About the Award
Born in 1877, Frederick Soddy was a Nobel Prize winning atomic scientist, who later in his life developed economic and sociological interests.
Through the foundation of the Frederick Soddy Trust, he sought to encourage research that would provide a holistic view of the whole life of an area or community, encompassing both human and physical geography. Applicants are encouraged to make clear how their research relates to this specific objective.
The Frederick Soddy Postgraduate Award was established in 2010 and was previously administred by RGS-IBG on behalf of the Frederick Soddy Trust. The award is open to individual PhD students or teams of PhD students. One or two awards are given every year.
In 2018 the Frederick Soddy Trust became a linked charity of RGS-IBG, creating a new set of grants, the Frederick Soddy Awards, to support school and student fieldwork and expeditions.
Applicants must be UK/EU nationals and be currently registered on a PhD programme at a UK Higher Education Institution.
Deadline: 3 February annually
Apply now
The Frederick Soddy Postgraduate Award is given through the RGS-IBG Postgraduate Research Awards scheme. All prospective grant applicants are encouraged to read our Advice and Resources pages, which include more information about the grants programme, its conditions, how to apply for a grant and what is expected if your application is successful. Please read this information carefully and send your application, or any enquiries, by email to grants@rgs.org.
Previous recipients
2020: Julio Stimson (University of Oxford): 'Climate Change on the Galapagos Islands: Cultural Translation, Perception & Response' (subject to final approval)
People around the world are already feeling the effects of climate change, but we still know very little about how this is experienced, comprehended or acted upon. Hence, anthropologists have a vital role in conducting multi-sited ethnographies that help localise and materialise climate change. This project will carry out ethnographic fieldwork about how farmers, fishermen, scientists and the tourism sector understand the discourse of climate change, perceive changes in their environment, and act upon their beliefs of future risks.
2020: Lindsay Sekulowicz (University of Brighton): 'After the fire: documenting ethnobotanical knowledge, material practices and belief systems within indigenous communities of the Northwest Amazon' (subject to final approval)
Following a large-scale fire in the Museo Nacional of Rio de Janeiro in 2018, which destroyed the museum’s entire ethnographic collection, there has become an urgent need to consider the role that contemporary communities and existing archival material can take in preserving site-specific cultural
heritage. This project will use multidisciplinary and collaborative approaches to map the forest and river ecosystems of the Upper Rio Tiquié region of Brazil’s Northwest Amazon, and document how this landscape influences traditional craft practices of the region.
2019: Danielle Johnson (University of Auckland). 'Climate change and indigenous health and wellbeing in the Kaipara Catchment, New Zealand'
Drawing upon political ecology, indigenous geographies and notions of solastalgia and adaptive capacity, the research responds to a gap in critical social science scholarship about climate change in New Zealand. The project employs qualitative, participatory methods to investigate the relationship between climate change and indigenous health and wellbeing in the Kaipara Catchment of northern New Zealand.
2019: Joss Lyons-White (Imperial College London). 'What does “zero deforestation” really mean? Balancing forest conservation and development needs in Liberia'
This project aims to explore the diverse values and attitudes of stakeholders in Liberia regarding the zero-deforestation concept and the High Carbon Stock Approach. This will promote an improved understanding of how zero-deforestation policy interacts with social, economic and cultural life in Liberia. It will also facilitate dialogue in both Liberian and international policy forums about how palm oil-driven deforestation can be effectively and equitably addressed.
2019: Silvia Hassouna (Aberystwyth University). 'Curating the future of Palestine: environmental/artistic approaches to preserve cultural heritage from loss and expropriation in the West Bank'
This three-month fieldwork project will take place in the Palestinian towns of Ramallah and Bethlehem to study innovative approaches adopted by museums to preserve cultural heritage from the urgent risk of loss and expropriation. Specifically it explores how ‘ecosystem heritage’ (traditional forms of plants and wildlife) is understood as a key component of cultural heritage by museums working to preserve Palestinian life in a context of cultural erasure.
2018: Daniel Robins (University of St Andrews). ‘Sao Paulo to London: voluntary immobility, place attachment and the geographical imagination’
Fieldwork will be conducted in Sao Paulo to explore the motivations behind why people migrate and why people remain. Qualitative interviews and participant observation will be conducted to explore the relationship between class, ideology and concepts of home and belonging.
2018: Lydia Gibson (University College London). ‘Saving parrots, destroying culture? The effect of species conservation and protected area designation on Maroon identity’
This project examines the role that conservation plays in the formation and maintenance of Maroon identity in Cockpit Country, Jamaica. In order to understand the impact of conservation on Maroon culture, the research explores the Maroon's clandestine use of, and relationship with, the forest - including hunting yellow-billed and black-billed parrots.
2017: Sarah Rosenberg-Jansen (University of Oxford). 'Voices in the dark: geographies of renewable energy policies in refugee settings in East Africa’
Working with refugee communities in Rwanda and Kenya, this research project aims to understand the mechanisms by which international development agencies are delivering renewable energy to refugees, and the role displaced communities and households have in defining their access to energy.
2017: Harry Hilser (University of Exeter). ‘Empathising with nature: nature connectedness and its relationship with conservation advocacy and behaviour in Indonesia'
This research will investigate mechanisms of conservation advocacy and pro-environmental behaviour in North Sulawesi, Indonesia, and assess the effectiveness of strategies for conservation approaches related to hunting and logging. Data from participant observation and focus groups will be analysed and used to help practitioners refine approaches to biodiversity conservation.
2016: Agnese Marino (University College London). 'Conflict and coexistence with large carnivores in the Northwest of Spain'
By focusing on an area of Spain where management and habituation to wolves and brown bears differs considerably across short distances, this research project will look at the ecological, economic, social and cognitive drivers of conflict and coexistence with large carnivores.
2016: Aoife Bennett-Curry (University of Oxford). 'The political ecology of oil palm, people and forest conservation: searching for a balanced approach to development in the Peruvian Amazon'
The Amazon region – like many other developing regions – has a long history with failed rural development projects. These failures are often a result of a lack of understanding about local cultures, values and economies at the design phase of projects. This research will address this asymmetry in development planning, using a mixed methods human geography approach.
2015: Jeanna Loyer (Queen's University Belfast). 'Life and death in the steppe: investigating the impacts of socio-economic, political and climatic change on the health of prehistoric pastoralists of the Volga Region'
Major socio-economic, political and climatic changes have shaped the Volga steppe region during the Bronze and Iron Ages (3rd millennium BC – 4th century AD). Global environmental fluctuations greatly impacted the steppe and several striking shifts in the pastoral economies have been traced. The current research will investigate the palaeopathology of about 600 skeletons, in relation with climatic, archaeological, and health geographic data. This study will provide unique data which will enable a better understanding of the past and present effects of climate and socio-economic change to be gained in relation to the health of pastoralist communities.
2014: Samuel Derbyshire (University of Oxford). 'A history of Turkana material culture: tracing change and facing the future with the people of the grey bull'
This project explored the on-going development of the Turkana people and region in Kenya. An exhaustive ethnographic investigation was undertaken, during which Turkana material culture was analysed as it operated in daily life. This ethnography will be placed within its deep historical context by combining it with a range of documents and photographs spanning the 20th century.
2013: Yuri Boyanin (La Trobe University, Australia). 'Sedentary nomads: pastoralism, nomadism, settlement and tribalism among the Kyrgyz of High Asia'
This archival and oral history study focuses on the Kyrgyz mountainous pastoralists: scattered across Inner Asia and separated by modern national borders. The project aimed to uncover how the Kyrgyz identity has adapted to various changing patterns of settlement. Evidence suggests that a number of social, economic and political factors have pushed the Kyrgyz to permanent settlement in their high-altitude alpine pastures.
2013: Kate Porter (University of East Anglia). 'Imagining climate control: the case of the ‘Geoclique’ and the ‘Haida’'
This project explores the underlying ecological worldviews - signalled by ontological, epistemological and axiological assumptions - that people draw on when engaging with the idea of climate control and when reaching normative conclusions about its desirability and feasibility. Using discourse analysis, the project will explore this through two case studies: 1) the metaphorical ‘Geoclique’ and 2) residents of Haida Gwaii and employees of the Haida Salmon Restoration Corporation. Both case studies are sights of visible controversy about the desirability of geoengineering interventions.
2012: Michael Musgrave (University of St Andrews). 'The decline of the Zambezi Teak forests of Western Zambia and the implications for social and economic development'
The Zambezi Teak forests of western Zambia have been logged for 70 years and are severely depleted. The study mapped the current and historical geographical extent of the forests and examined the social and institutional issues surrounding their management. A unique opportunity exists to make an important contribution to common–pool resource theory by examining the social, cultural and economic differences between communities living in Zambezi Teak forests in Zambia and Zimbabwe. The lessons learned from comparing the differences in managing Zambezi Teak in the two countries, will play an important role in future management of the Zambian forests.
2011: Dan Keech (University of Southampton). 'Social enterprise and the production of nature'
The project studied the commercially challenging nature of orchards - the costs of husbanding often exceeds earned income. However, orchards varied biological structure represents great value to wildlife. Recent attempts by wildlife NGOs to protect orchards include experimenting with social enterprise methods (balancing commercial with social/environmental objectives) to revive orchards. This project compared influences on orchard social enterprises in Germany and England.
2011: Konstantina Isidoros (Oxford University). 'Social transformation among saharan desert nomads'
The project examined the social landscape of the Sahrāwī hassāniya-speaking nomads whose territory spans the whole of the western Sahara. Exploring the hidden logic of how and why this tribal nomadic pastoralists’ social adaptation has persistently survived as a powerful and dynamic system of human social behaviour and organisation, where others have weakened under climate change, post-colonial conflict and our ‘modern’ Western economic-political template.
2010: Evelyn Landerer (University of Cambridge). 'Re-imagining the land: experiences of cultural, social and spatial change among forest dwellers in a region in eastern Siberia'
The project studied a remote region of eastern Siberia, contrasting indigenous reindeer people (Evenki), who walk endlessly around the dense boreal fores, with settlement-dwelling Russians and others who engage only briefly with the forest as hunters or (recently) oil prospectors. The project analysed how each group conceptualises, perceives and orders their social, cultural and economic spaces under rapid anthropogenic change.