to Twitter, which Labour utilised, Facebook offered much greater reach of different voter types. People using Facebook give a lot of information about themselves; their age, interests, likes, and region which advertisers can use to target the most relevant material. The Conservatives used this data to firstly contact people in the specific constituencies that would decide the election.

Within these locations, people of specific interest or demographic could be further targeted. For example, women aged between 30 and 45, with children, living in a swing seat, who were interested in buying a house. All of this data could also be fed into VoteSource and tailored direct mail messages or door to door knocking could be used to further target people.

Another major factor leading to the Conservative victory was the consistency of all public opinion polls and media pointing to a hung parliament.

There was a substantial focus on the chaos this would bring to the UK economy, allowing the Conservatives’ brand image of competence and stability to gain significant traction at the expense of smaller parties, especially UKIP and the Liberal Democrats.

Team2015 network of 10,000 volunteer activists being bused around the country to key marginal constituencies was based on the success of the London 2012 games maker volunteers. Young people from across the country were enticed to campaign for the Conservatives with the promise of a beer and curry in a pub beforehand, social interactions and romance, and rail and hotel expenses all covered. All of these volunteers were contacted in an organized fashion beforehand

by Conservative Central Office to ensure strong turnout on campaign days and they were directed by the superior Conservative targeting campaign that knew exactly which streets and houses to target in particular constituencies. The Team2015 scheme was an incredibly well planned and well targeted ground strategy.

Analysing regional electoral data, Labour tended to pile up votes where they already had considerable support such as the North East, the North West and Yorkshire and the Humber with an approximate increase of 3-5% in support.

In comparison, the Conservatives maintained support across every UK region, whilst gaining a moderate 2% increase in support in the key marginal constituencies in the West and East Midlands from an already strong 2010 position.

Overall, although the source of the Conservative majority at the 2015 election was clearly due to the annihilation of their Liberal Democrat coalition partners in the South West in terms of seats, a range of factors such as brand image, discipline and a well-funded and targeted technical campaign ensured all round Conservative strength in the UK.

Furthermore, the Conservatives had a much superior ground campaign to any other party. The

The Open University (Flickr)

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A Geographer’s Analysis

Rewilding

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ed up with Thoreau trying to convince you how much better trees are than people?

Then let the beavers chew them down and save a Scottish hamlet from flooding in the process. Welcome to the strange world of rewilding: the revamped call of the wild.

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There are multiple usages of the term ‘rewilding’, however these are can be broadly grouped into two interconnected strands; the rewilding of society and the rewilding of landscapes. Rewilding of society is founded on the premise that Western

society has prioritised culture at the expense of nature for too long. It points to the existence of ‘genetic memories’, residual traces of nature that exist in society, which society attempts to sate through synthetic substitutes. It argues that reintroducing nature to the equation could be for the benefit of society as a whole, as demonstrated by studies which have shown more frequent interactions with nature lead to better health, lower blood pressure, and higher levels of happiness.

The rewilding of landscapes is based on the recognition that we live in an ecological shadowland, one in which the ghosts of extinct species haunt an almost vacant landscape. This shadowland is maintained by decisions made to conserve it. This is due to ‘shifting baseline syndrome’, each generation defines the ‘natural’ environment to be what was present when they grew up. The issues with this are exemplified by the case of the Cambrian mountains, which have been ‘sheepwrecked’. Sheep grazing has created a putting green carpet of grass over

Analysis

as, due to globalisation of the food market, there has been a retreat of farming from unproductive areas. It is estimated that an area of Europe the size of Poland will have been abandoned by farmers by 2030. However, there are significant issues with rewilding, such as a naïve lack of engagement with rural politics and doubts over the potency of trophic cascades. Furthermore, there is a certain spatial bias to rewilding: it tends to focus on a certain type of place at specific spatial scales.

There is an overly romanticized emphasis on large areas with small populations which can be properly independent of the influence of man.

At the moment rewilding does not engage with nature in urban or semi-urban places, or even in lowland farmed areas. Currently all it stands as is a continuation of the David Attenborough brand environmentalism, one in which wolves roam on vast empty plains and people are conveniently hidden behind the lens. This is just not realistic in a world predicted to contain 9.6 billion people by 2050.

Rewilding focuses on the regional or national scale. On the global scale, rewilding flirts with environmental neoimperialism in its treatment of poorer countries. The land abandonment and expansion of nature in the developed world would be built on the back of industrialising agriculture and curtailing nature in the developing world. If more people could shoot megafauna in Scotland, would they travel to the Serengeti? Rewilding is the spatio-temporal fix of environmentalism within capitalism; it fails to solve the problem, it just shifts it spatially.

much of these Welsh uplands, which is now conserved by environmentalists and propagated by farmers. This landscape, as well as being a biological desert, is economically unproductive, with these farmers’ main harvest being neither wool nor meat, but subsidies. However, there is a solution. Once re-introduced, apex predators could unwittingly re-engineer the environment, down to the very composition of the soil itself.

These ‘keystone species’ would generate trophic cascades; shockwaves which would reverberate down the food chain, reconfiguring the proportion of species at each trophic level and creating a more productive ecosystem.

Rewilding of these landscapes could have environmental, economic and social benefits.

Upstream rewilding of catchments has been proposed as a way to mitigate damaging downstream floods, with beavers especially effective in creating natural flood barriers.

Subsidised, unproductive farming could be replaced by a more financially lucrative ecotourism industry. Rewilding is a plausible solution

Rewilding is undoubtedly based on an important observation: that the Earth’s sixth mass extinction event is rapidly approaching. However, ultimately it uses the same romantic argument, that nature must be left alone in wild, large places. It just argues using modern parlance to rehash an old argument. Rewilding has no fresh input on the old division between nature and culture, the very term reinforcing the distinction between ‘wild’ nature and ‘tame’ society. To this end, rewilding is a spatial contradiction; it aims to reconnect people and nature while separating them. In order to actually achieve the ‘rewilding of society’ the ‘wild’ and society must be spatially conflated; the messy, inbetween spaces that capitalism forgot in the urban landscape are just as important as large tracts of upland Wales. Conservation is like an aging rockstar: it must stop playing the old classics, move with the times and focus on its next hit.

George Monbiot - Feral Jamie Lorimer - Wildlife in the Anthropocene Brown 2011, Rewilding- A new paradigm for conservation in Scotland Jorgensen (2014)- Rethinking rewilding RewindingEurope.com

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A Geographer’s Analysis Nuclear Power

By Isabel Dewhurst

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ost people have a strong opinion on nuclear power, and everyone is familiar with the disaster stories of what happens when it goes wrong. However, there are many misconceptions, especially its place in the clean energy future. For anyone interested in the energy industry, climate change, or the future of sustainable development, here are some things you may not know about nuclear power.

Nuclear power plants function like other thermal power stations, by producing heat that creates steam, which turns a steam turbine connected to an electric generator that produces electricity.

This method, of course, is used in fossil fuel power plants, where coal, natural gas, or petroleum is burned to generate the heat required to produce steam. In a nuclear power plant, this source of heat is a nuclear fission reaction. Uranium 235, one of the three naturally occurring isotopes of uranium, is the most fissile of the forms. In a nuclear power plant, uranium 235 is bombarded with neutrons, which split the atoms of uranium and produce large quantities of heat for powering the electric generators.

So what about nuclear fusion? Fusion is the kind of nuclear reaction that happens in stars. It’s a fantastic source of energy and could easily fuel the earth’s entire electricity needs if we could harness it. Nuclear fusion requires an immense force to hold the reaction together; in stars, this is the force of gravity in a large mass. Scientists have successfully created fusion reactions on earth by using a magnetic field to hold the reaction together, but so far, this uses far more energy than it produces and has only been achieved on a very small scale. If nuclear fusion can be made feasible in the future, it would be a solution to the world’s energy problems, but for now, it’s only a distant hope.

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The good news about nuclear fission is that it’s actually a very clean source of energy and only non-renewable on a very long-term scale. It doesn’t contribute to pollution or greenhouse gas production, like fossil fuels do, and its only waste is minimal and very safe to store. In the best case, of course, it would produce zero waste, and

this is possible by recycling the leftover material into plutonium, which can then be used for further reactions until very little by-product is left. France is an example of one nation already using this technique.

Recycling is controversial, however, because of fears that the plutonium produced will be used for nuclear weaponry, one of the main anxieties regarding nuclear power in general and the biggest concern when any country enters the nuclear power industry. In the United States, recycling is illegal, so the waste is safely stored and protected instead. Advocates of purely renewable energy or clean energy may criticize nuclear energy for using a non-renewable resource, uranium, or for the mining processes that obtain the uranium. It’s true that uranium is non-renewable, but there is so much of it on earth compared to what is needed to produce electricity at our current or even higher rates that it would last for centuries, unlike fossil fuels, and the hope, of course, is that we won’t need it forever.

Secondly, renewable energy is no cleaner than nuclear energy in the sense that building solar panels or wind turbines requires huge amounts of metals and other materials that are just as damaging to mine as uranium, if not more so.

Ultimately, there’s no perfectly clean energy solution right now, but nuclear power comes about as close as we can get.

If the goal is completely renewable energy, it seems to make sense that we should just skip nuclear power and build more solar farms and wind turbines. In fact, countries like Germany are leading the world in clean energy by expanding their renewable energy and shutting down their nuclear power plants. Unfortunately, because our battery technology is limited and we have no good way of storing large amounts of energy, solar and wind power can’t work on their own yet. On a sunny, windy day, Germany produces so much power that it has to send it out to other countries or find some way to use it all up.

But what happens on a windless night? The answer, unfortunately, has actually been coal. In

order to keep up electricity production when the renewable stations can’t provide it, Germany has had to build new coal power plants for cheap, easy solutions that can be turned on and off at any time to make up the excess. And it’s not just Germany: the countries that Germany exports energy to on a good day take the surplus and ramp down their own facilities, so they also need new coal plants to make it through the bad days (or just the nights). Some parts of Europe now actually produce more greenhouse gases than they did before the “switch” to clean energy. So until we have better energy storage methods, it looks like we still need a secondary source of energy besides solar and wind power that can be turned on and off when its needed. Environmentally, nuclear is the best solution.

Safety, of course, is one of the biggest concerns about nuclear power and there tends to be a lot of public fear regarding a meltdown. Everyone remembers the Fukushima disaster after the 2011 tsunami in Japan, or certainly Chernobyl in 1986.

And it’s true that nuclear power plants have their dangers, and keeping the reactor cool is vital to preventing disaster. But safety measures have hugely improved since 1986 that make nuclear power no more dangerous than the mining, transport, and burning of fossil fuels. Designs for better and even safer plant designs are also being developed, but the recent lowering of natural gas prices has made research for nuclear power less economical than it used to be.

The main problem facing the nuclear power industry today is this: fossil fuels are cheaper and there’s not enough political or economic incentive to make the switch to nuclear power safely, especially in industrializing countries like India and China. So we continue with both the best and the worst, the coal plant next to the solar farm.

NEI: www.nei.org/News-Media/News/News-Archives/5-Reasons-NuclearEnergy-Is-Vital-to-EPA-s-Clean-P WANO: www.wano.info/Documents/WANO_WORLDMAP_2015_PRINT.pdf OECD Nuclear Energy Data 2015: www.oecd-ilibrary.org

kmichiels (Flickr)

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A Tale of Two Parises

By Angus Satow

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ne of the biggest mistakes we can make about COP21 – the global climate summit held in the closing weeks of 2015 – is to say that it took place in Paris. Okay, technically it did take place in Paris, but what I mean to say is that there were two Parises to be seen. The entire process was split in two, and the world was only ever told about one. Here’s the Paris you were told about. Its home was in Le Bourget, northern Paris, in the grounds of a private airport (the irony of this was apparently lost on the French Government). Within Le Bourget you had two zones, a fancier blue zone for those deemed of greater importance, and a green zone for hoi polloi. Tense negotiations were had, “high-ambition coalitions” unveiled, and grand speeches were made. Finally, on Saturday the 12th of December the leaders got together to celebrate a “historic deal” which would secure “climate justice” for all. Terrific.

Then, there was the other Paris. This one was spread out in the town proper, less homogenous and less exclusive. It was, quite simply, everyone else: activists from around the world come to maintain the pressure on leaders who never offer enough; Indigenous peoples from Canada, India, South America, come to protest the callous destruction of their ways of life; and ordinary people, concerned for their future. We slept in Airbnb’s, in tents, even giant warehouses. While the leaders saved the world, we went to Le Centquatre instead, a hub of talks, cool posters and general anti-COPness. Famous (western) activists such as Bill McKibben and Naomi Klein spoke. There was much intersectionality. We did actions, turning our backs on the ‘greenwashed’ talks and walking out together, supporting Indigenous groups in their protests against fossil fuel companies and joining together on that Saturday to denounce that same deal and demand true climate justice. (In the spirit of things, President Holllande claimed we were marching in support. Oh, François.)

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Paris, in essence, was power. Power of the elites over protesters, with the government exploiting the state of emergency to arrest protesters, even in their own homes, while the media stayed silent. Power of the nation state over the

Indigenous nation, as the latter’s resistance was cast aside, tokenised. Power of the Global North over the Global South, as the West, grown rich on colonialist exploitation and fossil fuel burning, refused to recognise its historical responsibility and held onto its dominance. And power, finally, of elites over all of us, sold a lie by a pliant media that told us ‘it’s all okay now’. Don’t worry, team, it may look like we’re heading towards the abyss but they’ve got it under control.

True inspiration was not in Le Bourget. It was there in the healing ceremonies of Indigenous groups who have found ways to coexist in this world without burning it. There among the dedicated campaigners who told of their enormous struggles. There in the true community of activists, not the imposed one of torturous haggling. There in the creative space Le Jardin d’Alice where food was plentiful and people paid what they could, all the while making banners, preparing our Red Lines.

Red Lines is the mot du jour of the climate movement, and the theme of our Saturday protest (held against the will of the government, who were forced to back down three hours before in the face of 15,000 outraged yet peaceful citizens). These are the limits of our world and our humanity: 1.5°C warming, Indigenous rights, a just transition, no more fossil fuels. Beyond them, this world will no longer be recognisable, as species are wiped out, cultures destroyed, islands sunk underwater, extreme weather greater and resource conflict universal. A meaner world of death and depletion.

Yet the agreement trampled all over these, not that you’d know it from the media coverage. If we exceed 2°C warming climate feedback loops kick in: put simply, disaster begets disaster.

Everyone agrees we cannot breach this limit. But even the ‘aspirational’ 1.5°C limit suggested at

Experience

COP would be enough to send many low-lying islands underwater and cause climate devastation elsewhere. Rapid, drastic change is needed, right now. But look at where COP21 is actually taking us, and it’s well over 3°C. For some reason, we’re not shouting and screaming, we’re celebrating.

But they did well elsewhere right? Well, not really. One of the biggest mistakes of the climate movement, one it is now rectifying, is that it hasn’t been framed in a human way. Climate change will increase child malnutrition by 20% in the coming years, as the developing world sees its crop conditions fail. Here lies the horror of global warming, as much as anywhere else. Yet when the rich western countries who have done so much to cause this crisis had an opportunity to ensure a just transition, they let pride and selfishness get the better of them. Technology share was watered down. So was compensation. Indigenous rights were shoved into a meaningless preamble. Afraid to lose their power, Western diplomats decided to blame China and India instead.

Worst of all, the whole agreement didn’t specify anything. I challenge you to read the text itself, and find a single mention of fossil fuels, animal agriculture, aviation or shipping. We need a huge shift to renewables, we all need to eat significantly less meat and dairy, we need to stop flying excessively and we need to look at how we can ensure sustainable transport. But the whole global

Nina Grossfurthner

agreement that was supposed to do something about these didn’t say a thing. Nothing.

Yet it was, paradoxically, the best we could have hoped for. As the respected environmental writer George Monbiot wrote: “by comparison to what it could have been, it’s a miracle. By comparison to what it should have been, it’s a disaster.” This is the most frightening aspect of COP21. It was a feat of diplomacy, and yet a total catastrophe.

We need a revolution, in the personal and the public sphere. And it certainly won’t come from those leaders who led us to ruin in the first place.

Fortunately, there was another Paris. Whereas Le Bourget served meat, fish and dairy galore, with a footnote that we probably shouldn’t eat that, activists practised what they preached. Here were the divestment activists, the vegans, the campaigners, the decolonisers, the colonised and the solution. There is a groundswell of people realising that we’ve been lied to: it won’t be ok, it isn’t ok, fossil fuel companies are not the answer, we have to stop burning, we need system change.

For us all, climate justice means social justice – in saving the world we can also transform it. This pressure won’t let up, it won’t give in. We’ll keep fighting and passion for life will overcome passion for profit. Change starts here.

For more information on how you can get involved, look up The Cambridge University Zero Carbon Society.

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On The Climate March Experience: Did we really achieve anything?

By Adam Williams

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he climate march of 2015 was a very odd experience. I had never been on a march against anything before, usually being a keyboard warrior copying my name into loads of petitions against injustice that allowed me to feel good about myself. However, coming to Cambridge, I wanted to experience new studenty things, like protesting against something. The opportunity arose after a meeting of the Zero Carbon campaign group, in which there was a sign-up to go to the London march on the 29th November. This was it! A way I could unleash my mild mannered anger at the British establishment for their disregard for the planet. So I waddled back to Kings, signed up, paid my travel fees (using fossil fuels to get to a climate march, love the irony) and then carried on with an attempt to complete my supervision essay. I put to the back of my mind the fact that the future of the planet was weighing down a lowly undergrad; I had more important things to think about- such as the queue for Sainsbury’s pizza.

Anyway, about the march itself: The expedition out of the university bubble was pleasant and we got there in good time, but the key factor was the weather. It was the best of British winter: a damp cold, occasional drizzle and the gust of wind just strong enough to blow your hood down that eventually became annoying. Nevertheless, it was symbolic in showing how angry mothernature could be despite it achieving little else that blowing our pickets into each other. There had been a strong turnout by the Zero Carbon campaign and indeed by the King’s Geographers, 75% of the subject (there are only four of us in

the college). After a wait as long as America’s ratification of the Kyoto treaty, we began to slowly move into establishment London. This is it, small, white, middle class boy (who had a poorly finished temporary tattoo on his check) had something to campaign against and stick it to the man.

We all held our banners with pride, proud of our purposeful procrastination to help the world, our world, that quite frankly, we don’t want destroyed for the sake of profit. So, the divestment group, me and a bunch of angry vegans sang, shouted and cheered as we walked down the streets of London, knowing that around the world others were doing the same, though without deadlines on their minds I imagine. Once we got to parliament, it just stopped. There were people talking and gathering, but there was no big finale. David Cameron didn’t come out and suddenly start hugging all the vegans, tearfully lamenting on his scrapping of green policies. It just dissipated. The embodiment of the modern generation and their environmental consciousness, all of sudden became groups of ordinary people. Right we’ve walked all the way here, what shall we do? I know! Let’s just walk back, good day’s work everybody.

As people started to disperse and leave their pickets, I started to think, what had we done?

People joked there had been enough people to storm parliament, we didn’t do that, we just stopped there and walked away afterwards. Chris had the Guardian live stream that kept us updated with what was going on, he said that it had been the largest climate march in the UK and loads of famous people had spoken today. That’s all well and good, but my view at the end of it was what had we, as a mass protest, achieved today? All the planning and hope for today suddenly gone, will this influence the COPs decision, will their decision be impacted by me being there at that present moment in time? In the end, this didn’t matter, what mattered was that it was a great day out. I had great company and a powerful idea behind me, I had joined the universal grassroots movement of climate change activism.

The People’s Climate March in London is the first

demonstration I have attended and I am glad to be able to call it that. I attended the march as part of the Cambridge Zero Carbon Society, which calls for the University to divest from fossil fuels.

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Angus Satow

Experience: My first protest march

By Chris Chung

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o my surprise, the atmosphere was largely positive and peaceful, and while there was a huge range of organisations taking part, from vegan advocates to anarchists, we were united under one common aim; to campaign for action against climate change.

The march involved demonstrating from Hyde Park to the Houses of Parliament in Central London. We chanted slogans and gave out flyers to promote our cause and our demonstration leader, Tim Lornie, gave many speeches about both divestment and climate change. It was almost like a carnival, as drums and music lined the demonstration route, and people dressed up as animals, trees, and even as coral reefs! In the brief moments where we felt bored or tired, sarcastic, funny, and down-to-earth placards kept our excitement up. I also bumped into Natalie Bennett, the Leader of the Green Party, and managed to get a selfie with her!

As a Geography student, climate change is a key concept that I am familiar with. Nonetheless, I gained a great deal from my participation in the demonstration. I saw that many people demanded a ‘system’ change, which suggests that to tackle climate change, we cannot maintain the status

quo, but instead have to change the way we approach society and the economy. This links to the 1A Society, Environment and Sustainable Development module, which explores alternative ways of tackling climate change, such as a green economy and using market mechanisms. I was pleased to see that the demonstrators were able to offer alternatives, such as demanding for more green jobs and subsidising renewable energy rather than fossil fuels. It would be aimless and futile to just go around shouting for change when we don’t know what changes we need to make!

Personally, the most rewarding part of this march for me was that I was able to be part of something global. According to The Guardian, more than 600,000 people took part in climate demonstrations globally, and London had a record breaking number of 50,000 demonstrators. This really shows how strong the demand for swift action on climate change is. We were also able to demonstrate for our Parisian friends, who regrettably were unable to protest.

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Green Impact Scheme

By Alice Guillaume, Green Impact Team Student Rep

T

he Green Impact scheme is an environmental accreditation and awards scheme run by the National Union of Students. It is a nationwide scheme, tailored to the specific institutions that are involved. Cambridge has taken part in for the past four years. The aim of the scheme is to encourage departments and colleges to reduce their environmental impact through completing specific and measurable targets. These come under the broad headings of waste, water, travel, energy, procurement (where we get our resources from), and embedding and communications.

Progress is recorded via an online workbook and rewarded at the end of the year at a prize-giving ceremony, with Bronze, Silver, Gold, Platinum and Excellence awards depending on the level the department or college is working towards and the targets it has met.

There are many benefits of the scheme. Firstly, it provides clear, simple, but - importantly – effective suggestions for groups or individuals that want to make a positive difference but may not be sure how. Secondly, it provides recognition for those people that are already making changes to lessen the environmental impact of their workspace. It is a great way to bring departments and colleges together and is particularly good at branching the student-staff divide. As a student rep, I would also say that you gain a greater understanding of how your department or college works and get to work and communicate with staff outside of your lecturers or supervisors. Finally, you can take

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https://www.pexels.com

part knowing you are contributing to improving your working environment, both through making it more environmentally-friendly and gaining a financial benefit through reductions in waste and inefficiencies.

In the Geography Department, we are a new team, formed this year, working our way towards the Bronze award. Firstly, we brainstormed areas where we thought the department could make an improvement, such as heating, recycling and printing. We then conducted a survey to see what possible changes could be effective and whether students would be receptive to this change. For example, we are considering removing some of the vending machines to reduce energy usage, so we wanted to establish how many people used the machines. In total, 57.1% of respondents told us they never used the vending machines, whilst only 3.9% of respondents use them often. This suggests that there is room to cut down on the number of machines without having too great an impact on the student body.

Another area we enquired into was lecture handouts. We believe that paper and printer usage could be reduced by only providing hand-outs to those who want them. Whilst the majority of students (67.5%) always take the handouts provided, only 34.2% said they would definitely print the hand-outs out themselves if they weren’t provided, suggesting that many people find it convenient to have the hand-outs but not necessary. However, there is always the possibility that some students could be put off by the cost of printing all lecture notes and slides, so a possible way of reducing the paper usage to only those who want to print out handouts could be to increase the student printing

Environment

have any hand-outs given out in lecturers. This would also ensure consistency (many respondents commented on not knowing whether hand-outs would be provided or not). For me, the most interesting area was that of waste and recycling.

I was fairly surprised to find that less than half of respondents (41.6%) agreed or strongly agreed that the recycling facilities in the geography department are clear and well labelled. I also found it revealing to see which items respondents were most unsure about regarding recycling. I think this reveals that communication can often be quite confusing and it is hard to keep track of policies in different places. For

example, I know that at home I cannot recycle plastic film packaging, and it took me a while to discover this was possible in Cambridge. It is also easy to confuse recycling with composting – it seems common sense that food waste doesn’t have to go to landfill, but in fact the University is currently not able to compost food waste and it should be one of the main components of general waste. The green impact team is hoping to provide more recycling facilities for the department. On a more general note, we want to extend our focus to the William Hardy building too as we feel it is currently being neglected!

Recycling Batteries

Writing implements

General waste

CAN ALL plastic (plastic bottles, plastic packaging, film plastic, envelope windows…)

ALL paper and cardboard (newspaper, photocopy paper, failed essays, cardboard boxes, phone books…)

ALL glass Metal: cans, tins, foil, staples etc.

Drink cartons Paper cups with plastic lids

You can take part knowing you are contributing to improving your working environment, both through making it more environmentally-friendly and gaining a financial benefit through reductions in waste and inefficiencies

CAN’T Food waste Polystyrene cups Crisp packets (a mixture of plastic and metal) Rubber bands Textiles

Aerosols Batteries (in specific marked bins) Writing implements It’s almost easier to remember what you can’t recycle in the geography department….

Overall, I think the Green Impact Scheme is a very rewarding project to be involved in. It’s quite hard being a new group with a huge task ahead of us, but I believe there are simple changes that can be made that will have a larger impact over time. It will be most effective, and easiest, with many people on-board and involved. In order that we can see whether our changes are having

the intended impacts it is useful for us to have comments, suggestions and feedback so please email: green.impact@geog.cam.ac.uk if you have any ideas!

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The EcoHouse Initiative Student Society The EcoHouse Initiative Student Society harnesses the skillsets and enthusiasm of Cambridge students to create sustainable solutions to issues of urban poverty, primarily in Brazil. Current projects include survey data analysis, the design of a vertical water supply and the redesign of a house for NGOs based in Latin America. The EcoHouse Initiative encourages and enables students to take a handson approach to international development, whether that be through working on projects with our partner NGOs or by informing others about the need for meaningful action in this sector through our Communications Project.

To find out how you can get involved email comms@ecohouseinitiative.org or like us on Facebook!

YASUNI, THE $7BN ENVIRONMENTAL CATASTROPHE

BY ZOSCHA PARTOS

E

cuador’s government has recently decided to drill for oil in a formerly protected Yasuni National Park in the east of the country.

A 10,000km2, stunning and virtually untouched preserve, the Park is a pristine piece of nature and is described by many scientists as the most biodiverse region in the world. However, the current conflict surrounds the potential that the region has financially for the impoverished Ecuadorian population. The oil is estimated to bring $7 billion in revenue and yet, interestingly, 78% of Ecuadorians are categorically against the drilling.

In August 2013, Ecuador’s President, Rafael Correa, abandoned the so-called ‘Yasuni-ITT

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initiative’ (named after the park’s Ishpingo, Tambococha and Tiputini oil fields), a conservation plan initiated in 2007 as part of the United Nations Development Program. The initiative provided financial compensation to Ecuador in return for its pledge not to drill for oil in untouched parts of the National Park. It was seen as a key step in combating climate change, and marked the first time a country had decided to leave such an immense reservoir of fossil foils in the ground, that is until it was overturned.

Public opinion in Ecuador has played a crucial role in this conflict. Data collected by the BBC suggested 78% of Ecuadorians are against drilling. Furthermore, 800,000 signatures were put forward on a national petition to stop the exploitation of oil in the National Park – however, the petition was rejected after the government

Environment

Ecolodge Napo Wildlife Center , a community tourism project located in the Yasuní Park Wildlife_Center_Ecolodge.JPG

claimed that only 359,762 of the signatures were legitimate, a number far below the required 583,323 needed to trigger a national referendum.

This ruling has led to questions of manipulation and bias, sparking further demonstrations all over Ecuador.

The protesters are angry, and they are angry because Yasuni is home to a huge variety of wildlife, including unique species of birds, monkeys and amphibians. Additionally, the park houses indigenous communities including the Tagaeri and the Taromenae that have not yet been included in the debate. The disadvantages to this project are clear: the destruction of unique, beautiful and endangered wildlife, the tearing down of more unique tree species than are found in all of North America, and the inevitable contribution to climate change. Matt Finder, a scientist from the Centre for Environmental Law, described the turn of events as ‘deeply disappointing’.

In July 2013, Correa created a commission to evaluate the benefits of the Yasuni-ITT initiative that concluded that the economic potential of the estimated 846 million barrels of crude oil (onefifth of Ecuador’s total petrol reserves) was too hard to ignore. Correa announced that “The world has failed us”; and believed drilling was now non-negotiable, as only $13.3 million of the $336 million pledged by countries in the ITT would be delivered. ‘Plan A’ had failed. Ecuadorian biologist Hugo Navarette sums up Correa’s feelings: “At some point conservation and ecology are kind of a luxurious thing. People have to eat.” It is

(www.commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Napo_

estimated that drilling will bring approximately $7 billion to the highly impoverished people of Ecuador, yet there is certainly no guarantee that these profits will be shared equally amongst the Ecuadorian people. Along with the recent plummet in oil prices, improvements may be hard to discern.

The issue of climate change is a sensitive one and whilst it is evident that making use of these oil reserves will have a negative impact on the fight against climate change, there are always those who say that it is not Ecuador’s responsibility to save the planet, when essentially it is economically secure countries (the hypocritical ones in President Correa’s mind) who are doing most harm. As it stands the future lies in the hands of Ecuador – a country caught between wishes to increase its citizens’ living standards and the natural splendour in which its people take great pride.

There is an alternative way of looking at the issue: instead of looking at the economic benefits of oil extraction, and assuming that that’s what a developing country needs, we should be applauding the Ecuadorian people for their commitment to sustainability and environmental protection. The fight against the destruction of our planet certainly isn’t economically beneficial in the ‘here and now’, but those contesting the Yasuni decision are demonstrating that sometimes, money is not everything. Ecuador raises the ultimate question in the seemingly never-ending debate between environmental protection and economic prosperity: to drill or not to drill?

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THREE ANIMALS WITH SOMETHING TO CELEBRATE Often in Geography we hear about the ways in which humans are messing up the world. A lot of the time the other animals we share the Earth with are suffering for it, whether through habitat destruction, melting sea ice, poaching, pollution, overconsumption… The list goes on. However, there are always positive stories we can take encouragement from. Here are few from 2016:

Elephants

Hong Kong’s decision in January to ban the export and import of ivory was hailed as ‘historic’ by animal welfare activists. Many environmentalists believe the city, a hub for ivory sales, has been fuelling the illegal trade and widespread poaching of elephants.

In 2013, over 8000kg of ivory was seized at Hong Kong airport and China’s demand for ivory could be the cause of 30,000 elephant deaths per year. It is hoped falling prices in China and this ban –when implemented – will help change this.

Megan Coughlin (Flickr)

Manatees

It’s not often you can be happy about being labelled as ‘threatened’. This is the case for the manatee, however, which for 48 years has been classified by the US Fish and Wildlife Service as ‘endangered’.

The reason for the change: manatees are making a comeback. Over 50 protected areas have been established for the West Indian manatee, and even the Coast Guard is involved, helping to prevent collisions with boats. Since 1991 their numbers have increased by 500%. They will continue to be protected under US legislation.

Flickker Photos (Flickr)

Indian Tree Frog

In 1876, British naturalist T.C Jerdon visited Darjeeling in northern India and recorded this frog. Then, for 173 years it disappeared: until now. The frogs, which were thought to have gone extinct, were rediscovered by renowned Indian biologist Sathyabhama Das Biju and his team after they heard their calls. Mr Biju et al.’s findings were in January this year. They include quirky breeding locations (in holes 6m off the ground) and intriguing maternal care (the tadpoles feed off their mother’s eggs).

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Wishwasdeep Shrivastav (Flickr)

The Tanner Lectures 2016: Aerial Violence and the Everywhere War Review by Alex Jeffrey and Euan Godbold

I

n some senses Gregory’s talks underscored a shift in his work over the past fifteen years. As described in the preface to Colonial Present, prior to the terror attacks in the United States on September 11th 2001 Gregory was finishing a manuscript for a book exploring Orientalism and cultures of travel entitled Dancing on the Pyramids.

But the violence of the strikes on New York and Washington shook Gregory into a more contemporary focus, and in particular an exploration of the imagined geographies that legitimise the targeting of Afghanistan, Iraq and Palestine under the banner of the US-led ‘War on Terror’.

Part of the purpose of the Colonial Present is to trace links between representational practices and historical experiences, to uncover an “architecture of enmity” where military campaigns are “wired together” as part of “the same mechanism” (p. 28). Similar synthesising was on show in the Tanner Lectures: Gregory has a remarkable skill at teasing out echoes and repetitions as he traced the technologies, logics and, crucially, spatiality of aerial war over the past century. Gregory’s method comprised a careful construction of the historical geography of bombing from the air, an approach that drew attention to the (often spurious) claims of precision and specificity, while pointing to the wider array of materials, bodies and institutions that are assembled into the service of aerial violence.

As with all of Gregory’s talks they were also visually arresting, where a staggering array of archival, literary and biographical materials told a story that moved back and forth across time periods and geographical locations, weaving links and illuminating connections. One example was the exploration of the changing expectations of air power, from reconnaissance, to targeting and finally to the dropping of bombs; a narrative arc that was as true in World War I as it is for the use of Predator drones in the present.

It is this complex terrain on which Gregory shone a light, thus reflecting the original purpose of the Tanner Lectures: to advance and reflect upon scholarly learning directed towards the advancement of human values.

T

he first lecture, entitled “Good bomb, bad bomb”, focused on the historical geography of bombing throughout the twentieth century. Professor Gregory broke down the parallels between the traditional bomber crews of World War II and the pilot teams for Reaper and Predator drones used by allied forces. In particular, he offered a unique analysis of the traditional ‘PlayStation argument’ against the use of drones, which argued that piloting a drone is detached from reality in a similar way to flying a video game. However, through an analysis of the historical geography, Professor Gregory showed that such an analogy is neither recent nor accurate.

He called upon the example of Operation Igloo White in Vietnam. This operation involved a complex system of netwroked sensors along the Ho Chi Ming trail, and used an IBM60 computer to output a location for the bombing aircraft to target. Almost all involved in operating the network had no visual feed on the target, so the blind process was described by many USAF airmen as “playing a pinball machine”. Professor Gregory offered a rather nuanced analysis of this point, arguing that the process involved in both Igloo White and in modern drones is better understood as a machine. Given the huge numbers of people involved in the operation and maintenance of the machine, Gregory argued that the emotional detachment from bombing in both forms is as a result of the long bureaucratic, operational and manufacturing processes. As a result, the responsibility for the bombing becomes more widely distributed, preventing any one individual from being accountable.

The second lecture, “Killing Space”, looked at the discourse on the shrinking domain of bombing.

Given the increase in accuracy from dronedeployed missiles like the hellfire, it seems the domain of the target shrinks from a large land mass or building to a single individual. However, Professor Gregory highlighted the increased role of intelligence and metadata that has been growing behind the scenes.

In his concluding remarks for both lectures, Professor Gregory offered a chilling reminder of the ethical implications of what these machines are actually used for. The clinical nature of “the hunt” that is bombing detaches not just the pilot but also the general public from their responsibility for resulting deaths.

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BEYOND TH

Abel McLinden, Franny Schlicke, Alex Shuttleworth, Harriet Brien, Tessa Callendar, Kavish shah

Whether for research, volunteering or leisure, Cambridge geographers are eager to travel the world.

Compass explores some of their experiences

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2

HE BUBBLE

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Malaysia

W

hen I was first approached to write a travel article on less-travelled places in Asia, I immediately thought of Ipoh, the Malaysian city that I used to visit biannually. I went back last May to pay my grandfather a visit. This gave me the opportunity to revisit this place that thoroughly dominates happy childhood memories, and rediscover it through the eyes of a tourist. This will not be your regular travel article as I have never visited Ipoh in the shoes of your classic tourist. But if you prefer personal anecdotes to travel guides, rather than the regular mould of ‘guide-to’s, stay tuned as this is for you.

Ipoh, the capital of the state of Perak, is a city located within the Kinta Valley on the west coast of the Malaysian Peninsula. To its south lies Kuala Lumpur, a mere 2 hour drive away along the North-South Expressway, and to its north lies Penang. Yet despite its proximity to these popular tourist destinations, Ipoh remains relatively unvisited by the regular tourist network. This is why it is perfect for you.

When you are in Ipoh, the easiest means of travel is by car although there are a few buses if you need them. Ipoh rewards with an authentic experience of Malaysian life and a wealth of local delights at ridiculously affordable prices.

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By Catherine Chang Firstly, there is the famous Bean Sprout Chicken, known affectionately by locals as ‘nga choi gai’.

Served with a platter of bean sprouts, drizzled in sesame oil and tossed with soya sauce. You will stop and wonder for a moment – how could something so simple be so popular? But as soon as you bite down on the tender chicken flesh and crunchy bean sprouts, the answer becomes obvious. It is believed that Ipoh’s bean sprouts are particularly tasty because of the underlying geology. Located atop a large limestone foundation, the water used to cultivate bean sprouts is alkaline-rich. As bean sprouts have a high water content, this characteristic of Ipoh’s water is often cited as the reason behind the exceptional juiciness of its sprouts. A bowl of rice noodles in an aromatic broth made from boiling chicken overnight lends the finishing touches to this dish.

If you’re searching for a more unique dining experience, there is Dai Shu Geok Yong Tau Foo, which translates from Cantonese to mean ‘Yong Tau Foo at the base of the big tree’. The stall is located, quite literally, under a big tree.

Yong tau foo is traditionally a Hakka Chinese dish that consists of tofu stuffed with a ground meat mixture or fish paste. But it has since become a dish that consists of a wide variation of ingredients – from fried beancurd, fishballs,

Travel

stuffed peppers, sausages, lettuce, seafood and more. These ingredients are laid out in trays. Grab a bowl, a pair of tongs, and pick the ingredients that look the best. Pass your bowl of ingredients to the owner who prepares the dish right in front of you, and serves with your standard bowl of noodles or rice. If you’re on a hunt for yong tau foo, a quintessential dish that you’d have to try in Ipoh, there’s no better place to go. Be prepared to queue, it’s worth it! When you’re thirsty from all this food and the tropical heat, treat yourself to a refreshing cup of Ipoh’s famous White Coffee!

Coffee beans are roasted using only margarine, resulting in a lighter roast. The coffee is served with thick condensed milk. My friends swear by Ipoh’s white coffee and claim that its velvety smooth texture is like no other. I’ll leave the judgement up to you.

Recommended coffee shops: Nam Heong (2 Jalan Bandar Timah, Ipoh, Perak, Malaysia); Sin Yoon Loong (15A Jalan Bandar Timah, Ipoh, Perak, Malaysia). Both are located in Ipoh’s Old Town.

Of course, there is more to Ipoh than its food.

During your food hunts, you’ll appreciate the massive limestone hills that surround the city and dominate the skyline. Many of these limestone hills are targeted by quarry companies, but some hold within them cultural treasures, such as Sam Poh Tong temple. This Chinese-Buddhist temple built within a limestone cave remains one of Ipoh’s oldest and most famous icons.

Ipoh is also a city massively arrested in time.

In Old Town, south of the Kinta River, you’ll find

buildings dating back to the British Colonial Era when Ipoh, rich in tin, was colonised as a mining town, for example the Railway Station and Town Hall. Oh, and if you drove thirty minutes out of the city centre, you can also poke around Kellie’s Castle in Batu Gajar, the deserted mansion of a Scottish planter with secret passages and hidden chambers.

Another thing look forward to on my trips back to Malaysia are the mornings that I spend at the wet market with my mother. At their core, wet markets are the places where locals would get their fresh groceries. But there is also much more being sold beneath the colourful umbrellas of carts - local delicacies like nonya kuih and peanut pancakes that I can never resist, for one.

Many would think of wet markets as dirty places, but to me, they have always been the places where the essence of local life in Malaysia can be most deeply felt. While I don’t understand the exchanges in Cantonese that my mother has with the shop-owners, the best moments in all my travels have always been found when I am completely and excitingly lost in the energies of a new place. That being said, it is definitely possible for you to get by in Ipoh with English.

There is so much about this little shānchéng (Mountain City) that I don’t have time to mention.

But if you find yourself in Malaysia on your next holiday, remember to pay this friendly, sleepy town a visit. You might find yourself falling in love with its people, its history, its food, and above all, its quaint charm.

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Philippines

V

olunteering on International Citizen Service (ICS) involved a life without the internet, without chocolate, and with a lot of tears. It was also the best two months of my life.

A few years ago I volunteered with VSO ICS. I knew I wanted to help people and I knew I wanted to go with a reputable organisation, so I applied with VSO, and they assigned me to an ‘environmental education and conservation’ programme in the Philippines.

What makes ICS special is that you work with national volunteers and live with a local volunteer and host family. My work counterpart, Art, was 25 year olds and my home counterpart, Myla was 21, and both from Manila (the capital). They were perhaps the sweetest people I have ever met, and creating such close bonds with national volunteers helped you to identify with the country and start calling it home. The host family also worked in the same way. The children of the host family became my little brothers and sisters, the local school children, my little friends, and the bonds formed helped you feel part of the community in a way that isn’t offered by any other volunteering programme.

People talk about “voluntourism”, or volunteering to get a new profile picture. That is not what ICS is about. It is authentic and genuine. True to its message: “challenge yourself to change your world”.

In the time of our placement we had a lot of challenges that we had to overcome. First there was a 7.2 Richter scale earthquake. There was this terrifying fear that enveloped me when I heard this apocalyptic tremble beneath our feet.

Luckily I’d watched enough American movies to realise we needed to get down to the floor. After the earth stopped shaking around us I collapsed into my friend’s arms and can still remember the pounding of his heart as we tried to comprehend what just happened.

The earthquake brought with it lots of challenges: the schools were unsafe and therefore closed, and we were evacuated for four days due to landslides in the local area. Nevertheless, we got to help out in the relief effort which was truly meaningful work. Volunteers of the group helped look after children at an evacuation centre; collected donations, packed these donations, and distributed them to the worst affected areas.

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And then as things were getting back to normal,

By Annabel Cleak there came Typhoon Haiyan. While I was safe and asleep as the typhoon poured outside, I had my Mum calling me up from London screaming “It’s the biggest storm ever on record!”, and then having to calm her down “I promise I’m OK Mum, we are just staying indoors”. Of course I didn’t want to alarm her, but we were ok. We had no electricity or clean water, but after seeing photos of Tacloban we could have been a lot worse off.

We found out that if the Typhoon hadn’t changed direction 24 hours before, everyone on the island we were on would be dead. This is scariest thing I have ever experienced.

When we returned to our office, everyone at the local government hall had their heads on their desks. It was clear there were higher priorities than our project, so how could we alter our objectives to focus on the current needs of the community? We worked on this, with a visit from our Programme Supervisor. However a few days later at our team meeting, we were told we were being evacuated. Our programme had become redundant and due to food and water shortages, we were becoming more of a hindrance than a help. It was an incredibly emotional day, with tears all round. It was too early to say goodbye and we didn’t want to leave the incredible people we became so close with.

Before the British volunteers were sent back home, we volunteered at a massive relief centre in the capital, Manila. This was a once in a lifetime experience, and it was so fulfilling to be part of a mass group effort to help people who have lost so much. We packed food goods, and although there was a lot of dirt and sweat, it was totally worth it.

Iran

towards us. One lady decided to empty her jar of walnuts by pouring them over our seats, while all we could do was try to catch them all!

By U. H

I

was fortunate enough to spend two weeks travelling around Iran during the Christmas vacation. A combination of praising words in Lonely Planet and a sense of adventure had convinced me that Iran was the right destination for us. Geographies of Iran seem endless once you scratch the surface. The Persian Empire, the nuclear politics and sanctions, the 2003 earthquake. I do not even feel qualified to talk about the obvious and pressing issue of women’s rights. It would be arrogant to claim that I can put myself in the shoes and hijabs of Iranian women after 2 weeks of pure tourism.

Instead, I am going to reflect on the friendliness of the locals towards us tourists . The most overwhelming and striking feature of being a tourist in Iran was the degree of hospitality that complete strangers showed us, simply because we were visiting in their country. I have not yet had a lecture on “the uneven geographies of friendliness towards tourists” but in this strand of geography (which I may just have invented), Iran seems like the epicenter.

Iranian hospitality had many faces. At least ten people every day would say “How are you?

Welcome to Iran” when we walked by their store – some would even yell it from their cars. Tea and dates followed by the mandatory selfie, and the question: “what do you think about Iran?” was popular. Several times, we were invited to homes for lunch or dinner. By the end we were invited for a three-course meal in an expensive restaurant in northern Tehran!

Our attempts to pay the bill were politely but firmly declined. Onboard coaches, a group of elderly women took advantage of our immobility by creating a flow of sandwiches and snacks

Having survived the walnut rain, we soon learned to buy plenty of snacks to bring onboard, so we always had something to offer in return.

I also learned that there is such a thing as ‘political hospitality’. Wondering around the city of Yazd after dinner we were stopped on the street by a group of opticians closing their store. Eager to have encountered tourists, they invited us in.

There we sat among hundreds of pairs of glasses and shared tea and oranges with people who knew just a few words of English. At one point, the television in the store showed a government ‘infomercial’ with a message I could vaguely identify as anti-American. One of our optician friends immediately got up, turned off the TV, and said angrily: “Look at this, we don’t believe in this.” And then he looked me in the eyes and said: “We love America. We LOVE Israel.” As absurd as the situation was, it was not only an expression of discontent with the Iranian government (we heard many of those), it was also all an example of how far an Iranian will go to make sure you feel welcome, and that you are appreciated.

Upon leaving, I reflected upon how privileged Iranians felt that we had chosen to visit their country, when many overlook it as a tourist destination. In Cambridge, most of us probably think of tourists as annoying traffic obstacles.

The old colleges put a lot of effort into limiting access for tourists, and I feel confident that none of us have ever invited a tourist from the street to lunch. Personally, I have never even said: “welcome to Cambridge, can I help you with anything?”. I can’t help but think that in the UK there is a deep-rooted cultural arrogance. This is obviously not something I am able to prove in this short piece. Nevertheless, I cringe if I think about whether the Iranians we met encounter the hostility of tourists visiting Cambridge, who are ignored or told to move out the way.

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Himalayas

By Hannah Gillie

“Great things are done when men and mountains meet.” -William Blake

A

s I stared at this quote on the door of the Cambridge Cotswold changing room, weighed down with new hiking and camp gear, the reality of my forthcoming adventure truly began to sink in. After completing my first year studying Geography, my interest in people, cultures, and landscapes fuelled an eagerness for discovery, challenge and exploration.

The British Exploring Himalayas 2015 expedition instantly appealed to me. The society sparked my enthusiasm for this journey with its rich history, scientific leaders and its passion for taking young people to challenging and inspirational areas of the wilderness.

Our six weeks began in Leh, the capital of Ladakh in northern India. Ladakh (land of high passes) is a region in Jammu and Kashmir with average altitudes of over 3000m. Its culture and history are closely related to Tibet as Leh was an important city on the ancient Silk Road. I was fascinated by the mix of religions, of the ancient and modern, and the harsh political and physical landscapes in which the Ladakhis live.

As we head to Base Camp we left the green streets of Leh and were hit by the heat and dust of the open valleys and jagged crumbling peaks.

Ladakh is a high altitude desert on the edge of the Tibetan Plateau, and whilst living at Base Camp, we experienced the end of the region’s summer; enjoying sunny days of over 25°C at the beginning, but watching the snow fall by the end.

Base Camp, home for four weeks, was Pensi-La, a mountain pass at 4400m. We were surrounded by peaks tickling the sky at over 6000m, its bleak beauty reflected in the large turquoise lakes; shaped by ice and baked by the sun. The only sound we could here was the thin mountain breeze.

“Strength does not come from physical capacity. It comes from an indomitable will.”- Gandhi 28

At many times during our time at Base Camp I reminded myself of this quote; scrambling for hours up to a summit, jumping over crevasses on a glacier or fighting the raging waters of a mountain river, it was steady determination which pulled you through.

Ice training on the Drang-Drung glacier was one of the best experiences. Using crampons and ice axes we learnt how to walk roped together on the ice, jumping over dark chasms and climbing up vertical ice faces. Two freezing nights were spent camping on the ice with the rumbling of avalanches and rock falls, which were regular reminders of the extreme and unpredictable environment.

Four weeks under canvas helped to immerse us in the lives of the locals. During the summer, yak herders live in small rock huts in remote valleys like Zanskar, while the more permanent Zanskaris live in tiny settlements surrounding Buddhist Gompas (monasteries). Staying in herder huts, cooking on yak dung fires and sharing chapattis with monks taught us the timeless patterns of the

people; how their lives and beliefs are seamless and ancient parts of the landscape.

“The compulsion to see what lies

beyond that far ridge or that ocean- or this planet- is a defining part of human identity and success.”-David Dobbs When I asked our expedition chief leader about what drives him to spend months exploring the wilderness he said simply, that it was “a reconnection with humanity”. Only a small percentage of the global population have modern ‘western’ lifestyle; with luxuries like central heating, the internet, and running water.

Such an expedition enables you to reconnect with how the majority of the world live. It is about living in harmony with nature, not against it.

At home we seek modern alternatives to keep us healthy and entertained, like going to the gym or the cinema. However, in the wilderness

we experience those aspects of life in a more balanced way. The adrenaline from climbing a peak, the satisfaction of repairing ripped trousers and the camaraderie of your team.

Having never travelled outside Europe the trip has completely changed my perspective on life.

Staying with Ladakhi families, the monks in the gompa and camping in the mountains has taught me new values, influenced my faith and encouraged a stronger appreciation for simple amenities.

The locals really emphasised community, selfrespect and purpose as the key to happiness and peace. Returning home was a greater culture shock than I expected. Where material objects are plenty and time is few, we have managed to lose the importance of those core values.

Overcoming the physical and mental challenges of exploring and living in the Himalayas has certainly changed me and it is an adventure I would highly recommend.

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An Introduction to: The British Exploring Society

By Beau Zilesnick- Expedition Recruitment Officer

The British Exploring Society is a youth development charity and since 1932 has been running challenging, meaningful expeditions to the wildest corners of the globe. It is the world’s oldest society of its kind, founded by Surgeon Commander George Murray Levick, a member of Scott’s Terra Nova expedition. During this fateful expedition, Levick spent three years being pushed to his limits. Against the odds he returned back to the UK and inspired by his own experience founded The Public Schools Exploring Society, now known as The British Exploring Society.

Over eighty years on Levick’s legacy lives on in the ethos of the society, with its core aim being: “To advance the education of young people by providing inspirational, challenging, scientific expeditions to remote, wild environments and so promote the development of their confidence, teamwork, leadership and spirit of adventure and exploration.” This mission is brought to life by the impassioned leaders on expedition and the Society has proudly shared its unique approach to youth development with over eight-thousand young people and by visiting all seven continents.

British Exploring expeditions run for 3 or 5 weeks in the summer. Expeditions strive to explore some of the last remaining wildernesses on Earth. In recent years this has included The Empty Quarter in Oman, Arctic Norway, the Peruvian Amazon and the Indian Himalayas.

You can join the expedition party as an Explorer or as Trainee Leader. To join as an Explorer requires no previous expedition experience although an adventurous mindset is essential. For those with previous expedition experience the Trainee Leader programme is a chance to gain invaluable transferable leadership skills apprenticing under the senior leaders on expedition whilst working towards industry recognised qualifications.

British Exploring believe expeditions are a rare opportunity for a truly transformative developmental experience. The development of new skills begins long before the explorers step onto the plane with their fundraising effort. This provides an opportunity to try new entrepreneurial pursuits, get creative with web funding and practice letter writing in applications for bursary funding from trusts and organisations.

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Science is the cornerstone of the expeditions.

Projects contribute to ongoing scientific research

with world-leading institutions and explorers work alongside experienced field scientists. The explorers gain invaluable experience of fieldwork skills but also a vital understanding of the world around them.

During expeditions the explorers are encouraged to record their experiences through creative storytelling. They use many mediums including photography, video, creative prose, poetry and countless songs have been created and shared around the campfire.

2015 Expedition Peruvian Amazon In 2015 the first of a three-year expedition saw over sixty explorers and leaders venture to the Manu Biosphere in South East Peru. Manu is one of the most biodiverse regions in the world and the team had a rare opportunity to survey the wildlife at close quarters camping deep in the jungle. All of the data will feed into the Crees foundations management plan of the reserve and the Pini-Pini range. The Crees foundation are a sustainable conservation non-profit whose longterm model strives to ‘protect the biodiversity of the rainforest, and fully involve the people who live here’.

As well as research into the the disturbed (secondary) forests, their innovative enterprise projects include a biogarden and agroforestry projects, which the explorers got to contribute to.

“My expedition was the most challenging, terrifying, exhilarating, fascinating and mind-broadening experience I have ever had. It was all that I hoped for and more – I would do it all again in a heartbeat.” Amazon Explorer, 2015

2015 also saw British Exploring’s penultimate expedition to the Ladakhi Himalayan mountain ranges. Basecamp was made in the Zanskar valley, an incredible landscape of extremes from its snowcovered mountains, glaciers, braided streams and diverse flora and fauna. This year the explorers summited two previously unclimbed peaks and traversed the Durang Drung glacier. The research studied glacial ablation, isotopic analysis of water, ice and snow samples, ethnobotany as well as two projects that measured the the psychological and physiological response to the expeditions at high altitude.

2017: There will be a new expedition trekking and canoeing the mighty Yukon river in Canada’s most extreme wilderness.

Travel

Top Travel Tips Before you go

Travel Essentials

Packing – be prepared for the myriad of microclimates that occur in tropical regions. Lay out all of the clothes you want to take and cut them in half. You’ll be grateful for this once you are lugging your bag around the continent, and you can buy most things for a fraction of the price once you are out there!

Clothing –always take a few full length items, and for girls a sarong is handy for the sun and for covering up for religious sites. Multi-purpose clothing such as trousers that become shorts are great space savers, keeping your bag light.

Vaccinations – start well in advance, some consist of a few injections over a period of months, so start early as it’s important to be protected.

Important Documents – digital copies of documents such as passports and visas can be life-savers in an emergency. A couple of spare passport photos can be handy too.

Whilst Travelling Do as the locals do – locals know the best things to see and do in their area and some of the best food can be found at the unofficial food vendors, the busy ones or the ones with a fast order turnaround tend to be safe bets.

Local transport – some of the best travel experiences come from meeting the fascinating people that frequent it.

Mobile – your essential travel gadget.

Smartphone cameras take great quality photos, and you can back them up over the internet so you never have to risk losing your captured memories.

Sun Cream – this may seem obvious but there is nothing worse than holiday snaps of you looking like a lobster.

Basic First-Aid Kit – a necessity to have one to hand, just a few basics including plasters, AfterBite and anti-histamines.

Umbrella/Pac-A-Mac – perfect for seeing off the rain showers.

Eye mask and Earplugs – welcome essentials in noisy hostels, a good night’s sleep gives more energy for travelling.

Padlock – useful for locking up luggage to deter thieves, can also often be used in hostels or on lengthy public transport.

Keep a journal – can seem tedious but just a few sentences a day will do. Looking back months after your travels you will be amazed at what you’ll forget.

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Geographers in Action Luke Dell meets Cambridge geographers and researchers to investigate geography beyond the lecture theatre

The Anthropocene: Crisis or Opportunity?

Dr Steve Boreham, Geologist, Ecologist and the department’s Geographical Services Officer, discusses learning, life, contemporary global challenges, and how Cambridge students can make the most of their University careers

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re we still living in the Holocene?, Dr Boreham begins, “Perhaps what we should really be interested in now is the Anthropocene. If it is real, then when did the Anthropocene start? Was it with the domestication of crops? Or was it when Europeans started cutting down the forests in the Neolithic period? Or was it the first nuclear detonation?

Or maybe it is the mass extinction event that is going on right now? When we see past geological events from our current perspective, they often look instantaneous, even though they may have lasted decades, centuries or even millennia. When future Geographers look back at today, they will be searching for a ‘golden spike’, a defining global signature that marks the end of one epoch, and signals the birth of another.

The truth is that we are in the midst of a huge changeover in the ecology of our planet. During the Ipswichian interglacial about 120,000 years ago, Britain was actually 3°C warmer with frostfree winters and much-reduced ice caps. The sea level in Britain was 7 metres higher than it is today and that all sounds a lot like ‘global warming’. Yet it happened without any significant human inputs: That is what the Earth is capable

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of on its own. If you want to have a vision of what the Earth could become in the near future - there it is. For the last half a million years the Earth has been in the grip of one enormous Ice Age. This has been a series of 100,000 year long periods of bitter cold known as glacials, interspersed with shorter warm blips, known as interglacials - each about 10,000 years long. The ‘normal’ situation for Cambridge in the Pleistocene is tundra with pine and birch scrub - it’s just that for the last nine millennia or so it’s been warm enough for temperate woodland to grow here. That plunge back into 100,000 years of freezing tundra and boreal scrub is what we think the anthropogenic change in Carbon Dioxide levels has headed off.

Now you can see how, as a Geologist and Ecologist, a Scientist doing Geography, I am interested in the planet, and I am passionate about the discipline because all of those changes

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We are in the midst of a huge changeover in the ecology of our planet

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affect humans. We are starting to realise the whole planet is full of nonlinear responses: unexpected and unintended outcomes. That is one of the things that makes Geography so interesting: exploring these non-linear behaviours and the human responses to them. What are the limits? How far can we push it?”

Solving the Global Crisis?

But Dr Boreham is not completely pessimistic about the huge environmental challenges of the present-day. “While you are doing your Geography degree”, he says, “you have this opportunity to, like a sponge, suck in all of the problems, all of the issues of the moment, and not just despair about them. You can see the problems being set up and it is going to be you guys, the next generation, that have a chance of dealing properly with the issues that humanity faces.” It comes as no surprise that Dr Boreham has a poster outlining ‘Ten ways to change the world’ on the back of his office door.

“Solving the big global problems - That’s your job as the next generation of Geographers. Here at the University of Cambridge we are training people like you to be the mentors, teachers, and agents agents for change in the political and nongovernmental organisations of the future. You will be the government advisors in this country and abroad. That is what we are really doing here - training people. Nobody can be forced into having that ‘Ah-ha!’ moment, that epiphany, but you can bring people to the edge of the water, and allow them to see in their own reflection how their future might look. It is like an hourglass. We take in all those students, they come through this intense process and then, trained and ready, they spread around the world. A large proportion of

people who come through this Geography degree go on to have influential positions for much of their careers.”

However, it is not just the training provided by the University that Dr Boreham believes students should embrace. He recounted how his neighbour’s daughter, who was reading Geology at University, had a significant influence on his life. “If it hadn’t been for her mentorship, I wouldn’t have been encouraged to follow that trail. I can’t over-emphasise the importance of mentorship - having people who are passionate about what they do and who want you to be passionate too. If you are not exposed to those people your life chances massively change. I think one thing that is so great about Cambridge and the Geography Department is that it is full of people who are committed and passionate about what they do, and if you give them a chance, they will offer you fantastic guidance and education. Professor Richard West, retired head of the Plant Sciences department, must have seen something in me - he must have seen a spark of ability. He became my mentor, and without that gentleman’s encouragement, I probably wouldn’t have gone on to do my PhD. Good teaching and mentorship is vitally important, and so we should all be grateful for the high-quality people that we have all around us in the department. In my opinion, you should seek their help and recognise their value - that’s the ‘value-added’ part of what we do here at Cambridge.”

The origins of a Biogeographer

Dr Boreham notes how his interest in geology and ecology first began when he was six years old: “I would collect animal skulls, discarded

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-35692252w

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bird eggs, seeds and leaves. I would draw them, sketch them and make clay models of them. I would also collect stones, pebbles, crystals, fossils and, much to my parents’ dismay, pots of different coloured soils. When I was a bit older, I just used to hang out in Epping Forest where I grew up. I was amazed by the way you could predict which plant species, particularly the trees, would grow in a certain place by studying the geology. The entire ecology was affected because of the plants, because of the soils, because of the hydrology, and because of the geology. I suddenly realised the holistic link between the woodland ecosystem and the exact type of rock, which in turn was determined by events that had happened on the Earth many millions of years ago. When I saw that, I had my own ‘Ah-ha!’ moment, and that’s when I realised: ‘It’s not just about pretty stones and rocks: it’s about how it all links together’.”

After receiving one-on-one tuition with his Geography teacher to study an O-Level in Geology, which his school did not usually offer, Dr Boreham went on to teach himself the A-Level course. “I knew I wanted to do it and I wouldn’t take no for an answer!” Despite being encouraged by his parents to go on to study Astro-physics at University, Dr Boreham declared that he “defied them and ended up doing a modular science degree. I was able to study Microbiology on the one hand, as well as Quaternary Geology, Sedimentology, Biochemistry, Woodland Ecology…

I must have been a timetabling nightmare, but since they offered all these fantastic courses, I just did everything I could get my hands on. My problem is that I am only interested in everything!

In the past there had been times where I thought that the people telling me to specialise were right

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It’s not just about pretty stones and rocks: it’s about how it all links together

- I had spread myself so thinly over the toast of life - but in the long run my comprehensive experiences served me really well. I guess that’s what made me a scientist: a bizarre thirst for knowledge in many different linked scientific disciplines. It’s hard to link Quantum Physics and Biology or Geography, but if you go via Chemistry and conventional Physics it is just a daisy chain.

Seeing those interdisciplinary linkages suddenly gave me a broad base, and slowly through my career, I became a master of several of these cognisant disciplines, rather than a ‘Jack-of-alltrades’. Everything is linked and for me that is what Geography is all about. It is about dipping into each of these things. By bringing in all these strings we get a much more holistic approach, after all, the whole is greater than the sum of its parts - and I think this highlights the potential for Geography both now and in the future.”

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Swimming in the Cam?

Dr Boreham later went on to explain his role in leading the Part IA Undergraduate skills fieldtrip to a Wastewater Treatment Facility upstream of the River Cam. “What is really interesting is the horror on the faces of some of the undergraduates as they come out of the bus and have a guided tour around a working Sewage Station. There is a slow, grim realisation that whatever they flush down the toilet comes to a place like this. There is distaste and sometimes resentment - but then a slow growing understanding that what they are seeing is the technological miracle of taking foul grey wastewater and creating a product that can be discharged into a river, and in which brown trout can live. They are seeing these huge technological advances that are protecting our environment and our health. By the time we are out on the river, doing chemistry and sampling the actual animals that live in it, people are smiling and having a great time.

If you want to go swimming in the River Cam, and I do not advise it, the ‘best’ time would be Easter because then around 80% of the River’s flow is natural or chalk spring water and only about 20% is treated effluent of some kind. However, by August, about 80% of the flow is treated effluent.

There is a massive tourist industry punting on the river, so the waste water technology needs to be good, and we, as a society, have come to rely upon the recycling of water. In Cambridge we draw our drinking water straight from the Chalk bedrock. However, in parts of North-East London, by the time the water comes out of your tap it has been through roughly five or six people before you.

If we want to have greater density of human population, particularly in South East England, which doesn’t have a particularly high amount of rainfall (Cambridge has about 560mm per year with other parts of East Anglia below 500mm similar to the semi-arid Sahel) we need to recycle water. We must use our resources and our technology to make sure that there is sufficient clean water for everyone. This is what Geography is about because water acts as a limit on economic development, health, housing, education and agriculture. The situation in South East England is tricky, but it isn’t so bad when we consider, for example, the suburban sprawl of Los Angeles, California. It only requires an El Niño event, just a climatic oscillation, and suddenly there is a persistent drought and the viability of this enormous urban area is called into question - but wait a second, they also built it quite close to a fault line too, and isn’t there a huge methane gas leak affecting public health? Now that’s what I call Geography!”

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Why is there greater support for gender equality in urban areas?

Dr Alice Evans, Bye-Fellow of Fitzwilliam College and University Lecturer in Human Geography, tells Compass about one of her current research projects, which investigates the varied global attitudes towards gender equality in urban and rural areas.

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lobally, urban residents tend to be more supportive of girls’ education, women’s employment and political leadership. Why is this? What is it about the urban that disrupts otherwise pervasive inequalities? And what does it reveal about the causes of egalitarian social change?

breadwinners, electricians, mechanics and nurses) appears to undermine internalised gender ideologies. It also signals that other people regard women as equally competent and deserving of status. This seems to foster a positive feedback loop, with rising support for female education, employment and leadership in urban areas.

Rural-urban differences in gender ideologies and practices have been widely observed. Across 20 middle and low-income countries, young urban women are ‘beginning to envision a future similar to young men: education, independence, greater financial autonomy, and shared responsibility for their family’ (Boudet et al., 2012: 97).

The prevalence of (and support for) female genital cutting is also lower in urban areas (UNICEF, 2013). Further, people with equivalent characteristics (age, education, occupation, marital status, wealth and media access) are less likely to justify violence against women if they live in urban areas of Sub-Saharan Africa (Uthman et al., 2009). Place matters, seemingly more than education or wealth. Gender inequalities also seem to be reducing more rapidly in urban areas.

Over the past 30 years in China, the gender gap in education has dramatically reduced in urban but not in rural areas (Zeng et al, 2014).

Importantly, such exposure is not an inevitable feature of the urban, but mediated by economic context. In a context of worsening economic security (structural adjustment in the 1980s, job losses, user fees, as well as HIV/AIDS), female employment is increasingly perceived as advantageous and thereby risen.

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Place matters, seemingly more than education or wealth

My comparative rural-urban, ethnographic research in Zambia points to two key features of the urban: heterogeneity and greater proximity to services. I wonder if these hold more widely?

Urban heterogeneity (stemming from intersecting migration channels) seems to increase the likelihood of exposure to women undertaking socially valued roles. Seeing a critical mass of women performing work previously presumed to be beyond their capabilities (such as

While rural Zambians have also endured hardship (declining soil fertility, reduced support from urban kin and increased living costs), their gender ideologies appear more resistant to change.

Rural homogeneity and limited exposure seem to limit people’s awareness of alternatives, dampen confidence in the possibility of social change, discourage contestation, reinforce gender ideologies and reproduce gender divisions of labour – as alluded to below: Nsenga (41, circular migrant, fish wholesaler): “In the village, there are no educated women for girls to look up to, so they don’t aspire for employment.”

Annie (45, widow, circular migrant, fish wholesaler): “But here in town, there are nurses, teachers, doctors. Girls think, ‘if I am educated then I can be a doctor’. Here in town children see everyone going to school but in the village they just see two people…”

Nsenga: “Here in town a woman may stop school to give birth, then she will be desperate to return to school and finish. But in the village they just give birth and it’s all over. It’s because of early marriage. There’s nothing else they see and aspire for.” [translated from Bemba]

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Greater proximity to services in urban areas also seems significant, making it easier for women to control their fertility and secure external intervention against gender-based violence.

Rural girls and women are thus less likely to be knowledgeable of, familiar with and financially able to access these services. Rural men may thus be less likely to fear external sanction, and regard government intervention as legitimate.

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Urban heterogeneity may erode assumptions of

difference and thereby cultivate support for equality

But proximity to services only disrupts gender inequalities in conjunction with effective policies.

It is only in the past decade that the Zambian government and co-operating partners have facilitated more gender egalitarian family planning and police training. As BanaBupe further remarked, ‘the government of Kaunda didn’t legislate that we could take husbands to court.

But this time, you lock him up’ [translated]. These changes are partly shaped by shifts in norms and effective feminist organising at the international level. Overseas development assistance for gender equality from OECD DAC members tripled between 2002 and 2012: from $8 billion to $24 billion (OECD, 2014). The disruptive potential

of the urban is clearly mediated by national and international gender policies.

What does this tell us about the urban?

Characterising the urban as particularly (though not inevitably) disruptive is common in urban studies. But whereas others have suggested that urban heterogeneity merely fosters tolerance of difference (e.g. Sennett, 1990: 126; Warf, 2015), my argument is that urban heterogeneity may erode assumptions of difference (between men and women) and thereby cultivate support for equality. It is not that urbanites cease to condemn outspoken women; rather, they come to champion women leaders.

I have shown this through a comparison with the rural. Weirdly, I think, urban geography tends to focus on the urban. But how can we understand the urban without comparison with the rural? Future research might adopt this same epistemology of the urban and explore the significance of the rural-urban spectrum in other domains: ethnicity, race and sexuality. The disruptive elements of the urban will undoubtedly differ between these cases, but I hope this brief thinkpiece is nonetheless valuable in showcasing the value of rural-urban comparative analysis.

The challenge now is to further investigate when, where and why the urban can be disruptive, as well as how such disruption might be amplified.

Afrobarometer (2015) ‘Online data analysis’. Afrobarometer.

Boudet, Ana Maria Munoz; Petesch, Patti; Turk, Carolyn and Thumala, Angelica (2012) On Norms and Agency: Conversations about Gender Equality with Women and Men in 20 Countries (Washington, D.C: The World Bank).

OECD-DAC (2014) ‘Financing the unfinished business of gender equality and women’s rights: priorities for the post-2015 framework, technical brief’ Uthman, Olalekan A; Lawoko; Stephen and Moradi, Tahereh (2009) ‘Factors associated with attitudes towards intimate partner violence against women: a comparative analysis of 17 sub-Saharan countries’, BMC International Health and Human Rights, 9:14.

Warf, Barney (2015) ‘Global cities, cosmopolitanism, and geographies of tolerance’, Urban Geography, 36(6): 927-946.

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Zeng, Junxia; Pang, Xiopeng; Zhang, Linxiu; Medina, Alexis; Rozelle, Scott (2014) ‘Gender inequality in education in China: a meta-regression analysis’, Contemporary Economic Policy, 32, 2: 474-491.

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A study in Sherlock How corporeal, imaginative and communicative

mobility is conveyed through fan-written Sherlockian travel writing and guidebooks.

What inspired you to conduct research in the field of Literary Geography, in particular fanwritten Sherlock Holmes travel writing?

I didn’t get interested in Sherlock Holmes until an old girlfriend of mine, who was obsessed with the stories, persuaded me to watch the Robert Downey Junior film adaptation (2009) and I loved it. Following the film, I saw the BBC TV series (2011, 2013, 2015, 2016) and I loved that too - all that fast-paced, refreshing action. She said to me, ‘If you like these, you should read the books’, so I did. When I was reading the books it occurred to me that so much of the stories is geographically unlike their portrayal in the TV and film adaptations. I initially had the impression that the stories were all about London, with a big capital L, whereas in the books there is a lot more that goes on elsewhere. Someone did a study of content analysis and found that 56% of the canon does not take actually place in London.

I was captivated by the idea that, because the stories take place mostly outside of London where their readership was heavily based, people were reading them as a form of travel writing, as a form of entering the lives of other people. This was how I got into my PhD work.

My title for about two years was ‘Sherlock Holmes as Travel Writing’, which sounds selfexplanatory but is impossible to try and write about. I was looking at the earlier stories and the earlier fandom and it was only later on when I did a year’s worth of research in America at the Library of Congress - funded by the AHRC that I discovered the world of Sherlock Holmes through fan-written travel writing. I discovered it as a completely untapped body of work that I could engage with - as a young academic that is amazing. To find a bunch of sources that no one has really talked about before is a gold mine.

When I first came into Geography after having done a degree in History at Durham University I was more of a cultural Geographer, I think, still more of a Historian really. Over time, I have become a Literary Geographer because that is a good field for me to be in with my research. A friend of mine, who started at the same time as me in non-serious Geography, as I am doing, likened my movement from History to Geography as being like ‘The Lord

with Dave McLaughlin

of the Rings’. He says, ‘Here I am, a confused little Hobbit, running through Middle Earth with the ring trying to find my place to put it’. I think I have moved away from History now in the sense that I find it less accommodating as a discipline than Geography. Geography is much more open and willing to push its own boundaries all the time, and I find that much more amenable to the kind of work I do. My research has always been inter-disciplinary since I was an Undergraduate, so finding a department that is set up to be interdisciplinary is great.

What is the most interesting thing you have learnt from your research so far?

I think the biggest thing is that there is almost an exact date at which American fans of the Sherlock Holmes stories got up from behind their desks - from writing fan fictions and semiacademic accounts - to when they started walking through the world as a way of understanding it. A date when they started thinking in a much more experiential, phenomenological and three-dimensional way. It was about 1970 - a real change point in the history of Sherlockian experiences of the world.

There is also so much material on this topic that no one has looked at before. There are fans writing whole guidebooks to London just from the point of view of Sherlock Holmes. And these guidebooks are not for the casual fan! Baker Street features, but also odd streets in London that they say Sherlock must have walked down because they work out the Geography of the book and figure that there is a blank space, even though it is not in the text.

I have also discovered now that there are two places in the Universe officially named after Sherlock Holmes. There is Sherlock crater on the moon and there is Holmes Peak in Oklahoma.

Where do you think your PhD will take you?

I think I will take what I am doing at the moment and continue looking at fans’ unexpected interest in moving through the world. I am thinking socio-geographically about literature, and seeing literature as a part of their everyday experience in a way that isn’t always at the fore-front of critics’ arguments. Perhaps doing it with another fandom would be really interesting. I am not sure if I want to stick with Sherlock Holmes. I am

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interested enough in carrying-on with my project, which helps me through the writing, but I think for my next project I would perhaps like to move on to Jane Austen. There are many potential places to go.

I am also planning to do some work with The Baker Street Irregulars, the world’s biggest and oldest Sherlock Holmes society. They are named after a group of homeless street children in the stories. The editor of their journal wants to do an interactive map of New York, which is where The Baker Street Irregulars are based. He wants to show the history of the fan-group in that place over the last thirty or forty years and he has enlisted my help to do so. I also saw a book in Chicago called ‘The Soft Map of Amsterdam’ which is a map of the city which has more of a focus on memories and experience, than on buildings and streets, and uses these experiences to map the city. I would like to do the same thing but call it ‘The Soft Map of Baker Street’ and use fans’ experience of their world to write about the world of Sherlock Holmes.

Which is your favourite Sherlock Holmes story?

I think this makes me a really bad fan of Sherlock Holmes, but my favourite story is ‘The Valley of Fear’ which is, in general, the least favourite. It is

one of the four short novels in the Sherlock canon.

I love this story because, like ‘The Hound of the Baskervilles’, half of it doesn’t involve Sherlock Holmes. It is also based on a true story - the detective work of a member of the Pinkertons who were the people who protected Lincoln during the Civil War. My favourite character is Birdy Edwards, the Pinkerton Detective in Vermissa Valley.

If you could be any character in the Sherlock canon, who would you be and why?

I would quite like to be Jude Law’s Watson. He is funny and not pretentious like Holmes, and also young and so full of vitality. He is as good as Holmes is, but just different, whereas many of the early TV adaptations make him look bumbling and idiotic. Maybe I would also like to be Birdy Edwards from ‘The Valley of Fear’, although his life is very dangerous, and I have never been in a fight, so I can’t say I am him! I definitely wouldn’t want to be the retired Sergeant of the Marines, McConnell, who turns up on the doorstep in ‘A Study in Scarlet’ and is used by Holmes to show off his prowess in front of Watson. I wouldn’t want to be Lestrade for that same reason either! Maybe I would like to be Inspector Tobias Gregson. There is a chapter in ‘A Study in Scarlet’ called ‘Tobias Gregson shows what he can do’: He is a very good detective!

Behind the Camera On a very cold and wet Thursday afternoon, I met up with second year Geography undergraduate from Fitzwilliam College and founder of the Students Of network, Joe Binder, to discuss his exciting, innovative and inspiring social media project.

Founded just over a year ago at the end of October 2014, Students of Cambridge has since had over 1.5 million views and has reached over 400,000 people across the world. Within a month of starting, Students of Cambridge had become a sort of franchise, with a network spanning fifteen different Universities across the UK, in Europe, and even in America, so you can imagine my excitement when I was asked to interview the man behind the camera, so to speak, for CUGS Magazine. Joe Binder is exactly as you would expect for someone whose job is to document the everyday lives, experiences and thoughts of students at the University; he is a genuine, laidback and friendly guy, who appears to like nothing better than sitting down with a coffee and having a chat, which is exactly what we did.

So what is Students of Cambridge?

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Joe claims that it “is a photographic census of all the students who go to Cambridge, or at least it hopes to be. It acts as a central platform for

student representation and expression, whereby anyone can have their views, opinions and ideas published and there is a huge ability for content to go viral. We have had individual posts reach over 170,000 people.” Essentially, it is a student take on Humans of New York, a Facebook blog and bestselling book which documents the everyday lives of people on the streets of New York City.

Joe remarks, “I was obsessed with Humans of New York and I just couldn’t understand why there wasn’t one for students of the University of Cambridge - it made no sense for me whatsoever!” So that is exactly what he set out to do.

When first starting Students of Cambridge, Joe was conscious of making it anonymous: “If I

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were to have attached an identity to it from the start it could have very easily been Joe Binder’s project and now there is no way of it becoming that because it has already established itself as a name and a brand. You can see it from all the posts. When I interview someone I always try and reduce the amount that I am speaking because nobody should care about who I am or my opinions - it’s all about what the other person has to say.

I think that’s what I love about Humans of New York and Students of Cambridge: it is the authenticity of it. Usually, the first thing people say when I stop and ask to speak to them is: ‘Oh, I am not interesting enough’ or ‘I don’t have a deep motivational quote’ and then my response is always ‘trust me, you are a human being, you are inherently interesting enough - there will be something about you that is unique and authentic’. That is what I always try to get to and that’s one of the things I love about Humans of New York. You get to meet different people just by reading their stories. You feel so much closer to them by reading something authentic and unique about someone which defines them. I have tried to replicate that in Students of Cambridge: I always try to find something that somebody is passionate about, and that can sometimes be really hard to do.” Ultimately, Joe told me, “it is all about authenticity and being interesting and unique, which everyone is; it is just the interviewer’s role to reach that.”

Developing Students of Cambridge:

The majority of the people Joe speaks to are students picked randomly from the street: “I tend to stay quite central and try and find people walking on their own because there is a lot of pressure to speak and do this particular interview when you are with a group of people. Whenever somebody is on their own or with a friend I try and target them. That could be in a college setting or just around Kings Parade or around Downing, just wherever I am at the time. I usually have my camera with me. If I see someone I just go over and chat to them. Sometimes people think I am really weird. I think you can tell a lot about someone and their personality by the way they react to how you speak to them at first.

For example, I could stop one person and ask: “Sorry, are you a student here?”, and they would say “Hi, yeah, what’s up?”; and other people would say: “Yeah? Why?”, and give me a really dirty look. I think you can tell a lot from that. I think it is quite fun to experiment with and to see different personalities come out from such a small interaction.”

Joe believed he reached a turning point in the project around one month after it started. “I spoke to two girls, Audrey and Yasmin, who did the Black Lives Matter Campaign. That was actually a huge moment for Students of

Cambridge because that was when I realised that it doesn’t have to be so similar to Humans of New York that it was just stories and ideas. Students of Cambridge can be used as a platform for Student expression. Audrey and Yasmin’s post got a reach of 20,000 people in a few hours when all the other posts had only been seen by 3000 or 4000 people.

So that was huge, and a defining, moment in the development of Students of Cambridge.

Students of Cambridge and Geography:

As well as being a fantastic non-academic project, it is clear that Students of Cambridge is inherently geographical. “Firstly, it requires the use of social media which adds a sense of a global village.

Somebody can say something on Students of Cambridge, for example let’s take the Black Lives Matter campaign, and that can be heard all over America within minutes of being uploaded here in the UK. I think that really contributes towards the availability of ideas. We have all these different nodes, these Students Of hubs at different universities but the second they are online it all becomes very flat - everybody can see it. You don’t have to be in a particular space to be able to hear or appreciate what is going on around the world at different Universities and I think that is something that is really special about the project and about social media: everything is accessible to everyone. You don’t need to be living in a certain University just to hear that University’s thoughts.

“It is also a form of ethnographic research, in the sense that I am speaking to people, trying to approach that conversation in a way that most suits them. Some people are weirded out by me, some people are super enthusiastic, and some people are shy. I think it is my responsibility to create an atmosphere where they feel comfortable to talk and open up and as an interviewer that is really difficult but this skill will definitely help when it comes to the dissertation and interviewing people for my research.” When asked to sum up Students of Cambridge in two words, Joe said that it was “diverse” and “genuine”, which I think perfectly captures the essence of a project that’s aim is to capture the authentic, unique and varied experiences and thoughts of both students at Cambridge, and across the world.

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LEARNING TIPS Lecturers impart their wisdom on how best to study, read and revise

Dr Alice Evans How do I read a book or article effectively?

The key – I think – is to critically engage with the text, rather than passively write down everything the author says. Think: what is their main argument? What evidence and reasoning do they use to justify that position? Is that sufficient to support claims made? How does this argument relate to the broader literature? What are the alternative perspectives on this issue?

If reading for a specific essay question then think carefully about what the question is asking. Only some of the material presented in the article or book will be relevant. Always focus on the question at hand. Dogmatically.

How much extra reading should I be doing?

Reading more widely is beneficial: broadening your understanding of different issues and perspectives. However, it’s not just about quantity: how you read is cardinal (as mentioned above). Further, you may have other priorities, besides Geography.

How should I write an essay for a supervision?

Okay, here is my six point plan for success: 1 What is the question asking? Think carefully here. Any deviation from the question posed is irrelevant and an utter waste of time.

2 What are the different perspectives on the question posed? Consider these alternatives and the reasoning behind each.

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3 Read around the topic.

4 Write a plan that directly responds to the question posed.

Your aim, in writing an essay, is to persuade the reader. Your reader is one of my phenomenally intelligent colleagues. They will not be persuaded by an unjustified one line assertion. If you lack the evidence to support your point then either: (a) cut it; (b) look for evidence; or (c) explicitly state that this is a mere speculation, not statement of fact.

5 Discuss your plan with a friend, who has already prepared their own. Does their plan answer the question? Is it persuasive? Is each and every claim justified sufficiently, such that you have no doubts about its validity? Chat at length.

6 Write your argument. Ta da!

How do I get the most from lectures?

I would emphasise critically engagement, rather than passively writing down everything the lecturer says. Think about the argument they are making, the evidence cited and consider ways in which it might be critiqued. What further questions do you have?

I grant, it is tempting to write notes as if gospel (since my colleagues put everything so clearly, cogently and indeed beautifully). But such passive note-taking is not conducive to critical analysis.

The latter is a skill that needs to be worked at and routinised.

Rather than starting from a blank slate, you might find it helpful to read a relevant paper before attending the lecture. This will equip you with a

Learning

foundational understanding of key issues, as well as a critical lens through which to evaluate the ideas presented.

Then, after the lecture, discuss the lecture with friends from college – on the walk back, over lunch or perhaps with tea and cake. If you each read a paper in advance, then you are likely to have a slightly different perspective and evidencebase from which to debate. This would be superb.

What revision strategies work best?

Essay plans.

Look at past papers. Identify some questions to answer and write essay plans. You could do this ‘open book’ or ‘closed book’: either allowing yourself access to notes and articles (to research a topic); or closing your computer and seeing how much you know. You might find it useful to share and discuss the essay plan with a friend (after they have answered the same question). Do they

find your answer persuasive? How might your argument be critiqued? Does it respond to the question posed? You are surrounded by brilliant minds: harness this resource, debate different perspectives, learn through critically engaging with each other’s work.

Stay cool, calm and collected during the revision period is equally important. Anxiety will disturb your sleep and hamper critical analysis during the exam. In the Easter term of my undergraduate years, I used to stop work at 5.30pm every day, so as to enable my brain to switch off. I played sports. All the sports. But other things may work for you.

What if I keep falling asleep in lectures?

Reconsider your priorities.

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Dr Harriet Allen How do I read a book/ article effectively?

Essentially the answer is the same whether you are reading for physical or human geography, and Alice’s answer is comprehensive when thinking about how to approach the reading with the question in mind. I would add, for physical geography, that you are often reading papers which give the results of empirical or theoretical research. This information often forms the evidence you can use to substantiate an argument or as an example of a process operating. In this instance, you should take note of the details of this evidence, e.g. what are the rates of sea level change? Is this spatially and temporally variable? Does latitudinal species richness vary between mammals and trees? In all these examples, what you need to note are the data that support your statements – and make

careful and precise notes about the units in which these measurements were made. Think about whether you are comparing like for like units.

How do I get the most from lectures?

Every lecturer has a different style and will have thought about whether powerpoint (for example) is the most useful medium to use to convey their ideas. So your approach to lecturers and what you get from these is potentially going to vary from one lecturer to another.

If we think about powerpoint, you need to ask yourself why a lecturer chooses to use it. Is it to jog their memory about what comes next and the order in which they are going to present their

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information, or is it as an aid to you, the listener, so that you don’t have to take notes?

In the first there may be few words, but lots of diagrams, maps, photographs. In the second there might be bullet points, quotations, etc. Of course it is usually a mixture of the two; it is rarely simply the latter. Therefore think about this, and if you know a lecturer’s style you will adapt your practice from one lecturer to another.

Wherever possible, lecturers try to get their material (if they use powerpoint) up on to the intranet in advance. This means that you can download it ahead of the lecture and then take that material to the lecture (printed out or on your laptop). In some lectures you will have to take quite detailed notes – it is very rare that anyone remembers days later (near the exams) what a lecturer said without having any notes. But you shouldn’t be aiming to write down, word for word, everything the lecturer said (see Alice’s comments). If there is a handout (copy of powerpoint presentation) then annotate that, either on paper or digitally. Look for good applications which allow you to annotate a PDF without having to print it.

But remember that not every lecturer uses powerpoint. They don’t have to and they will have thought carefully about whether to do so – it is not just laziness. Without powerpoint they are engaging in a very different teaching style and you are learning differently, and this is to be celebrated. Also be aware that for copyright reasons, some lecturers remove diagrams from PDF of their powerpoint before uploading it. This is also the reason why some lecturers do not allow you access to their original powerpoint slides, but instead give you a PDF of it. A lecturer’s presentation is their intellectual property, reflecting the hours that they have put in to writing it. It is therefore not for you to change or edit it, even for your own study purposes, especially as you might pass an edited version to someone else – which, in any case, you should not be doing. Lecturers are protecting themselves and their intellectual property by choosing not to give you the powerpoint slides. While some lecturers do choose to share their slides, you should not expect all of them to do so.

I recommend that after a lecture (or at the very least all the lectures given in a block) that you review these together and see where you can make connections between topics/ideas/themes.

Drawing some sort of mind map or spider diagram linking key themes together will help you make these connections. It will also help you to spot

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any gaps in your knowledge/understanding which you can then plug through reading and asking questions at supervisions.

Apart from reading books and articles on the reading list, what other useful things could I be doing/reading?

Practise all those things you wrote about in your personal statement for UCAS. Keep reading, as widely as possible. It doesn’t always have to be academic literature. There is plenty of reading (books) available (fiction/non-fiction) which you can use to remind yourself why you are so passionate about geography. And, when you read do so for enjoyment as well as being critical. Most newspapers have book review sections in their weekend ‘culture’ supplements; read these to find out which general interest books have just been published and which have a strong geographical context – or visit Heffers/Waterstones to see what is new. You should be reading newspapers and magazines, e.g. New Scientist or The Economist for up to date information. As you progress through the degree and you start to find your particular area of interest, you can signup for email alerts for new issues of journals – essentially the table of contents and some editiorials. This is a great way to discover the most recently published papers. Also, visit the Department Library’s Periodicals room and browse copies of journals – physical copies – to see what is out there; a problem with looking at online versions is that sometimes there are too may clicks to get you through a list of papers.

Don’t forget there are radio and television programmes which may also be useful – check out podcasts and programmes on iplayer/youtube How can I plan an essay effectively?

Go and visit the Deptartment’s online resources on essay writing, and look through the different topics listed. You will find examples of essays that have been marked, with annotations, and

Learning

examples of what makes a good introduction, why an argument doesn’t work, etc. Go to: https:// intranet.geog.cam.ac.uk/undergraduate/skills/ Of course, a key starting point is to know what the question is asking. Therefore spend a bit of time thinking about this – is there more than one way in which you can interpret the question?

Talk about it with your supervision partner and bounce ideas off each other. When planning make sure that there is balance – have you addressed the answer in full, or only focused on part of the question? If you look at the marking criteria for exam essay answers (https://intranet.geog. cam.ac.uk/undergraduate/essayscriteria.pdf) you will see that these are marked on the basis of 1) relevance of answer to the question set, 2) quality of argument, and 3) range of knowledge displayed. You can use this as guidance for supervision essays. Critically think about what you are planning and see whether you think, in all honesty, that your answer fulfils these criteria.

How do I get the most out of my supervisions?

Come prepared – prepared to be an active participant in supervision discussions, and prepared because you can remember what you wrote in your essays. Just as every lecturer has his/her own style, so too with supervisors. Ideally the supervisor doesn’t do all the talking, but that means you also have to participate. Therefore, think in advance what questions you want to ask, what information you need in order to understand more clearly the themes or processes related to the topic. These might not come directly from your essay reading/writing but from lecture material. It is rare that a supervision will focus solely on the essay question(s) you and your group have answered; often that is the starting point for discussion. Therefore think about the wider context of what you have written.

You may be asked to explain to your supervision partners what you have said in your essay – it helps if you know this without having to bury yourself in a copy of your essay.

Carl

Lend er

Don’t be afraid to disagree with your supervision partner(s) and indeed the supervisor. So long as you can back up your opinions, with evidence/ examples, then it is perfectly acceptable to do so.

Some of the liveliest supervisions stem from such discussions.

“

A supervision shoud not be a mini lecture

A supervision should not be a mini lecture, therefore don’t slavishly write down everything the supervisor says. If you keep your head down and focus only on your piece of paper/laptop, then you are not being an active participant. It is often better to get a discussion going, and then ask for a pause and then make a note of the key points being considered.

Two opposite states to avoid – don’t become the dominant member of the supervision group and don’t become the quietest member either.

Everyone should have an equal chance to participate and the supervisor will help to facilitate this; but so can you through being aware of the group’s dynamic.

Supervisions can be some of the most enjoyable teaching experiences that Department staff have, but not always. If you have enjoyed a supervision, then most likely your supervisor has too. If you haven’t, then maybe they haven’t either.

Therefore think about whether you can make that experience better, by being prepared.

Finally, you are very lucky to be in a Department where most of your lecturers also supervise, and where most of your supervisors are also lecturers. This is very unusual in Cambridge.

Having a system in the second year (option papers) and third year by which supervisions are coordinated by the lecturers is also very rare, but we, the Department staff (most of whom are also Directors of Studies), recognise that this works best for everyone and gives students equal access to the most knowledgeable researchers. This includes our PhD students, who are generally very keen to help you learn.

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Physical: Cadiz, Spain

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The Dissertation Demystified Physical: Cadiz, Spain

By Dale Walmsley I have always preferred physical geography, but when it comes to dissertation time, everyone seems to flock to the human side and dive into interviews, surveys and focus groups. I decided to stand my ground and be that physical geographer.

Dissertation ideas can be hard to come by in physical geography, so if you do want to do a physical one then I would suggest talking to someone in the department who researches in the field you want to study, for example volcanology, coastal studies or biogeography.

I decided to do a coastal dissertation, and after speaking with Dr Moeller, I decided to focus on the spatial variation of stem flexibility in salt marsh vegetation. It is better to have a focused title as it makes it easier to direct your investigation. Also, use the dissertation as an opportunity to get some travelling in, especially since there are so many grants and funds available. I managed to get myself a trip to Cadiz in southern Spain to study the salt marsh there and to practice a bit of the Spanish I had forgotten since A Level.

Stem flexibility is an important factor because it affects how the stem moves in the water column and thus affects its capability of attenuating approaching wave energy. Due to salt marshes now being viewed as a natural coastal defence, the research is key to improve the understanding of the importance of vegetation on restored marshes for defence. The study had three principal strands, one of which was to test a new piece of apparatus which I designed (it wasn’t very hi-tech) to see if it was an accurate surrogate

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for testing stem flexibility compared to the Instron machine used in the laboratory. I also wanted to test the spatial variation of the stem flexibility of spartina and salicornia, two of the most common salt marsh species on the Cadiz marsh. Finally, the study aimed to determine some factors which influenced the flexibility of individual stems such as the weight per unit volume of the stem.

Before heading to Spain in July, I was put in contact with the university in Cadiz where there was a team working on salt marsh vegetation who I could join in the field. They organised for me to flat share with a Spanish student who wanted to improve her English. After arriving and meeting my new flat mate, within an hour, she told me that she couldn’t understand my Northern Irish accent. Therefore it was two weeks of speaking only Spanish to a woman who had a very thick Spanish accent, it was definitely an experience!

It was two weeks of speaking only Spanish to a woman who had a very thick Spanish accent, it was definitely an experience!

The research was a lot of work, with two weeks spent between the salt marsh and the laboratory.

It is a tiring experience but it is also rewarding to collect your own original data in the field.

Physical fieldwork is difficult, I am not going to lie. The temperature in Spain in July was up close to 40 degrees C and with no shade on the salt marsh, it was a harsh environment in which to conduct research. I would definitely recommend thinking about the influence of weather when carrying out your fieldwork because it can affect your ability to work in the field. A physical dissertation also requires a fair bit of maths. You don’t need to be a maths genius but it is useful

Learning

if you feel comfortable dealing with numbers as there is often statistical tests involved with physical fieldwork. Don’t let this put you off doing a physical dissertation though, because there is lots of support available in the department for the statistical side. Also, having data and statistical tests makes it a bit easier to try to draw out some conclusions rather than trying to go through lots of interviews to find some results, in my opinion.

would ever spend so much time thinking about a salt marsh!

I am glad that I decided to do a physical geography dissertation so don’t be put off it!

Speak to people in the department and don’t be scared of asking for advice. I never thought I

Human: Reykjavik, Iceland

By Rob Beresford The Icelandic landscape is one which is not only very geologically active, but also thought to be the home of many elves, dwarves, trolls and hidden people. Most people in Iceland know somebody with a story of having encountered an elf or other being from another dimension. The majority of the population (the percentage varies by study but is usually a majority) would not deny the possibility that elves might exist. It is not a belief as much as a world view about the importance of respecting nature and the environment.

Most people in Iceland know somebody with a story of having encountered an elf or other being from another dimension

My area of study was about impact of elves and other mythical beings on planning. The history of road building in Iceland has featured many problems with the elves. While the elves are beings from another dimension, their homes and other buildings exist in this world as rocks, usually found in lava fields. When construction is planned in an area populated by elves, companies are often beset by difficulties. Stories frequently relate to disaster, usually involving machinery breaking down when attempting to move rocks. People have also lobbied construction companies when construction is planned in an elf area. In the most recent case, after well over two years, the road company moved an 80 tonne boulder, thought to be an elf chapel, to allow them to build a road.

While I was in Iceland I conducted five semistructured interviews. I had begun to email people about interviews several months before I visited Iceland. I also went to places where contestations of space had occurred over elf rocks. I found where some of these were in advance although primarily I learnt of the location and stories surrounding these places while I was in Iceland.

Also, I found visiting museums a useful way of gaining a wider perspective of culture.

One of the main parts of my methodology was interviews. Finding people to interview is a challenging and daunting task! It’s useful to email people well in advance and have some interviews set up before you go. It’s also possible that during interviews, respondents will mention other people you should talk to, or you might discover new people when you visit a new place, so be aware to be flexible. Conducting interviews varies greatly depending on the type of interview you are conducting. Interviews could sometimes happen very spontaneously, so always be ready!

Planning going abroad presents different challenges depending on where you’re going. I booked flights and accommodation several months in advance which kept costs down. It’s worth investigating how you are going to travel around the places you are going to and factoring in the costs of this. Insurance is another cost important to consider. Also, the use of an interpreter might be necessary.

Overall I wanted to write a dissertation that could demonstrate that when conceptualising landscape, geographers must include that which may not be considered real, in the sense that it is not physical. However, as these contestations of land use reveal, the elves have very real effects. The landscape is one made up of a large array of actors, such as humans and the physical landscape itself, but also elements that are more tacit and sensual. The Icelandic world view, including elves, can be thought of as a materialisation of the emotional effect of nature on people, which is often ignored in favour of economic or political factors in planning.

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Taking the

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next step

By Emma Harper

Don’t Panic!

This section is not here to make you worry about your career right this second. It is merely to let you know that you have already made a big step towards your future career, by choosing to study such an amazing subject as geography. What makes it such a great degree for your future?

Well, according to the Royal Geographical Society, 85% of geography graduates will be employed after graduation. So really there is nothing to be worried about, we geographers are employable.

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If you still need some convincing, let me reassure you by reinforcing the skills you will definitely have by the end of your time in the geography department at Cambridge; skills that will make you so attractive to future employers, your very own geographer’s toolbox:

Next Steps

1. After all those hours spent on the computers in the top lab, believe it or not you will have brilliant IT skills, something which in this technological world is highly desirable to employers.

2. Geography is all about trends and patterns, so that makes geographers pretty good at spotting them, another helpful skill in the working world.

3. You will be an independent researcher who can effectively manage their time and meet deadlines (most of the time)! Any employer looking for a project manager will love you.

4. The variety in a geography degree, well it’s hard to keep up with really. One week we could be in a laboratory looking at the properties of rocks, the next conducting surveys around town and the week after that, waist deep in the Cam collecting water samples. All of this variety makes us very versatile and after all you never know what an employer might ask you to do.

So now while you are slaving away over those essays or stressing over coursework, be assured that the skills you are developing will be greatly appreciated by your future employer.

My top tips for more advice: look at the Cambridge careers service website which is packed full of helpful advice and work experience opportunities. The careers page written by the RGS is both helpful and reassuring and don’t forget to check out their article in the next few pages.

5. Think of all those books we trawl through whilst writing essays. Geographers are brilliant at collating information from a variety of sources, another skill that employers will appreciate.

If you are still worried about what will happen after Cambridge then read these accounts from geography alumni to see where the degree has taken them, and don’t worry, they all felt like we do now when they were doing their degrees!

• www.careers.cam.ac.uk • www.rgs.org/OurWork/ Study+Geography/Careers/

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Dominic Waughray

“

I am currently Head of Public Private Partnerships and Member of the Executive Committee of the World Economic Forum (WEF). The WEF - based in Geneva, Switzerland is the international organisation for public-private cooperation, perhaps best known for its annual meeting in Davos. We work with leaders from governments, civil society, global business and international organisations to make progress on global challenges, like closing the infrastructure gap or tackling food security. I have led the WEF work on environment since I joined in 2006; this includes mobilising international partnerships for action on issues like climate change, water security, forests and more.

One example. Researchers estimate that half of the world’s tropical deforestation is driven by the unsustainable sourcing of just four commodities palm oil, paper, beef and soy. As well as massive biodiversity loss, this destruction also accounts for about 7% of global GHG emissions and many localised environmental problems such as smog. Yet, over a billion poor people rely on forests and agro-forestry for their livelihoods.

So, how to produce tangible and sustainable economic benefit from tropical forests whilst also protecting them? By bringing together the major companies involved in the supply chains of these commodities - producers, traders, manufacturers and retailers (for palm oil companies like Wilmar, Unilever, Nestle, Walmart); leading NGOs (like WWF, Greenpeace, Rainforest Alliance etc); Ministers of Environment and Economy from forested nations like Brazil, Columbia, Gabon, Indonesia, Peru) and donor countries and organisations (like NORAD, DFID, World Bank); one can build an alliance to help everyone shift to sustainable production. This is what the Forum is doing by hosting and delivering a partnership with these players through something called the Tropical Forest Alliance 2020. TFA 2020 has a goal for zero deforestation in those four supply chains by 2020.

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We run similar public-private partnerships for action in water security, climate change (we worked closely with the Government of France and the UNFCCC for the public-private action track for COP21); and other environmental public good/

common property resource challenges. I manage a team of about 14 at WEF that helps deliver this work, but we are very connected in with many other NGOs, government and international agencies and companies to create and deliver these networks for action.

Geography for me was - and continues to be - a key skill set: being taught to examine and solve problems from a multi-disciplinary point of view (earth science, economics and politics), within a spatial context has I think been key to my career.

I benefited from work experience in scientific research and business consultancy before joining an international organisation: getting this experience under my belt gave me confidence and helped me join the WEF at an expert rather than a more junior or generalist level. I really enjoy continuous learning and applying what I know to new cultural, geo-physical and political contexts very much a geographer’s trait.

I don’t really have any tips for fellow undergraduate Geographers, aside from I don’t think you need to follow the money immediately to have a satisfying career path. I know peers of mine who graduated and dashed off into the city at 22. At that time I was broke and they seemed jolly well paid. Instead I followed what I was interested in and a career has somehow emerged from that. People respond to people who are driven by passion and intellectual curiosity and therefore work hard and care about doing their best. It certainly keeps you feeling young and that you are making a contribution. For me, it all still feels like some kind of giant geography project, which is pretty cool.

Next Steps

Salwa Elhalawani

“

I am a sociologist and anthropologist by education. My first degree was B.A in Sociology from University of Cairo, Egypt.

My engagement in international and sustainable development projects in my home country, Egypt, intrigued me to learn more about biodiversity conservation, thus, I decided to pursue my postgraduate studies in the subject that explores the relationship between nature and human aspects, geography. I was awarded a scholarship for a PhD degree in geography at Fitzwilliam College, which I completed and graduated in 2013.

In 2014 I joined BirdLife International as a Project Officer for the Arcadia/BirdLife Conservation Partnership Fund. The goal of the

Gabriella Lobb

“

I graduated from Selwyn in June 2014 having studied a mixture of human and physical geography throughout my degree. I think this balance was really important for developing a well-rounded skill-set. Whilst I didn’t really know what I wanted to do after graduating, I chose modules that first and foremost I enjoyed, but that I was also good at. Cambridge is difficult at the best of times so try to make it a bit easier for yourself or at least a bit more enjoyable.

It doesn’t really matter what you study as long as you can frame those skills in a way that will support a future job application. Geography equips you with a multitude of skills which are invaluable in the workplace; I completely underestimated how much I’d apply my degree to my current role. When I graduated I knew I wanted to work for a big company with the opportunity to explore different types of roles to find the right fit for me. I looked at many different

fund is to support a dynamic network of high impact self-sustaining conservation NGOs which are working effectively with local people, local and national governments and the international community to better protect key species, sites and habitats in their own countries. My main role is to assist the 12 participating NGOs around the world in planning, and following up on the implementation of, organisational development and conservation activities. Not only this, but I also conduct studies related to the illegal killing and taking of birds. Recently I have undertaken a socioeconomic study on bird hunting along the Mediterranean Coast of Egypt.

No doubt, the geographical skills I acquired through my studies in Cambridge were the backbone of my work. The understanding of conservation issues on both national and international levels, and the importance of involving local people in conservation, was my main study area and the focus of my dissertation. Also, understanding research methodology, particularly how to collect, analyse and interpret data has added to my skillset, which enabled me to competently undertake research on the ground. The commitment and hard work that studying geography entails, well-qualifies a student to successfully obtain a geography related career. graduate schemes from consultancy and research, to the Civil Service and business management.”

I am currently ‘Team Manager of Unsecured Money Management and Joint Ventures Collections’ at Lloyds Banking Group. It’s a bit of a mouthful but essentially I am responsible for 28 individuals who help customers in financial difficulty across the different brands of the Group. I also manage people in the Customer Priority Team who are specially trained to support customers identified as vulnerable due to their personal or family situation. I absolutely love my job - it’s incredibly challenging and I have new things thrown at me every day. Coming pretty much straight from education into a role where I am working for lots of other people, colleagues, management and customers, it’s a very different dynamic than I’m used to. I think Cambridge places so much focus on working for the individual it’s been fantastic to work in a team of talented individuals and build something much greater than what I can achieve on my own in the library, not to mention being able to see practical results rather than memorising endless references, theories and case studies!

Most people laugh when I tell them I studied Geography and am now a banker. They always think it’s a bit of a random step, and that because I’m not a geography teacher or a weather girl, I can’t possibly be using my degree. In fact

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I think I use my degree far more than I ever imagined. Apart from the obvious Excel skills and the ability to understand process maps and flow charts at the blink of an eye, I think my mindset and the way I approach problems has been completely moulded by my geographical study.

From obtaining and selecting relevant and valid information, to performing analysis and producing logical, convincing reports, geography has heavily influenced the way I do my work. You wouldn’t believe the look on the faces of the senior leaders when I showed them that we can do variances and averages to track changes in performance rather than just looking at random figures that feed into our systems. It might seem like an obvious thing to us geographers to make our data relevant and useful, in the same way that considering all stakeholder interests before making a decision is paramount for successful implementation, but trust me not everybody sees it that way. The world needs more geographers, and not just teaching, reading the weather or standing in rivers when it rains a lot.

So some top tips - as an undergraduate, enjoy your time in Cambridge. It really is a wonderful place and despite the never-ending stream of work, you are all really lucky to be there. The time flies by I promise so just try to appreciate it every now and again. I also wish I’d been reassured that things always turn out OK - no matter how difficult an assignment is or how little you think you know for an exam, you always know far more than you think you do and it will always be fine, I promise!

When it comes to graduating I’d say keep your options open - throw out your feelers to lots of different organisations and different types of roles.

I never thought I’d end up in banking, but I can’t imagine enjoying work more than I do.

John Wallace

“

After graduating, and a short holiday to recharge my batteries, I spent my summer volunteering at The Mountain Trust in Pokhara, Nepal. I was involved in a variety of projects and undertook a range of research and administrative tasks. My highlights were helping in the preparation and delivery of a health camp, which treated over six-hundred patients in rural hillside communities, and leading an ethnographic research project that assessed the impact of a development initiative.

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The summer after graduation soon came to an end and my working life began with a grad scheme at PricewaterhouseCoopers. For the following nine months I worked as an Assurance Associate and began training to become an accountant. The role comprised of carrying out a range of evidence gathering activities that formed part of an external statutory audit. I worked on the audits of national and multinational organisations operating in a variety of industries, including manufacturing, construction, healthcare and science. Visiting different clients and studying accounting and business modules was interesting, but the vast majority of the work involved tick-

box exercises and too much copying and pasting in Excel to keep me interested. After exploring different options with my manager and partner, I resigned and left under amicable circumstances in May 2015.

Having regretted not taking a gap year after uni, I took the summer months off and did a little bit of travelling and a few other things. I went trekking in Snowdonia National Park in Wales, travelled around South East Asia for a couple of months, explored some Norwegian fjords, went to a music festival (see picture) and stayed with my sister in Toronto for a short while. I had a blast. But, like a year earlier, the summer came to an end all too soon and I needed to work out what to do next.

Thinking back to how much I enjoyed my degree, I was keen to find something more aligned to what I had studied. I made a number of speculative applications to various organisations, charities, think tanks and NGOs. I was lucky enough to receive an email back from a research fellow at the Overseas Development Institute (ODI) and managed to secure myself an internship in their Social Development

Next Steps

team. I worked on a project funded by the Hewlett Foundation and spent most of my time researching the extent to which social policies support and facilitate the educational attainment and economic empowerment of women and girls in countries across South East Asia, the Middle East, Sub-Saharan Africa and North Africa. It was a huge task, but really interesting.

were pretty useful (e.g. involving stakeholders, evaluating environments etc.). At PwC I guess it was more of a personal thing (e.g. a critical reflection of myself and what I was doing, something you might do in your dissertation research). Now at ODI I’m essentially doing big supervision essays (e.g. finding sources, reading, picking out interesting bits and writing).

Sadly my internship at the ODI was unpaid so I worked in three bars/pubs and a leisure centre in my evenings and weekends. Fortunately my manager liked my work and I’m currently finalising a paid work contract agreement.

I’m planning on doing the research remotely, hopefully on a beach somewhere sunny!

Thoroughly investigate any work or postgraduate programmes you’re offered. What will you be doing on a day-to-day basis? Will you be in a position where you can think for yourself, make a difference and enjoy yourself in the process? What responsibilities will you have? An interview is a two-way process, these are the kind of questions you should ask when an interviewer says have you any got questions.

When I was in Nepal my geographical skills

Alastair Neilson

“

Since graduating from Magdalene in 2012 I’ve completed the graduate scheme at professional services firm EY (Ernst & Young), auditing clients in the real estate, hospitality and leisure sectors. I haven’t needed to use too much of my Geography directly doing accountancy, but many of the skills from the Cambridge Tripos have been important; data analysis is a key part of my job, and it’s essential to be able to process and quickly understand large volumes of information.

You might not think it, but my role in accountancy is much more about liaising with clients and colleagues than it is sitting in front of Excel spreadsheets and using complicated maths!

Supervisions taught me how to put an argument across well and communicate effectively, whether the subject matter is historical geography or accounting principles!

I’m now a chartered accountant having obtained the internationally recognised ACA qualification; the exams are hard work but not impossible, and it’s seen as a passport to a huge range of jobs in the finance and business world. EY makes it as easy as possible; paying in full for the tuition and exams and giving you paid study leave to prepare.

lead teams and manage projects when I’m only a few years out of university. It’s exciting to see inside the companies behind well-known brands (my favourite was Domino’s pizza), and I regularly work with colleagues in different countries as many of our clients operate internationally.

EY offers roles for graduates in many areas; management consultancy, accountancy, corporate finance, tax, and now even law. All of the service lines give you a very firm grounding and introduction to the world of business, and working towards a professional qualification is definitely worth considering to give yourself an even wider range of career options.There are opportunities to specialise; maybe our Climate Change and Sustainability Services department might take your fancy, and being part of a truly global organisation gives you the chance to travel the world on secondments. I’d highly recommend the six-week summer internship; I fitted it in after my second year along with my dissertation research and it gave me the opportunity to experience the job first hand before deciding if it was for me.

The most enjoyable part of my job is working with some great people, and having the opportunity to

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RGS-IBG: Supporting Your Future in Geography By Simon Faulkner, Ambassador Scheme Coordinator

T

he Royal Geographical Society (with IBG) is dedicated to the development and promotion of geographical knowledge, together with its application to the challenges facing society and the environment.

This means that the Society is here to support geography. In all its forms and guises, whether it’s being studied at school, university, or put into practice in the world of work, we aim to help and support those involved with it and promote the subject’s relevance to key issues facing the world.

The Society is an organisation open to anyone, with a vibrant community of geographers across all ages and backgrounds. As a student, you can benefit greatly from a wide range of support, whether looking for a grant to fund your dissertation research, becoming a fieldwork apprentice, or using our careers resources to work out your next step, there’s many opportunities the Society offers.

Geography Ambassador Scheme The geography Ambassadors scheme harnesses the enthusiasm of undergraduate, postgraduate and graduate geographers to promote the subject to school pupils through interactive sessions and support, and to be positive role models for the subject and higher education in the classroom.

The scheme works with over 35 universities across England, Wales and Northern Ireland, has over 1,300 active Ambassadors currently part of it, delivers 800 sessions annually to 250+ schools and reaches an estimated 28,000 school pupils every year. It is open to anyone studying geography at university with experience of the UK school system.

The scheme is a great way for you as a student to share the geography love to secondary school pupils, become part of a vibrant community of lovely people, create and deliver your own resources as well as gain a variety of transferrable skills. To find out more about becoming a Geography Ambassador please contact the scheme’s coordinator Simon Faulkner on s.faulkner@rgs.org or visit www.rgs.org/ ambassadors The Geography Ambassador Scheme is kindly supported by Esri UK

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Grants The Society offers a range of grants for students, from small scale to help you get out in the field for your dissertation research, to larger scale if you’d like to plan a full-on expedition, there is something for everyone. Visit: www.rgs.org/ grants Overseas Research Grants for First Year Undergraduates As part of the Learning and Leading programme, the RGS-IBG is offering a small number of £2,000 grants to enable first year geography undergraduates to participate in overseas fieldwork with an academic from their university.

These ‘Field Apprentice’ grants benefit both the undergraduates, by offering them a unique opportunity to gain valuable field experience, and also the academics, by funding an apprentice for their field research.

The deadline for applying for a Field Apprentice grant is February each year. Application forms from both the undergraduate and the academic,

Next Steps

along with a reference from another university tutor must be submitted by this time for the undergraduate to be considered. Interviews for the shortlisted undergraduates will take place on Thursday 10th March 2016. To find out more about this opportunity, and to see what previous Field Apprentices have done, please see the website. If there are any further questions, please contact Charlie, the Learning and Leading Coordinator on landl@rgs.org

Events The Society has a full termly programme of events that vary greatly in their size and scope, most of which students are able to attend. You can find a full list of our events at www.rgs.org/ whatson - many of which are free to attend.

21st Century Challenges The Royal Geographical Society (with IBG)’s 21st Century Challenges programme invites leading thinkers and commentators to give their view on topical issues of today. From climate change, energy security and flooding, to immigration, housing, economic growth, and the digital divide. Everyone is welcome to come and share their ideas at our evening panel discussions in London and cities across the UK, or catch up with over 150+ free speaker videos online at www.21stcenturychallenges.org Anyone is able to join the Society and enjoy the wide range of benefits it provides. You can find out more about these and find out how to join by visiting www.rgs.org/joinus

If you still aren’t convinced by how helpful the RGS can be to young geographers then read these accounts by Cambridge geography undergraduates of their experience as RGS Ambassadors: Ania: I decided to sign up for the RGS Ambassador scheme to explore my future career options, boost my CV and help the society ensure that GCSE and A-level students have a better understanding of what geography is and where it can take them. In a year, I have visited several schools to lead sessions on development projects, studying geography at university and careers. The scheme has also helped me land a job as an assistant teacher at a summer school in Switzerland. It’s a great experience with fun people around who support you, inspire you and share your passion for geography!

Sam: Personally I was just a little bit fed up of having to explain to people why geography is relevant as a subject! The RGS ambassador scheme allows you to share a passion for geography with students, teachers and parents.

I have worked with wonderful students during my time on the scheme sharing ideas of Orientalism and critical thought with sixth form students, talking about geography at university and beyond at careers fairs, and helping run a session with year nines on the breadth of geography as a subject! Despite having busy terms, the RGS ambassador scheme has always been a really fun thing to go and do!

Rosie: I joined the Geography Ambassador Scheme in the hope of inspiring more students to take the subject. Being an ambassador involves planning school visits and helping out at events at the RGS in their London office. So far, I’ve I run two sessions to students in years 7-9. The most challenging thing was to try and pitch the presentation to the right age group, a task which we initially failed at and were then faced with awkward silences. But we saved the situation by showing funny maps of the world, like where the hairiest populations live or where McDonald’s is globally, and in the end we left feeling as if the students had learnt something and enjoyed themselves. Being a geography ambassador has helped my presentation skills and it is very useful to experience organisational meetings and working in a professional environment, all of which can go on your CV. At the end of the day it is a great opportunity so have a try and spread the geography love.

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PROCRASTINATION SECTION

African Rivers

CALEDON

CONGO CUANDO

CUNENE

GAMBIA

GAMTOOS

KAGERA

LIMPOPO LOGONE LUALABA

Capital Scramble

Capitals can be more than one word long

1. BEOSSEIURAN 2. ALPUUKLRMUA 3. VAINANATNARO 4. HEECGONNPA

5. IASUDHOMG 6. YTTKWIICAU 7. TVRLOIAP

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8. NTUAKMHDA

9. OTEMVNDIEO

NIGER NILE

OKAVANGO ORANGE SENEGAL TUGELA UBANGI UELE

VAAL

ZAMBEZI

General Knowledge Which country...

1. Has the most official languages, at 16?

2. Has the highest ratio of trees to people (8953:1)?

3. Has the shortest coastline, at 3.5 miles?

4. Has the oldest, continually used national flag (since 1625)?

5. Has the most neighbours touching its border (14)?

6. Is the happiest in the world, according to the World’s Happiness Report 2015?

7. Is the ‘goodest’ in the world, according to Simon Anholt’s Good Country Index?

8. Has the lowest land in the world, at -423m below sea level?

9. Is the youngest in the world, formed in 2011?

10. Has the shortest national anthem, at only 4 lines long?

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1. Wordsearch:

+ + + + + + + + + O L +

+ + + + + S A L E G U T

+ E G N A R O + + N A +

+ + + O + E N O G O L +

+ + + D N Z K I T C A +

S E N E G A L N G M B +

+ + N L V M I V I E A I

+ U + A I B M A G L R G

C + N C + E P A + + E N

+ G + + L Z O L + + G A

O + + E + I P + + + A B

+ C U A N D O + + + K U

2. Capital Scramble: Buenos Aires, Kuala Lumpar, Antananarivo, Copenhagen, Mogadishu, Kuwait City, Port Vila, Kathmandu, Montevideo, Reykjavik 4: General Knowledge: Zimbabwe, Canada, Monaco, Denmark, China, Switzerland, Ireland, Israel, South Sudan, Japan 3: Country Outlines

Whose self portrait?

Can you identify the ten countries from their outlines?

Country Outlines

Yearning to write an article?

Proud of that photo? Got a new idea? Get involved! Contact us at cugsmagazine@gmail.com

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