Leading journalists and media watchers will place the stories of the week within the wider geographical landscape, making connections across environmental, political and social forces.
About the speakers
Adam Fleming is the host and creator of the BBC’s Newscast podcast and presents Radio 4’s weekly live discussion show AntiSocial. He also appears on Newsnight and PM. Previously the BBC’s Chief Political Correspondent, Adam covered the Brexit negotiations in Brussels. His broadcasting career began on Newsround. He studied Geography at Hertford College, Oxford, and is a keen skier and runner.
Michelle Jana Chan is a journalist, author and broadcaster who has written for The Daily Telegraph, The Times, Vanity Fair, Newsweek and The Wall Street Journal. She has presented the BBC’s The Travel Show and hosts The Wandering Book Collector podcast. Her novel Song, set in Guyana, was praised by Bernardine Evaristo as “a wonderfully lush and atmospheric odyssey of survival against all odds”.
David Shukman was the BBC’s first Science Editor and led its environmental coverage for nearly twenty years, reporting from the Amazon to Antarctica. Sir David Attenborough has described him as “a leader in raising awareness about the climate emergency”. His latest book is The Response: A Story of Fire and Flood in Britain’s New World of Extremes. He is a Visiting Professor at the LSE.
Hannah Lucinda Smith is a journalist and author who has spent more than 14 years reporting on the Middle East and Balkans. She has written for The Times, The Economist, The Atlantic and Wired, and is the author of Erdoğan Rising and co-author of Zarifa. Her latest book, Hinterlands, explores Europe’s unfinished frontiers and the forces reshaping the continent.
Please note: The views of our speakers do not necessarily reflect the opinion of the Royal Geographical Society.
Note on captions
The Society aims to provide automatically-generated captions for all event recordings. The captions appear as text at the bottom of the video which you can toggle on and off.
The accuracy of automatically-generated captions varies depending on the audio quality, any specialist language used and the speaker. They are therefore are unlikely to be 100% accurate and the Society does not edit or correct automatically-generated captions.
- Monday Night Lecture
Lessons from the wild: nothing grows in the comfort zone - Anna Dimitriadis
Growing up, Anna, a wildlife filmmaker, believed she had missed the age of exploration. However, the further she travelled, the more she realised the greatest mysteries lay somewhere entirely unexpected.
London and onlineMembers + one guestMonday 26 October 2026 - Monday Night Lecture
Lost, found and followed: remarkable tales from tracking wild animals
Biologist Lucy Hawkes reveals how cutting-edge animal tracking technology is transforming our understanding of some of the planet’s most exciting wild animals.
London and onlineMembers + one guestMonday 2 November 2026 - Monday Night Lecture
40 years of polar expeditions - what I have learned
Norwegian polar explorer Børge Ousland, will be speaking about his polar expeditions over the last 40 years, including his IceLegacy project, and the crossing of the North pole in the dark.
London and onlineMembers + one guestMonday 9 November 2026