From climate change to inequality - working on the world's biggest problems today

Welcome to the School of Geography and Environment, a vibrant community of agenda-setting researchers, teachers, students and professional services staff.

We are one of the foremost geography and environment university departments in the world, internationally recognised for the quality of our research and our teaching. Geography at the University of Oxford is a large, vibrant and intellectually diverse community comprising the core academic department of the School of Geography and the Environment, its three research centres: the Environmental Change Institute (ECI), the Transport Studies Unit (TSU) and the Smith School of Enterprise and Environment (SSEE) and several geographers based elsewhere in the wider university.

We craft robust, imaginative and forward-looking answers to pressing questions about the environment, technology, geopolitics and socio-economic change.

This subject is the intersection of everything. So many disciplines and pressing issues come together in one place.

DPhil student, 2022
Image: Bethany / Adobe Stock
IN THE MEDIA

Cases in which body is found decomposed have been steadily increasing since 1980, researchers say. Growing numbers of people in England and Wales are being found so long after they have died that their body has decomposed, in a shocking trend linked to austerity and social isolation. A new study published in the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine by a team of researchers including Prof Danny Dorling has been featured in The Guardian.

Image: T shooter / Adobe Stock
IN THE MEDIA

Blenheim Palace and the University of Oxford are partnering on a data-led approach to restoring the three-hundred-year-old building. Built to celebrate the Duke of Marlborough's 1704 victory at the Battle of Blenheim, the eponymous Blenheim Palace in Oxfordshire requires a major programme of restoration work. However, rather than just replacing individual stones that have failed, the Built Heritage Team at the Palace want to find out precisely why certain stones crack or flake, and others do not. To delve deeper into how the building performs, and so that it can prioritise where restoration budget is efficiently spent, the team has partnered with experts at the University of Oxford.

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