Projects supported

Grants awarded in 2026

The following projects have been selected for funding as part of this year’s grants programme. Grants are awarded subject to projects receiving approval of risk and ethics assessments.

Fieldwork Apprenticeships

• Anna Donskikh (University College London), Quantifying Contributions of Mountain Cryosphere Components to Groundwater Recharge Using Isotopic Analyses

Frederick Soddy Postgraduate Award

• Jay Sinclair (Durham University), Teesside in Transition: Tracing Reindustrialisation in a Post-Industrial Region using Endocrine Disrupting Chemicals
• Amarachukwu Ifeji (University of Oxford), Gendered Climate Necropolitics and Patriarchal Geographies of Violence: A Decolonial Feminist Political Ecological Analysis of Lithium Extraction in Zimbabwe

Frederick Soddy Schools Award

• Lucy Hatch (Fullbrook School), Year 10 Urban Fieldwork to London
• Sophie Palmer (Cornfield School), Olympic Park Regeneration Year 11 Fieldwork 
• Chris Archer (Tyldesley Primary School), Formby Beach Clean
• Kim Watson (Sunnyside Primary School), Ocean Defenders Set Sail
• Rob Cook (Rawlins – A Church of England Academy), Sitges-Barcelona A-Level Fieldwork
• Catherine Biddle (Q3 Academy), A Level Geography Fieldwork
• Claire Smith (New College Pontefract), Geographical Fieldwork- Urban Change
• Lucy McArdle (Teversham CofE VA Primary School), The Coast in 2025
• Danielle Weinberg (Leigh Academy Halley), Bridging Continents: Sustainable Energy and Tectonics in Iceland
• Katie Howard (St Joseph's Catholic Primary School, Wallasey), Exploring People and Place – Human and Physical Geography at Thurstaston Wirral Country Park
• Phoebe White (Lift Broadlands), Residential Fieldwork for GCSE cohort 2025-2027
• Selina Chan (Lift Four Dwellings Primary), Y2 Western-Super-Mare Fieldwork
  

Gilchrist Fieldwork Award

• Maria Shahgedanova (University of Reading), Quantifying Contributions of Mountain Cryosphere Components to Groundwater Recharge Using Isotopic Analyses

Gino Watkins Fund Awards

• Sasha Doyle, IMAQA - Expedition SILA [Arctic Club Award]
• Catherine Burford, Girls’ Trip
• James Hepburn, Svalbard 2026
• Thomas Heck (University of St Andrews), Geological mapping of the Ilímaussaq igneous complex, South-West Greenland
• Shira Biner, Baffin Island Free Climbing First Ascents Expedition 2026
• Megan Loftus, East Greenland Climbing and Sailing Expedition [Arctic Club Award]
• Thomas Wood (University of Oxford), Connecting the Fjord to the Sky: Monitoring Biological Controls on Freshwater Geochemistry in the Kongsfjorden Ecosystem
• Sofie Sjogersten (University of Nottingham), Quantifying the impact of climate change on Arctic wetland methane emissions
• Adam Hodgson, Nutarmiut island exploration [Arctic Club Award + Ann and Jim Simpson Award]
• Sophie Sparham, School of Ice [Arctic Club Award]

Henrietta Hutton Research Grant

• Ruaraidh Lockett (University of Newcastle), Understanding arboreal mammal habitat usage and the impacts of mining in tropical forest habitats
• Sarah Lill (University of Glasgow), Assessing Intertidal Macroalgal Communities and Ecological Status Using Functional Trait-Based Indices (EEI-c) in Skálanes, Iceland
• Rebecca Askins-Gast (University College London), European Badger population dynamics: Integrating spatial analysis and field surveys to support conservation action in rural Ireland
• Sadie Shaw (Oxford Brookes University), Studying the abundance of immature green turtles in relation to seagrass biomass

Journey in Audio

• Julia Massey-Stewart, Sounds of the Soil / Soils Alive
• Julia Rowlandson, Sea of Senses
• Ira Deulgaonkar (University of Sussex), What Drought Sounds Like: Women, water, and work in Marathwada
• Aris Dougas Chavarria (University of Sussex), “The Sea is History”: Migrant Death/Disappearance at Sea and border violence en route to the Canary Islands
• Suzannah Scott-Moncrieff, Between two forests: Echoes of a lost ecosystem

Monica Cole Research Grant

• Joseph Buchanan (Lancaster University), Quantifying the surface evolution and lake development on Khumbu Glacier over the past 12 years
• Erin Doyle (Aberystwyth University), Determining the spatial variability in the composition of cryoconite
• Lucy Mulligan (University of Bristol), Understanding snow/glacier algal productivity relative to key abiotic stressors to inform better grade and larger-scale modelling of algal bloom formation and propagation
• Katie McGhie (University of Edinburgh), Studying grainsize distribution of the Campanian Ignimbrite PDC and co-PDC deposits to model plumes and ash dispersal from large eruptions

Neville Shulman Challenge Award

• Lisa Drewe (Islandeering), Small Islands, Big Lessons: A Human-Powered Journey Across Britain’s Outer Edge
• Iva Njunjić (Taxon Foundation), Speleological Expedition to Save Komarnica Canyon

Postgraduate Research Awards

• Luke Macpherson (Northumbria University), Echoes from the ice: working with an indigenous community to assess the effectiveness of coastal defences on vulnerable permafrost
• Maria Jose Arbelaez Zapata (University College London), Care on the Move: Walking in Bogotá’s Caring City
• Shannon Goldberg (Northumbria University), Monitoring the impact of non-native bumblebees on an island ecosystem using an integrative approach
• William Kalani Foster (University of Manchester), Examining Indigenous and satellite imagery-derived depictions of landscape restoration in northern Kenya
• Jiaxi Chen (Heriot-Watt University), An Exploration of Collaborative Adaptation Pathways for Sea Level Rise: Cases of Edinburgh and Shenzhen
• Ruth Dunn (University of Newcastle), Quantifying the Underestimation of Rainfall by Rain Gauge Networks: Significance, Implications, and Recommendations
• Weile Zhang (University of Newcastle), Mapping Power and Place: A Participatory Workshop on Gendered Business Drinking Spaces in Hangzhou, China
• Yuhong Lei (University of Newcastle), Evolutionary Geographies of Robotisation: A Comparative Study of Garment Supply Chains in Guangzhou and Hangzhou
• Faith Imhanze (Loughborough University), Reconstructing the historical pollution of drinking water reservoirs in the East Midlands, UK
• Janae Steadman (University of Leeds), Investigating the co-evolution of Congo River Channels and Peatlands
• Kelly Moon (Queen's University Belfast), Investigating Environmental Stress Associated with Wildlife Mortality in the Okavango Delta
• Jennifer Hewitt (Bangor University), Sediment Dynamics on Norfolk’s Intertidal Flats: Implications for Blue Carbon Assessments
• Charlotte Hawkins (University of Reading), Drivers of Global Biochar Adoption: Insights for Successful Implementation in Soil Management
• Tania Ocampo García (London School of Economics), Sensing Paradise: Mapping Cancun’s Multisensory Urban Fabric
• Ava Rawson (University of Oxford), The Post-Life of Oil: Decommissioning and the Energy Transition within the North Sea
• Alexis Forer (University College London), The Natural and Cultural Heritage of Birds in Haida Gwaii
• Lily Innes Jones (The University of Sheffield), Do microplastics escape proglacial forelands?
• Daniela Schofield (Cardiff University), Gender and climate justice: informal street and market traders in Dar es Salaam [Geography Club Bicentenary Award]
• Dominic Seager (University of East Anglia), Drone Photogrammetry: A new method for monitoring coastal erosion
• Martha Day (Imperial College London), Post-fire hydrological function of a tropical mountain cloud forest 
• [Geography Club Bicentenary Award]
• Katherine Zhou (University of Oxford), Artificial Intelligence’s Bargaining Chip: Migrant Workers and the  Negotiation of Spatial Fix in Taiwan’s Semiconductor Industry [Hong Kong Research Grant]

Ralph Brown Expedition Award

• Duccio Gheri (University of Liverpool), Expedition Grey: a multi-sensor experiment to measure ice mass loss at the Grey Glacier, Torres del Paine National Park, Chile
• Marco Fusi (University of Newcastle), Investigating the role of invertebrate-coral interaction in structuring the coral reef oxyscape
• Lucy Clarke (Nottingham Trent University), The Role of Tidal Freshwater Zones in UK Aquatic Systems

Ran and Ginny Fiennes Award

• Oliver Basciano, The Grey Line: Walking the NATO border
• Nina Maria Allmoslechner, A Visit to Iceland (1845 and 2026)
• Karolina Pakėnaitė (Bath University), DeafBlind Everest Project

RGS Explore Grants

• Rosa Vasquez Espinoza (Amazon Research International), Amazonian Medicinal Plants Documentation co-created with Indigenous Communities [Gumby Award]
• Stanley Sherlock (The University of Sheffield), ALPaC (Analysing Laguna’s Processes and Collapse) [Jeremy Willson Award]
• Caitlin Barker (University of Newcastle), Steindalsbreen Valley Research 2026 [Tabarin Award]
• Aaron George (University of Newcastle), Investigating controls on glacier melt rates and the proglacial environment in Tarfala, Sweden
• Heart Vareekasem (University College London), Marmolada 2026: A Comparative Spatio-Temporal Analysis of Glacial Morphology and Thermal Response Following the 2022 Collapse

Small Research Grants

• Ihnji Jon (Cardiff University), Green gentrification, at the Amazon’s resource frontier: Case study of Cuiabá, Mato Grosso
• Peter Martin (University of Nottingham), Sharing the Tsaroff Story: Creative Community Engagement in Aleutian History
• Roselle Knowles (University of Liverpool), Heat, fire and toxic futures: a comparative study of Italy and the UK
• Masashi Watanabe (University of Southampton), Reconstruction of tsunami recurrence intervals in southwest England
• Joe Blakey (University of Manchester), Understanding How Climate Scientists as Public Intellectuals Navigate False Hope in UK Climate Discourse
• Mingyu Zhu (University of Glasgow), Port–City Disconnections in Northern Britain: A Study of Transition and Inequality
• Elina Apine (University of St Andrews), Exploring sense of place: the cultural significance of coastal habitats in the Outer Hebrides
• Rosemary Huck (University of Oxford), Crust Assessment, Mapping, and Emission Linkages (CAMEL)
• Iain Wheel (University of Stirling), Calving in ice-sheet models
• Luke Green (University of Newcastle), Co-authoring geography: A study of the prevalence, practices and experiences of research collaboration and co-authorship in Anglophone human geography
• Michel Valette (Imperial College London), Governing fire in a rapidly changing Amazon: post-2024 wildfire responses in Capoto/Jarina
• Paul Breeze (King's College London), Evaluating the rehabilitation of traditional water security practices on a thirsty Greek island for water security: the Souvales of Aigina
• Sarah Knight (University of Salford), Evaluating the impact of greenspace improvements in York, UK
• Ting Lian (Imperial College London), Misplaced Exposures: How Methodological Precision Shapes Environmental Inequality in Urban and Rural England
• Lauren Hammond (University of Oxford), Encountering nation(hood) in Oxford and Edinburgh: An exploration of the relationships and disconnects between children’s geographies and education [Jasmin Leila Award]
• Olivia Taylor (University of Sussex), Debt, disasters and climate justice in Barbados: debt-based financial instruments in small island development states (SIDS) [Rob Potter Award]
  

Thesiger-Oman International Fellowships

• Hong Yang (University of Reading), Solar Megaprojects and Land Surface Change in Arid Western China

Walters Kundert Fellowship

• Robbie Mallett (UiT The Arctic University of Norway), Isotopic tracking of salt in snow on Arctic sea ice

Full list of projects supported since 1953