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: miraleks / Adobe Stock
IN THE MEDIA

Oxford University researchers have recorded the wettest month in Oxford in 250 years at the School's Radcliffe Meteorological Station. Data from the station this week confirmed that September 2024 saw an extraordinary 193.3 mm of rainfall, making it Oxford’s wettest month since 1774 and the second wettest of any month since rainfall records began in 1767.

Image: kamilpetran / Adobe Stock
IN THE MEDIA

As the climate crisis accelerates, the Net Zero Stocktake 2024 identifies a commitment gap across cities, states and regions, which is holding back the necessary economy-wide transition. The Net Zero Tracker’s annual assessment of the intent and integrity of global climate commitments, shows only a modest increase in net zero targets set by subnational governments (states and regions, and cities) in the past year.