St Anne’s is a popular choice for undergraduate students in Geography, as it is situated only a five-minute walk away from the Department across the Parks and has a well-earned reputation for the commitment of its two geography tutors, one specializing in human geography and the other in physical geography.

David Banister, Professor in Transport Studies at the Oxford University Centre for the Environment (OUCE), has interests in transport, cities and the environment, in particular the problems which occur at the interfaces between these issues. This research has strong methodological and empirical elements and these have been reported in 19 books and over 100 publications. He is also engaged in the policy debates surrounding sustainable development and has been involved in many international research projects, conferences and networks devoted to their resolution.

Nick Middleton is a physical geographer, although his interests span the entire subject. His main area of research is in the nature and human use of deserts and their margins, work that has taken him to the Sahara, Gobi, Atacama, Thar, Danakil and Kalahari. He also works and teaches on a wide variety of environmental issues, writes travelogues, and has presented three television series on extreme environments and the people who live there.

Geography students at Oxford and St Anne’s study components of both human and physical geography throughout the three years of the course, though you can specialize in topics that particularly interest you.

One area where specialization is important is the dissertation. St Anne’s undergraduates are eligible for College travel grants to offset the cost of this research, and some decide to work in far-flung destinations. Recent overseas geography dissertations at St Anne’s have focused on seaweed farming in Sulawesi, Indonesia, social segregation in Sydney, Australia, and desert dust movement in South Africa. Those preferring to work closer to home have studied equally diverse subjects, including building stone decay in Oxford, ageing in a South Wales community, and civil liberties in Darlington.

The ability to produce a high-quality dissertation, when combined with the self-discipline and hard work needed to write an essay on a new topic every week, make geography undergraduates very employable. After leaving St Anne’s, some choose to continue studies at top-level universities and elsewhere. Others enter the job market in a very wide variety of fields, including nature conservation, planning, international development, publishing, television, the civil service, the oil industry, teaching, advertising, accountancy and the legal profession.

Follow this link for a student's view of Geography at St Anne's.