Celebrating Geography at 100

Read this article and more like it in your alumni magazine, InTouch Online.

The year 2022 marks the centenary of the Department of Geography at King’s College London. Established in 1922, the Department was originally set up as part of an intercollegiate collaboration with the London School of Economics and was called the ‘Joint School of Geography at King’s College, London and the London School of Economics’.

Today, it is recognised as a world-leading Department, engaging with global challenges and pressing environmental, urban and social issues. Here we reflect on the Department’s early beginnings, highlights its present-day achievements, interviews its longest-serving staff member and illustrates its journey through historical images.

Humble beginnings

When a full geography degree was first introduced in 1922, modules covered physical geography, map reading, regional and historical geography, the history of geographical study, economic geography, and the distribution of man, animals and plants. At that time, there were five students.

By its golden jubilee in 1972, the Joint School offered BA, BSc and BSc (Economics) degrees. It welcomed around 400 geography students, including almost 100 postgraduate students from other parts of the world, and shared 31 staff members. Primary regional study focused on London and South-East England – a legacy of former Head of Department, Professor Sidney W Wooldridge, whose physical research concentrated on the London Basin and the Weald.

From its early home in the old Norfolk Hotel (Norfolk Building), the Department is now based at Bush House and sits within the School of Global Affairs (SGA), which is part of the Faculty of Social Science & Public Policy.

Developing Geography at King’s

King’s Department of Geography is working to make the world a better place. Accepting over 100 undergraduates and 200 postgraduate-taught students each year, the Department is a vibrant community of students and the largest in the SGA. At undergraduate level, a BA and a BSc degree continue. In 2001, the BSc merged with the School of Oriental & African Studies (SOAS) to award a joint honours degree; as of 2019, the course received accreditation by the Royal Geographical Society; and in 2021, the programme was renamed BSc Geography and Environmental Science to recognise the technical specialisms of geocomputation and spatial data analysis. At postgraduate level, the Department runs a suite of master’s programmes. In the late 90s, programmes on cities, culture, and environmental monitoring were introduced to address the changing landscape of the field. More recently, enrolment on newer degrees focused on climate change and sustainability has soared, responding to the trending environmental concerns of today.

Alongside classroom studies, field research has long been the highlight of many students’ degrees. Alumni may recall visits to Rogate Field Centre in Sussex, Dartmoor and County Clare. Further afield, trips to Spain began in the late 90s, with locations like Morocco, India, Hong Kong, San Francisco and Portugal carried out in the 2010s. Naturally, being environmentally conscious, the carbon footprint of trips is also considered. In fact, a charity fundraiser organised by the Department’s Sustainability Champions and student society, GeogSoc, raised almost enough funds to offset the undergraduate field trips to both Lisbon and Morocco in 2020.

Research that informs, innovates and impacts

The Department’s world-class teaching interrogates key issues facing the world today, and its reputable research finds solutions to both local and global challenges. Field research is conducted in over 95 countries across seven continents, while closer to home, London is a ‘laboratory’ in which physical and human geographers cooperate on projects, including studies of personal air pollution exposure, flood mitigation and adaptation to heatwave risk, among others.

With an increasing commitment to a co-production of knowledge with societal partners, the Department collaborates with industry, government and civil society, both internationally and within the UK. Long-standing relationships between researchers, policymakers and communities lie at the heart of this collaborative culture. Noteworthy to mention is the Department’s flagship internship programme for master’s students, which engages over 60 London-based organisations, with several internships made possible through the connections of alumni.

The Department houses six research groups and umbrellas several research centres and hubs, which are the drivers of public debates, policy development, new projects and publications. For example, King’s Climate Hub, King’s Water Centre and the Earth Observation & Environmental Sensing Hub act as impact and public engagement platforms, bringing King’s interdisciplinary research to a wider public and practitioner audience; and expert academics have authored the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change assessment reports.

Celebrating the centenary

• King’s Geography is ranked 26th in the QS World University Rankings by Subject 2022.
• In the Research Excellence Framework 2021, which measures the impact of university research in the UK, Geography climbed to 12th place nationally – up from 25th place in 2014.
• Geography now has 99 staff and researchers, 375 undergraduate students, 250+ postgraduate-taught students and 120+ PhD students.

For its 100th anniversary in autumn 2022, the Department ran a series of celebratory events. These included research talks, walks and a photography exhibition of student field trips over the years. The Centenary Big Bash celebration invited a panel of guest speakers, former student society presidents and alumni.

A future-proof Department

rom the intimate and everyday to the strategic and global, Geography’s research is world-leading. Indeed, its impact aligns wiih the United Nations’ 17 Sustainable Development Goals – a shared blueprint for peace and prosperity for people and the planet, now and into the future. You can read the research stories here.

Never resting on its laurels, the Department is striving for inclusivity internally and in the field more broadly. It runs its own Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Committee, which received an Athena SWAN Bronze Award in September 2019. Future plans include raising funds for master’s and doctoral studentships targeted at UK-based Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic applicants, to enable them to continue their university career beyond undergraduate level.

Find out more about the Geography Alumni Society (incorporating the Joint School Society) here.

See more fantastic images from the past 100 years of Geography at King's and hear from the department's longest serving member of staff Professor David Green in the latest issue of InTouch