- Sponsored Content
Explore the world’s most pressing social and environmental challenges in a UK top 15 Geography Department for student satisfaction (Complete University Guide 2024)
Geography at Chester enables you to explore places, understand physical and human environments and processes, and equips you with the skills and confidence to influence change. Studying Geography enables you to learn about the physical and human processes that shape our world and understand the most pressing global environmental and social issues of our time. Our courses cover a wide range of physical and human geography sub-disciplines, such as climate change causes and impacts, migration, palaeoclimatology, challenges of sustainability, smart cities, sea-level change and coastal management, ecology, human impacts on environmental systems, geopolitics and the global economy, glaciers and glaciation, excluded peoples, poverty and health, fluvial processes, environmental pollution, and more besides.
We make good use of our well-equipped analytical laboratory and Geomatics computer suite to support your learning, and you will also have opportunities to experience, and directly learn about, a range of environments and their communities during national and international field excursions. We’re lucky to be in a part of the world with a wide range of environments on our doorstep, from rivers, coasts and glacial landscapes to small rural communities and large cities all within little more than an hour’s travel. In addition to UK-based residential fieldwork in North Wales, we offer international fieldwork opportunities, for example investigating experiences of immigration in New York City, the changing glacial landscapes of Jostedal (Norway), impacts of urban regeneration in Barcelona or the geobiology of arid ‘badlands’ in South-East Spain. There are also options to gain work experience overseas or even study abroad for a year.
Our modules are designed to ensure that you develop the knowledge, expertise, and confidence to become an agent of change. Wide-ranging and advanced employment-focussed skills (much sought-after by graduate employers) are embedded throughout the programme (e.g., big data analysis, critical thinking, GIS, laboratory analytical methods, environmental monitoring), and we provide an invaluable opportunity for you to build relevant employment and problem-solving experience by working in an external organisation as a part of a full-time placement.
Field and Laboratory Work
Fieldwork is an integral part of our programmes. You will experience your first field trip in Induction Week, and have the opportunity to join our first-year residential trip to Snowdonia in your second term. In Years 2 and 3, depending on your interests and the modules that you select, you might visit Derbyshire to explore environmental hazards, North Wales to monitor coastal change, Manchester to investigate ‘smart cities’, Sheffield to hear first-hand accounts of the experience of refugees, Barcelona to investigate how cultural politics have shaped the urban form of the city, Almería to explore the arid geomorphology of badlands, Geneva to meet with staff from the United Nations, Naples to investigate risk mitigation plans around Mount Vesuvius, Norway to survey changing glacial landscapes, or New York to research impacts of immigration.
All students will also do some laboratory work in Year 1; lab work in subsequent years depends on module selection. Our sample preparation and analytical laboratory is well-equipped, and is used by students to investigate a wide range of environmental processes and issues. This includes: geochemical and biological indicators of environmental contamination; microfossil analysis to investigate past climate and sea-level; sediment erosion and deposition; and microplastic concentrations in fluvial and coastal systems. Additionally, we have a geomatics laboratory for GIS teaching, as well as a newly refurbished Map Room, which provides additional computing facilities and an exclusive quiet study space for G&E students.
Staff expertise and research
Teaching in G&E is informed by staff research expertise; often we draw directly on our current research during lectures and workshops. Staff expertise and research interests cover a wide range of contemporary topics across physical geography and geology, human geography and environmental issues, and natural hazard management. Examples of recent research activity include: identifying rapid climate change events during glacial and interglacials; novel application of LiDAR to monitor coastal change, and of high resolution satellite imagery to map slope instability; hydrological and landscape responses to recent and ongoing glacier recession; Iake and catchment system disturbance and recovery from historical mining pollution; digital exclusion in remote rural areas; the impacts of Covid-19 lockdowns on household consumption; the role of video games in public understanding of geopolitical events; and young people’s environmental activism.
Graduate outcomes
Data from the most recent Graduate Outcomes survey (2017-18) shows 88.4% of our graduates were in employment or further study 15 months after completing their undergraduate degree, with a further 2.9% about to start a job or course of further study.
G&E students have progressed into a wide range of graduate careers in sectors including: planning; utilities; transport; environmental consultancy; risk management; international development agencies; renewable energy; construction; financial services; and teaching. Many also go onto postgraduate study, including PhDs. G&E graduates are regularly welcomed back to the department to speak to current students about work in their chosen sectors.
Visit us
We offer a variety of opportunities to visit us throughout the year. Over the coming months, we will be hosting Open Days and Campus Tours, as well as events designed specifically for our 2023 and 2024 applicants and the Kitchen Sessions, our popular online lecture series. You can also take a Virtual Campus Tour. Register your details on our website so that we can let you know about all our upcoming events.
Contact info
If you would like to know more about any of our programmes, please email [email protected] and we will direct your enquiry to the appropriate Programme Leader. You might also like to see what we’re up to by following us on Twitter @chestergeog or Instagram @chestergeog