News

On 1 October 2022, Professor Giles Wiggs became the new Head of the School of Geography and the Environment. Giles succeeds Professor Gillian Rose who was Head of School from 2019 to 2022. Giles is a Fellow, Tutor and former Dean at Brasenose College, Oxford, and has previously held positions as Reader and Senior Lecturer at the University of Sheffield, UK.

The 20th anniversary of the Dana Declaration on Mobile Peoples and Conservation was marked in Wadi Dana, Jordan, from 7-10th September 2022 with the event titled Dana+20: Mobile Indigenous Peoples, Conservation, Sustainable Development and Climate Change Two Decades after the Dana Declaration. Working with the Royal Society for the Conservation of Nature (RSCN, Jordan), representatives of the World Alliance of Mobile Indigenous Peoples (WAMIP), concerned practitioners and academics, and representatives of Mobile Peoples from around the world - including Mongolia, Malaysia, India, Iran, Jordan, Sweden, Nigeria, Cameroon, Kenya, Tanzania, Namibia, and Peru - came together to discuss shared concerns.

At Windsor Castle on 8 December 2021, Yadvinder Malhi, Professor of Ecosystems Science at the University of Oxford, received a CBE from the Prince of Wales for services to ecosystems science. Professor Malhi was one of three recipients highlighted by the Prince of Wales and Duchess of Cornwall on their Clarence House twitter account on the day of the ceremony.

Three academic members at the School of Geography and the Environment (SoGE) have been awarded the title of Professor, by the Vice Chancellor of the University of Oxford, in recognition of their outstanding contributions to their fields of research, teaching and academic service.

An estimate of the environmental impact of 57,000 food products in the UK and Ireland provides a first step towards enabling consumers, retailers, and policymakers to make informed decisions on the environmental impacts of food and drink products.

A new policy brief from a major research programme whose coordination team is based in the ECI has highlighted the role of small, local food enterprises in feeding communities in Covid-19, and recommends greater investment to allow these types of food providers to contribute to a more resilience UK food system.

Congratulations to our Facilities Manager, Alex Black, for winning a Special Environmental Sustainability Staff Award, and to our graduate students Josh Ettinger, Alexis McGivern and Marcus Spiegel for coming runner-up in the Environmental Sustainability Students Awards.

In a recent interview with T La Revue the French business newspaper La Tribune's magazine, Kevin Grecksch, Departmental Lecturer and Course Director for the MSc in Water Science, Policy and Management, stressed the notion that people in developed countries have lost touch with water.