Geography
Course overview
BA Geography
Typical intake: 4
Geography is a wide, challenging and stimulating degree course which addresses many central questions about the environment, human society and the relationship between the two.
The College admits about 4 undergraduates each year to read Geography; although most will have studied geography at A-level (or equivalent) this is by no means compulsory. The Geography course has recently been completely revised. In the first year it covers a wide range of both human and physical geography topics, and provides a foundation in geographical techniques (such as the use of remote sensing and GIS – geographical information systems) and introduces some key controversies within geography. In the second and third year students all sit one core module (Geographical Thought), then select 2 out of 3 foundation courses and choose 3 optional subjects, including subjects such as climatic change and variability, desert landscapes and dynamics, European integration, and spaces of finance. Field trips for second year students form part of the Geographical Thought paper and go to destinations such as Tenerife and Berlin. Submitted work, including a dissertation based on original research, counts for about 40% of the final degree marks. In recent years geography students from Worcester have done their dissertations on evidence for tsunamis on the coast of Australia, voting patterns in Cyprus, shallow landslides in the Drakensberg Mountains, South Africa, and senses of identity within Eastern European workers in Cambridgeshire amongst other topics.
Tutors
Fellow & Tutor in Geography and Sustainability Fellow
Dr Lisa Wedding
Dr Lisa Wedding
Fellow & Tutor in Geography and Sustainability Fellow
Associate Professor of Physical Geography
Education
BA MA PhD (Hawaii)
For enquiries about Dr Wedding’s role as Sustainability Fellow, please email sustainability@worc.ox.ac.uk
Dr Lisa Wedding is an Associate Professor in Physical Geography and a Tutorial Fellow of Worcester College, the University of Oxford, where she leads The Oxford Seascape Ecology Lab. She is Associate Editor for the npj Ocean Sustainability journal and Editorial Board Member for the Landscape Ecology journal. Dr Wedding previously held a Research Associate position at the Center for Ocean Solutions, Stanford University, and was a Postdoctoral Research Scholar at the University of California at Santa Cruz, USA.
Dr Wedding’s research focuses on understanding the social-ecological causes and consequences of spatial patterns and ecological processes in the marine environment. Increasingly, her research is positioned at the interface between science and policy and where she often works with a highly interdisciplinary team of lawyers, social scientists, and practitioners to link place-based scientific research findings to inform ocean governance.
Undergraduate
Dr Wedding co-leads the Geographical Techniques and Physical Geography Fieldwork courses for first year students of the Oxford Geography degree, focused on field and analytical techniques for ecological sampling. She also teaches the marine ecology content in the Prelims foundational course ‘Earth System Processes’ and the Final Honour School foundational course ‘Environmental Geography’. Dr Wedding developed and co-leads the Final Honour School option ‘Geographic Data Science’.
Postgraduate
Dr Wedding developed the ‘Seascape Ecology and Conservation’ elective module for the SoGE MSc/MPhil programmes. She also teaches the marine ecology content in the MSc in Biodiversity, Conservation and Management core modules. In addition, Dr Wedding leads the ‘Coral Reefs in the Anthropocene’ lecture course for the Environmental Change and Management MSc students in the School of Geography and the Environment. She was awarded Teaching Development and Enhancement Project Funding in 2021 to develop a new postgraduate elective module on ‘Diversifying the Curriculum Through Multiple Ways of Knowing’.
Dr Wedding’s Oxford Seascape Ecology Lab is centred on three main thematic areas of research, including:
- seascape ecology and conservation
- cultural seascapes and ecosystem services
- linking geospatial data science to ocean governance solutions
Read more about these research areas on the lab’s research page. Learn more about our current Bertarelli-funded project where our team is studying island restoration and land-sea ecological connectivity.
College Lecturer in Human Geography
Dr Lorraine Wild
Dr Lorraine Wild
College Lecturer in Human Geography
Academic Administrator, School of Geography and the Environment
Education
MA DPhil (Oxford)
Lorraine Wild was an undergraduate and postgraduate student at St Edmund Hall, Oxford. She has a BA in Geography (1985) and her DPhil research (1990) was based on the effects of the changing legislative framework for land use planning decisions in the rural areas of the UK.
Lorraine has been a Lecturer in Geography at St Hilda’s College since 1993 and is also a Stipendiary Lecturer at Worcester College. At college level she teaches all aspects of human geography. In the School of Geography & Environment she teaches the Final Honour School third year option on European Integration.
Since 2003 Lorraine has been the academic coordinator of the Undergraduate Course in Geography and has taken a major role in the development of a revised undergraduate course which was taught for the first time in October 2011. She is responsible for overseeing the effective delivery of all aspects of undergraduate course.
As part of this role Lorraine also takes the lead in the outreach work undertaken in the department, visiting schools and making links with geography teachers. She has also been centrally involved in the Admissions process within the department over the last ten years and also been a member of the course team delivering the online Admissions and Interviewing Training Course run by the Learning Institute.
Since 2010 Lorraine has taken on the role of Programmes Officer in the School of Geography and Environment, responsible for the administration and effective delivery of both the undergraduate and all of the postgraduate courses in the department. As part of this role Lorraine has been involved in the review of the suite of MSc courses delivered in the department.
In 2007 Lorraine was awarded a Teaching Excellence Award in recognition of her outstanding contribution to the organisation and administration of teaching.
As part of this role Lorraine also takes the lead in the outreach work undertaken in the department, visiting schools and making links with geography teachers. She has also been centrally involved in the Admissions process within the department over the last ten years and also been a member of the course team delivering the online Admissions and Interviewing Training Course run by the Learning Institute.
Since 2010 Lorraine has taken on the role of Programmes Officer in the School of Geography and Environment, responsible for the administration and effective delivery of both the undergraduate and all of the postgraduate courses in the department. As part of this role Lorraine has been involved in the review of the suite of MSc courses delivered in the department.
In 2007 Lorraine was awarded a Teaching Excellence Award in recognition of her outstanding contribution to the organisation and administration of teaching.
As part of this role Lorraine also takes the lead in the outreach work undertaken in the department, visiting schools and making links with geography teachers. She has also been centrally involved in the Admissions process within the department over the last ten years and also been a member of the course team delivering the online Admissions and Interviewing Training Course run by the Learning Institute.
Since 2010 Lorraine has taken on the role of Programmes Officer in the School of Geography and Environment, responsible for the administration and effective delivery of both the undergraduate and all of the postgraduate courses in the department. As part of this role Lorraine has been involved in the review of the suite of MSc courses delivered in the department.
In 2007 Lorraine was awarded a Teaching Excellence Award in recognition of her outstanding contribution to the organisation and administration of teaching. In 2020 she was awarded the Divisional Teaching Excellence Award (Outstanding Achievement) by the Social Sciences Division.
College Lecturer in Physical Geography
Dr Huanyuan Zhang
Dr Huanyuan Zhang
College Lecturer in Physical Geography
Postdoctoral Researcher, Environmental Change Institute
Education
BSc (Sun Yat-sen/Birmingham), MRes (Imperial), DPhil (Oxford)
Dr Huanyuan Zhang-Zheng is a postdoctoral researcher with a profound interest in African forest ecology, carbon cycle modelling, and plant functional traits. Affiliated with both the University of Oxford and UC Berkeley, he is responsible for building the Global Ecosystem Monitoring (GEM) Forests carbon cycle database. Huanyuan is a member of the Ecosystems Lab and NGEE-Tropics Lab. Huanyuan’s primary research endeavours encompass the compilation of the GEM forests carbon cycle database, data-model comparisons of forests’ gross primary productivity, and meta-analyses of forest productivity across a multitude of tropical sites. He is also the sole author of CRAN R package, ARTofR.
Dr Zhang-Zheng earned a BSc in Environmental Science from Sun Yat-sen University in China, and the University of Birmingham. He also holds an MRes in Ecosystem and Environmental Change (Distinction) from Imperial College London. In 2023, he was awarded DPhil in Geography and the Environment from the University of Oxford with a thesis entitled Gross primary production of West African tropical forests. He has been the recipient of the Environmental Change Institute small grants from the University of Oxford, the Tang scholarships awarded by the China Oxford Scholarship Fund, and the Henfrey scholarship on Chinese studies from St Catherine’s College, Oxford. Additionally, his research was funded by Xishuangbanna Tropical Botanical Garden Open Funding, and African-Oxford Catalyst Grant, awarded by African-Oxford Initiative.
Born on a tropical island (Nan’ao Island, China) and passionate about tropical ecosystems, he has travelled to and conducted research in Mexico, Colombia, Ghana, Malaysia and Yunan, China. He is also a PADI qualified Free Diver and Dive Master.
See a full list of Huanyuan’s publications on Researchgate.
