The Society’s Field Research Programme
Request for Fellows and members for ideas
We want to thank all Fellows and members who sent in their ideas and suggestions over the summer for the Society-led Field Research Programme. We received more than 55 separate ideas from across the breadth of the Society’s Fellowship and we are very pleased that the consultation was such that researchers, travellers and geography enthusiasts among our membership all felt able to contribute their thoughts.
We received many interesting suggestions. The Steering Group, co-chaired by Vice-Presidents Paul Rose and Michael Bradshaw, who have been charged by the Council to oversee the development and planning of the field project have looked at all the suggestions. Taking them together, a number of different approaches and themes emerge. The approaches range from UK-based projects, to detailed investigations of a particular region, to studies on a core issue across a number of locations regionally or globally. The themes that have emerged are wide ranging too. They include many different topics on the themes of water resources, security and governance; urbanisation and the urban environment; biodiversity and conservation; sensitive and transitional environments; climate, climate change and its implications and much more.
This autumn the Steering Group is consulting with the Expeditions and Fieldwork Committee and the Research and Higher Education Committee. The Steering Group will then provide an interim report to the Society’s Council in December. Both Committees are also being asked to consider any key gaps in the approaches and themes that have been suggested. During 2013 the process of drawing up a long list, and then a short list of projects, for further development and detailed consideration will take place. The timetable we have set is for a decision in principle on the preferred project to be made by the Society’s Council in late 2013 or early 2014. The project approach and the project theme and locations(s) will significantly affect the partners that the Society selects to work with on this project. The current time plan is that fundraising to support the project will start in 2014.
Implementation of the recommendations of the Research Programme Review