The RGS-IBG Social and Cultural Geography Research Group is pleased to offer an annual prize of £100 for the best undergraduate dissertation. In addition, we will announce a Runner-Up prize. Both prize-winners will receive a year’s subscription to the Journal of Social and Cultural Geography published by Taylor & Francis. Please see the mission statement on the SCGRG website for our definition of social and cultural geography.
Nominated dissertations should: be an outstanding theoretical and/or empirical piece of work; usually approx.10,000 words in length; submitted for formal assessment in the preceding academic year to a UK Higher Education Institution for a BA/BSc level degree programme in geography; written in English. We are looking to reward both excellent scholarship and innovation in the study of social and cultural geography. Please note that a department may not submit more than one entry to the prize. Nominated dissertations may however be submitted for consideration for other RGS-IBG prizes.
Nominations are requested from the Head of Department or Dissertation Convenor. All dissertations should be submitted as a single PDF. Please include a post-September email and contact address for the student. The winners will be announced in September.
For further queries about the SCGRG Undergraduate Dissertation Prize please contact Dr Danny McNally, or see information, including previous winning entries, on the SCGRG website: https://scgrg.co.uk/dissertation-prize.
We are finally in a position to announce our winner of the undergraduate 2021 SCGRG dissertation prize. We had 21 entries in total from Geography departments across the UK. Committee members of the SCGRG RGS-IBG review the entries across three rounds.
After a rigorous process, the winner is Abi Smith from the University of Cambridge. with her dissertation entitled:
Making sense of sonic affect: the automated voices of the London Underground
It was found that Abi’s dissertation was considered the overall winner given:
A clear and unique intellectual contribution to aural spaces and sonic geographies, demonstrating conceptual excellence and methodological originality. It was deemed by reviewers of publishable standard.
SCGRG dissertation prize committee
The winner receives £100 for the best undergraduate dissertation while the runner-up and winner both receive a year’s personal subscription to the journal Social and Cultural Geography, published by Taylor & Francis.
The news of winning this award was equally as surprising as lovely to hear! I am hugely grateful to the SCGRG committee and to everyone- from the voiceover artists and LUUs (London Underground Users) to my Director of Studies supervisors, and accessibility team- who both inspired and made completing this dissertation possible.
Abi Smith
We are delighted that Abi has taken out the time to write a blog post for us, where she highlights her motivations for doing the research, her passion for sonic geographies and her reaction to being our winner.
Influences and motivations for the research
The broad and exciting nature of Geography quickly became clear, and this only made the process of narrowing down a dissertation topic more difficult. Whilst I found the many dimensions of sensory geographies particularly intriguing, it wasn’t until after several discussions with my Director of Studies, and a sensory methods lecture, that I began to realise that these ideas could form the basis for my dissertation.
During the process of exploring these themes for my research proposal, I came across an article by Nina Power examining the prolific use of female-sounding voices in urban space. The article not only raised many important questions but led me to realise that there were several empirical gaps relating to the study of automated voices, and sound, within Geography. To build on these questions, I decided to centre my focus on the London Underground, both due to my own familiarity with the network and its geographical significance.
The Sounds of the Underground: Research methods
By focusing specifically on the carriage space, my dissertation attempts to respond to calls within sonic geography to better conceptualise the relationship between sound and affect. Combining interviews with the voices of the well-known ‘Mind the Gap’ announcements, sound recordists, and London Underground users (LUU) with phonographic methods, it considers the sonic design, and reception of, automated announcements through the lens of affect. To do so it employs an ‘expanded euphonics’ to overcome the limitations of previous methodological, empirical and theoretical approaches, which typically emphasise sight and overlook the intricate processes of sound-making. Primarily drawing on the work of Gernot Böhme and Michael Gallagher, this expanded euphonics sought to (i) centre the sonic, (ii) understand how sonic atmospheres are designed and perceived and (iii) counteract the ocular-centrism which often persists in studies of affects and atmospheres. Methodologically, this involved collecting several audio recordings (remotely), incorporating these recordings within the interviews, and then utilising interview recordings within the text itself to invite the reader/listener to reflect on their own embodied reactions.
Contributions to sonic geographies
Moving beyond the visible components of the carriage previously researched, attending to the sonic revealed that these voices have a unique capacity to affect LUUs. Yet, it similarly demonstrated that this capacity is impinged upon by numerous external influences. Such influences ensured that whilst attempts to alter and/or design sonic affects (through the control of voice’s gender, tone, accent) are to some extent successful, unpredictable affective encounters persist- many of which were not possible to explore within the dissertation.
Reflections and future research
Whilst I was initially hesitant about how this process would work, considering the covid restrictions, I enjoyed finding alternative ways to examine these voices remotely (and found the SCGRG website particularly useful for this!). Although I had always planned to use audio recordings, the travel restrictions meant that they proved vital for evoking memories and a sense of place. Even though Zoom interviews took some getting used to, the virtual context also had many benefits, such as being able to contact a much wider range of people. Ultimately, this process demonstrated to me that there is huge potential for further research not only into automated voices, but within sonic geography more broadly.
I wanted to study Geography at University to have the opportunity to delve deeper into this diverse, interdisciplinary subject; I was especially drawn to the emphasis placed on the complex interconnections between the human and more-than-human world. I crucially believed (and still believe!) that Geography provides the most useful, interesting, and productive lenses through which to better understand and critically analyse societies and environments.
Your dissertation focuses on rights to the city and urban citizenship in a Barcelona ‘superblock’. What is a ‘superblock’ and what led you to study these issues around it for your project?
A superblock is an urban planning intervention being developed by a public consortium – BCNecologia – that aims to prioritise the needs of people over cars in contemporary cities. I first came across this initiative in an A Level Geography class where we were discussing novel ways in which cities are becoming more sustainable. Since I wanted to incorporate my Spanish into the dissertation process and had been fascinated by the project, I decided it would provide an ideal research context.
Your dissertation was based on rich ethnographic fieldwork undertaken in just 2 weeks In Barcelona, and working across languages – could you tell us a bit about your experience of doing the research?
The most important thing is that I needed (and liked!) was to be very, very prepared – but also to make the most of unexpected aspects or opportunities as they arose in the field. At times, the thought of going to Barcelona to conduct interviews with people I had never met before was really daunting. But in the end, it was an incredibly exciting and enriching experience – perhaps the academic highlight of my degree. My time conducting research in Barcelona was absolutely unforgettable, especially since I met some incredibly kind, warm, insightful, and generous people; my research couldn’t exist without them.
What do you feel you learnt or gained from the dissertation process?
With the help of my supervisor, I grew to embrace the freedom to direct and develop my research in both more conceptually rooted and empirically significant ways. It was an amazing feeling to take an initial idea and run with it, from planning fieldwork logistics and reaching out to potential participants to conducting interviews, analysing transcripts, writing up findings, and re-drafting arguments over the course of a year.
Completing the dissertation also reaffirmed the importance of not letting self-doubt hold you back. I was unsure about the adequacy of my Spanish (from A Level) to conduct the interviews in the depth that I wanted and needed, but instinctively felt that I could do it since I had actively kept up the language since school. And after carrying out over 75 pre- and unarranged interviews in Spanish, I proved my point! It was amazing when interviewees complemented my Spanish and I was really proud of how rapidly I adapted to the context and become comfortable processing information and engaging with people in an open and professional way.
Do you have any advice for students currently thinking about studying Geography?
It can be helpful to check out the RGS-IBG Research Groups to see if the kinds of topics covered and research being conducted by members of the Groups interests you (since these are the kinds of academics who are likely to be lecturing and tutoring you at University). It’s really important to be proactive about your interests; try not to wait for a ‘light bulb’ moment but actively engage with the subject to see whether you want to pursue it further, remembering that it gets a lot more complex and multi-faceted – and interesting! – at University. Read a news article and think about how a Geographer might relate or respond to it, watch Geography talks and lectures on YouTube, find geographical podcasts, and look for suggested resources on University Geography Department websites. There’s so much out there once you start looking!
During my time at school I struggled to find a subject which I loved. I think in part this is due to the limited nature of a-level curriculums, but also due to the fact that I hadn’t realised that I need not love one subject, but many. Choosing geography was a long process, but once I began looking into the modules offered within my degree – “writing landscapes”, “space, place and sensory perception” and “gender and environment” to name but a few – I knew geography was the one for me. Not because it had exactly what I was looking for, nor because it led into a decisive career path, but because it offered me time, intrigue I knew I would have the most fun studying geography, and I think that sums it up.
How did you come to choose public art and memory as the focus for your dissertation?
I grew up on the outskirts of Harlow New Town, Essex, and have fond memories of the sculptures which sporadically appear in the post-war landscape of modernist social housing estates, roundabouts and green space. In a way my dissertation focus was incredibly personal. My own experiences and memories prompted me to discover the ways public art, landscapes and mundane life intersect in Harlow to create a unique lived experience both in the past and how these experiences actively inform life today, and into the future as the artworks and the town respectively change with time. Geography and the arts is somewhat a vast and yet unfulfilled project. I think this lies in academic geography’s interest in the subconscious aspects of everyday life – the ways we live without realising, which has trouble embracing that public artworks are the antithesis. They are almost always intentional in form and function. It is this tension I found perplexing, and is what made me delve into Harlow New Town’s public artworks.
Your project takes a creative approach to the dissertation format, using narrative storying and illustrative map-making to present your findings – could you tell us a bit more about this approach, and your experiences of the walk-along interview method that formed the basis for your research?
The walk-along interviews are a technique which allowed participants to invite me into their hometown with control and connection to the surrounding landscapes. I was inspired by the political stance of feminist theorists such as Karen Barad and Stacy Alaimo, and wanted to incorporate a sense of radicalism to my method. It is only upon collecting my research did I see where this politics fitted in.
The participants during the walk-along method opened up more than I expected about their lives as they chose where we went and what they talked about. About grand schemes to sell a Barbra Hepworth sculpture to an American billionaire or the way the tactility of sculptures changed as time wore away at their surface. It is this relationship between place, agency and memories which allowed me to view space from a point of view which avoided casting landscapes as passive ‘backdrops’ to everyday life but instead how space and memory are entangled in environments where there is a syntax for reading space along a walk. The syntax I discovered during my research collection were the public artworks in Harlow. They worked as stepping stones linking memories between places and people. It was a pleasure to be able to explore the town countless times with residents, each exploring and using these stepping stones in a different order. In one sense my process was akin to reading the memories and landscapes in Harlow; public art as the language, and walking as the lines on a page connecting them together.
Because of this narrative ‘reading’ of space, I felt strongly my dissertation match my research style and take on a highly personal narrative format – four participants gaining their own chapters. The illustrated map was a means to undo the linearity of these antecedent narrative chapters. While storytelling works well in print, it fails to conjure up how complex and messy lived experience is in Harlow. The map is my attempt to record competing opinions of the sculptures and the town on one piece of paper, much inspired by Guy Debord’s deconstructions of seeing and being in urban space.
What do you feel you learnt or gained from the dissertation process?
My dissertation process was informed by the ways I thought I worked best. The emphasis here is on the fact I was unsure quite of what that meant, so I just gave myself time. I began my proposal in February 2019, then collected data in the summer. I found it highly useful to bite the bullet and collect data, as I wanted to avoid developing an argument before talking to participants. Around this time I knew I wanted to illustrate a map of the town by hand and was grateful for allowing myself room for adjust my timings. I began writing my dissertation and illustrating my map from October for an April deadline. Affording myself ample time to build relationships with participants, my supervisor and indeed get to know my material well was highly valuable. Above all, it is important to allow yourself time off, come back with fresh eyes and re-read and edit your work. Avoiding burnout, foregrounding commitment to your participants and rigour of research is a tricky balance, and I am still learning what that is, but staring your dissertation early is a good first step.
Do you have any advice for students currently thinking about studying Geography?
A piece of advice I have learned being a student is to research what your prospective lecturers study themselves. This is a great tip for finding out where geography can take you more widely, and the types of content you might expect from that lecturer’s courses. A good lecturer plays to their strengths and lectures around their own research perspectives, so make sure you choose a department you are interested in being a part of – it is a symbiotic relationship at degree level between teacher and student. Choosing geography is also a way to open countless doors to places, people and ideas. It sounds cliche, but geographers have a lot of fun together and it is an incredibly diverse and inclusive subject making it the perfect breeding ground for innovative research and exciting discoveries.
…and for Geography students who will soon be planning their dissertation research?
The dissertation is your opportunity to write the kind of work you wish you had read during your degree. It should be something which reflects your personality as much as your knowledge, if not more. Consequently, my advice is to be bold, committed and choose a topic which provokes a strong emotional response from yourself. And on a more practical note – keep a log of your sources as you go through the researching stages. You never know when you may need to retrace your steps to find a theory, quote or conceptual path to go down – It really is never too early to start a bibliography!
Eleanor Pendle of Oxford University is our 2020 Winner for her dissertation entitled ‘The Poblenou Superblock: Rights, Responsibilities and Exclusions‘. An engaging and detailed study of rights to the city, social justice, and urban citizenship in a Barcelona ‘superblock’, the panel were impressed by the study’s rigorous scholarship, nuanced analysis, and rich, in-depth fieldwork conducted across languages. The committee felt that this was an outstanding example of social/cultural geographical work.
The winner receives a prize of £100, and both have been given a one-year free subscription to the journal Social and Cultural Geography courtesy of Taylor & Francis.
In total we received 23 submissions for the prize this year from universities up and down the country, with work spanning the breadth of social and cultural geography. Many thanks to all students who submitted to the prize – we wish you all the best in your onward steps. We look forward to continuing the prize next year and await your submissions!
We’ve looked through the full back catalogue of SCGRG prize winning undergraduate dissertations and found useful examples of methods that can be used during lockdown.
Thomas Paulsen, University of Exeter – Runner Up 2017
Discursive analysis of manga and anime animation, supported with secondary background data, to examine representations of suicide and self-sacrifice in Japanese popular culture.
Grace Burchell, University of Nottingham – Runner Up 2015
Archival research (some accessed digitally), literary analysis of novels, and visual analysis, in order to understand how bulldogs have been appropriated by different social groups.
Helen Spooner, University of Oxford – Runner up 2014
Uses autoethnographic methods focusing on the author’s own experiences of running to think about the embodied, sensual emergence of landscape and self through practice.
Simon Cook, University of Plymouth – Runner up 2013
Analyses commercial Fairtrade images and their work in creating particular consumer imaginaries of the people and places they are linked to through their consumption.
Studies exploring more-than-human relations in the city and understandings of the spatial in visual art win SCGRG dissertation prize
Charles Couve of the University of Manchester is our 2019 Winner for his dissertation entitled More-than-human Manchester: Recombinance, Auras, and Dialectics in the Edges of Modernity. The committee found this a fascinating and original study. Written in rich and engaging prose, they were impressed with its deft handling of complex ideas from a wide-ranging literature, and its deep, nuanced analysis of the city. They very much enjoyed the risks it took in style, method, and form, including its innovative use of creative methods to vividly explore the ‘excess’ of more-than-human relations. All felt that this was an outstanding example of cultural geographical work that demonstrates some exciting possibilities within an undergraduate research project.
William Silver of Durham University is our 2019 Runner-Up for his dissertation entitled Gordon Matta-Clark’s slices through space: artwork towards a critical understanding of the spatial. The committee were impressed with this engaging and original piece, which showed nuanced engagement with complex theoretical ideas and interesting experiments with form in its writing. They praised its incisive use of literature from across art history and geography and its fluid prose that made the piece a joy to read. An impressive piece of work that gives valuable insight into applications of cultural geographical thinking to art worlds in an undergraduate project.
The winner has received a prize of £100.
Both have also been given a one-year free subscription to the journal Social
& Cultural Geography courtesy of Taylor & Francis.
In total we received 19 submissions for the prize this year. These spanned the breadth of social and cultural geography interests and we look forward to continuing with the prize in 2020.
Zainab Ravat wins the 2018 SCGRG Dissertation Prize
Zainab Ravat of Queen Mary, University of London, is our 2018 Winner for her dissertation entitled Photojournalism: Explorations into the Geographical Witness, Activist and Traveller. The committee praised the study for its sophisticated and nuanced approach to its topic, and the considerable insight and flair it demonstrates in its write-up. The study was based on very rich empirical material, with extensive research conducted with leading photojournalists on their personal motivations and experiences in the field, and produced a sensitive and engaging empirical analysis. The committee felt that this was a fascinating example of cultural geographical work.
Kieran Green of the University of Plymouth is our 2018 Runner-Up for his dissertation entitled In the Balance: Unsettled Space and Sofa-surfing. The committee were impressed with the originality and depth of research demonstrated in the study, which focused on a topic that is timely in austerity Britain. They praised its rigorous engagement with existing literature, its rich empirical work, and detailed analysis that gave valuable insight into individual trajectories in the practice of sofa-surfing and their wider geographies.
The winner has received a prize of £100. Both have also been given a one-year free subscription to the journal Social and Cultural Geography courtesy of Taylor & Francis.
In total we received 25 submissions for the prize. These spanned the breadth of social and cultural geography interests and we look forward to continuing with the prize in 2019.
You can read our winner’s dissertation by clicking here.
Here’s an interview with our winner Zainab about how she got in to her research and how she found the dissertation process:
1. What inspired you to study geography?
I’ve always been naturally drawn to the subject matter that geography allows us to engage with. From a young age, I began to learn about the ways in which the physical and human worlds around us are intertwined. Whether it was to do with the tourism industry, natural disasters or migration, there was an awareness that these were all processes that can change people’s lives. I imagine many geographers begin with a desire to help shape some of those processes for the better.
2. What led you to choose photojournalism as the focus for your geography dissertation?
I was struggling to settle on a final topic for my research when my supervisor told me that the dissertation was an opportunity to take something I enjoyed in my personal life – a hobby or interest – and to explore it intellectually and geographically. That’s when I began to think about the interest I have in the work of photojournalists. I knew there was a lot to be explored beyond the aesthetic quality of popular images, and particularly the more confrontational ones, like war and conflict imagery. Beyond that, I also knew there was something intrinsically geographical in the subject matter, as photojournalists essentially help to shape our own understandings of different places and the people in those places. After a little initial research, I saw that geographers have extensively examined the effects of imagery and have raised some interesting questions about ethics, agency and power relations, for example, in the depiction of poverty in NGO campaigning. I wanted to produce a report that did more than regurgitate those discourses, and decided I could have a lot of fun if I were to think about not only what the images represent, but who the photojournalists themselves are, where they come from and why they do the job they do. More importantly, I was intrigued by the capability photographers have to impact social change, and how they might articulate their own identities as activists or agents of change. It was an attempt to reveal the complexities in the production and effects of their images by honing in at the micro level. That angle has also allowed me to engage with other kinds of social, philosophical and critical theory outside of geographical discipline that I may not have otherwise had the opportunity to dedicate time to.
3. Your dissertation contains some fantastic interviews with photojournalists – could you tell us a bit about your experience of researching the project?
It was an incredibly fun and insightful experience on the whole because I had the opportunity to speak to photojournalists whose work I had known about for a long time, and who have years of experience working for the likes of National Geographic, Magnum and Al Jazeera. However, I would be lying if I said there weren’t times when I felt like giving up! I quickly found that photojournalists can be a tough group of people to correspond with as they’re often travelling or in the middle of projects at any given time of year. I must have emailed over 50 different people before I finally managed to secure a fraction of those for interviews (some of whom never even turned up!). I had conducted a lot of research into the people I was emailing to find out exactly who they had worked with, what their current projects were and a little about their background, so it was very time intensive from the beginning. On the other hand, the interviews that did take place were beyond fascinating and I am so grateful to have had the opportunity to conduct them with such accommodating and open people. It was by far the highlight of the experience.
4. What do you feel you learnt or gained from the process?
Speaking to people who are taking the time out to share personal experiences, some of which are sensitive, is a careful task and my research was an exercise in navigating how best to do that whilst still probing at the right questions. I think I went into the interviews with a degree of confidence already, but once you spend 11 hours discussing strangers’ lives with them, you come out with a better grasp of how to articulate yourself and think on your feet in that kind of situation. I learnt a lot from the photographers themselves, who had plenty of insights into the difficulties of journalism and the personal obstacles they have had to face in their careers. Overall, I came out with the experience of shaping my own project and an understanding of the effort and initiative it takes to make research happen.
5. Do you have any advice for students currently thinking about studying geography?
I would encourage it! Geography is incredibly interdisciplinary by nature and at the same time, it uniquely interrogates concepts of nature, place, space and power in ways that you won’t find in other disciplines. From my experience, it’s also an excellent field in which to learn how to think critically and to become a well rounded individual with an awareness of social and worldly issues. I know fellow geographers with ambitions for careers in a wide array of areas and with skills that are relevant to employers and academic departments alike.
6. …and for geography students who will soon be planning their dissertation research?
Don’t worry if things sometimes seem like they’re falling apart. If they don’t fall apart a little, then you’re probably doing it wrong. Any setbacks you have are an opportunity for you to refine or reinvent your project, and even when it seems as if you’ve run out of options, a little bit of time and thought will help you think of another angle to take your research in. I would advise you to try reading early and not to leave the writing and referencing too late in the process – this is easy to forget for anyone who isn’t used to writing a 10,000 word project! Looking back at my final research, I see where I made mistakes, where I rushed things and where things could have been clearer. No matter what, your final product will mostly likely be imperfect to you too, so my advice is not to strive for perfection every step of the way – but to just get started and to keep at it.
If you would like to read our winner’s dissertations, click on the titles above.
The winner receives £100 for the best Undergraduate dissertation while the both the winner and runner-up receive a year’s personal subscription to the journal Social and Cultural Geography, courtesy of the publisher, Taylor & Francis.
The winner receives £100 for the best Undergraduate dissertation while the runner-up and winner both receive a year’s personal subscription to the journal Social and Cultural Geography, published by Taylor & Francis.
