Human Geography

Human Geography

The Human Geography training pathway is offered at Newcastle University via the School of Geography, Politics & Sociology, at Queen’s University Belfast via the School of the Natural and Built Environment, at Northumbria via the School of Geography and Natural Sciences and at Durham University via the Department of Geography.

Across all four institutions, students following the Human Geography pathway engage with research that is conceptually rooted, theoretically innovative, and empirically rigorous. Our research has research-user impacts globally. Opportunities exist for PhD research training and to conduct research across a wide range of human geography fields, including political, economic, urban, social and cultural geography.

Durham University

Human Geography at Durham is a world-leading research community that conducts innovative and impactful research which makes a difference, globally and locally. Four research clusters function as centres of gravity for new ideas, experimentation, and maintaining an environment that maximises our collective research strengths: The Economy and Culture research cluster opens-up economic practices to cultural explanation in places and spaces within and beyond markets and across the Global North and South; the Geographies of Life research cluster examines how human and non-human life, living and liveliness are produced and experienced in ways that create hierarchies and inequalities, harms and potentials; the Politics-State-Space (PSS) research cluster focuses on the changing nature of sovereignty, territory, and citizenship while seeking to challenge existing analytical paradigms and make diverse engagements with the political within and beyond the discipline; and the Urban Worlds research cluster investigates contemporary and historical urbanism(s), including reformulations of urban governance and the prospects of different forms of urban justices. The projects of postgraduate researchers typically contribute to one or more of these research clusters – see Current Postgraduate Students – Durham University.

Newcastle University

Human Geography research at Newcastle hosts a vibrant group of internationally-renowned researchers who engage applied issues and public policy concerns, as well as more abstract cultural and theoretical ideas. The particular research strengths are organised into distinct research clusters. Economic Geographies is one of the largest and most dynamic groups of economic geographers in the world and its research challenges economic and policy orthodoxies, and explores viable possibilities for progressive change amongst economically marginalised people and places. Power, Space, Politics is a world-leading research cluster of critical geographers and theorists whose influential work examines the spatially uneven expressions, operation, and outcomes of (geo)political power. Geographies of Social Change are committed to agenda-setting international research that addresses spatial and social inequalities, explores the geographies of justice, and illuminates the spaces of everyday life. All of the clusters host a significant cohort of postgraduate researchers and you can read more about their projects here.

Northumbria University

Human Geography research at Northumbria University is supported by a vibrant, supportive and community-engaged culture that spans the breadth of the discipline. We have strengths at the intersections of political, social and cultural geographies, as well as in historical and development geographies, and our School is home to the Social and Cultural Geographies Research Group and Centre for Global Development. Our work explores themes including migration, borders and citizenship; activism, labour and resistance; feminist and decolonial approaches to development; urban politics and resource governance; and the politics of identity, inequality and belonging. We have a strong commitment to ethical, non-extractive and participatory research; working collaboratively with communities, civil society organisations and policy actors to ensure our research has significance beyond the discipline and the academy. Our research is theoretically ambitious and methodologically innovative, benefiting from local, national and global interdisciplinary networks. We host a number of postgraduate and early career researchers with externally-funded studentships and fellowships, you can find out more about recent members of our postgraduate community here.

Queens University Belfast

Human Geography at Queen’s University Belfast provides a supportive and vibrant research environment in which doctoral students can pursue advanced study across a wide spectrum of topics ranging across the fields of population geography, social/political geography and cultural/historical geography. Research expertise in population geography encompasses ethnic and social inequalities, residential segregation, international and internal migration and longitudinal data analysis. Work in social and political geography ranges from contemporary geopolitics, border studies, critical perspectives on security to apocalyptic thought and conspiracism. Expertise in cultural and historical geography offers opportunities to study landscape histories, geographies of identity and embodiment, historical geographies of science and religion, cultural geographies of outer space and heritage studies. Human geography research is further enhanced by the physical geography expertise within the department, enabling students to situate their work within wider debates on climate change, geographies of health and geoforensics. Postgraduate students also benefit from extensive opportunities for collaboration across the university through a range of interdisciplinary centres, including the Senator George J. Mitchell Institute for Global Peace, Security and Justice, the Heritage Hub, the Northern Ireland Longitudinal Survey Regional Research Unit, the Centre for the Study of Ethnic Conflict, and the Science and Culture Research Group.

Supervision for PhD projects can either be delivered entirely within one of the four Human Geography pathway institutions or can draw on expertise from different institutions across the pathway. If you are interested in submitting an application to any of the four Human Geography pathway partners, please contact the named person below for the university that you’re interested in joining.