Masters degree in Cultural Geography examine the ways in which cultures, beliefs and value systems shape and are shaped by populations and their environments.
Related subjects include Social Geography and Urban Geography. Entry requirements normally include an undergraduate degree in a relevant subject such as Cultural and Communication Studies or Human Geography.
The MA Cultural Geography (Research) was founded in 1995 as one of the first masters programmes in the world to offer students focused engagement with the then emerging sub-discipline of Cultural Geography.
Twenty years later and Cultural Geography is one of the most dynamic sub-disciplines in contemporary geography. Our course reflects this dynamism, exploring the relationships between our physical world, human identity and mobility. We combine core concepts with research methods training and interdisciplinary scholarship and practice. We develop this alongside innovative placements and research engagements with some of world’s top cultural institution, located on our doorstep in London.
The MA in Cultural Geography (Research) combines the vibrant research of the outstanding Social, Cultural and Historical Geography group with cutting edge teaching.
Thematically cultural geography focuses on the interconnections between place, landscape, environment, mobilities and identity, and thus has profound relevance for the contemporary world. Our graduates go on to work in a range of sectors, including the arts and cultural sector, publishing, planning and urban policy, private and public sector research work as well as many carrying on to further doctoral study.
The course attracts a diverse range of students from a range of backgrounds, not just those with geography degrees. To see more about the activities around the MA Cultural Geography at Royal Holloway, please look at our research group blog Landscape Surgery.
Core modules
Optional modules
In addition to these mandatory course units there are a number of optional course units available during your degree studies. The following is a selection of optional course units that are likely to be available. Please note that although the College will keep changes to a minimum, new units may be offered or existing units may be withdrawn, for example, in response to a change in staff. Applicants will be informed if any significant changes need to be made.
Assessment is by coursework only. Formative feedback and detailed ongoing discussion of work before final submission is a central part of the teaching ethos of the course. Students also have significant autonomy in the selection of topics for coursework and dissertation allowing them to develop particular interests and specialisms.
This programme is delivered in a single stage, equating to either one-year of full-time study or up to five years of part-time study.
Study Cultural Geography (By Research) at Royal Holloway, University of London and you’ll be well placed to progress to PhD study or to a rewarding career in your chosen field. This research-based programme sees more than 50% of graduates progress to doctoral study.
This programme is structured to maximise graduate employability and further education prospects, with transferable skills sessions, career development sessions and workshops taking place to help graduates you achieve your career ambitions. We help our students to work on their PhD applications, and also help to arrange placements with some of the world’s top cultural institutions – including the V&A Museum, the Museum of London, the British Library, the Natural History Museum, the Royal Botanic Gardens Kew and the Royal Geographical Society.
Cities are the vibrant and dynamic focal points of today’s society. These diverse agglomerations of people, companies and organisations are both locations for innovation and for conflict. Cities are regarded as creative places as well as conflictual places for divergent communities. In this Master's specialisation you will study how different actors influence the physical form of cities but also the way in which they present and understand the character and identity of cities and how they make use of the typical urban environment in their daily activities. They create and make cities.
See the website http://www.ru.nl/masters/ucg
The requirements for admission include:
- a bachelor degree in Human Geography received from Radboud University or another relevant bachelor degree with at least 24 EC in conflict studies and/or political geography
- Having successfully completed a course in social scientific research methods is highly recommended and will increase your chance of getting selected for this specialisation
- excellent proficiency in English
- a letter of motivation
- two letters of recommendation
- list of your grades obtained during previous training
The Master's specialisation Urban and Cultural Geography prepares students for a professional career in government, semi-government, and business. It also provides a stepping stone towards a research career in academia or consultancy. You will be able to apply the scientific insights and the practical skills you have acquired to topics including the development and marketing of cities, multi-culturality and integration, innovative and creative urban milieus, urban identities, cultural industries.
This would qualify you for a whole range of different jobs. Some of you might find a job in a government agency, e.g. as city-manager, city marketeer, city planner, integration agent, city-network manager, PR- manager, etc. Others will end up in semi-government agencies such as development agencies, cultural planning agencies, but also research institutes, etc. Finally also private industry offers a number of opportunities for urban and cultural specialists. One might think of jobs such as event manager, museum director, city marketeer, consultant, journalist, innovation consultant, communication manager or media specialist.
See the website http://www.ru.nl/masters/ucg
In this Master’s degree you will acquire conceptual ideas, theoretical approaches and analytical research skills needed to study social and cultural geography at postgraduate level. You will engage with questions that interrogate the foundations of inequality, the relationship between power and dissent, identity and belonging, race, gender, cultural change and conflict. Representations of cultural landscapes and critical cartographies are used to explore the geographical imagination of the world from local to global scales.
UK-focused and international case studies are used to illustrate critical, contemporary challenges, from understanding the dynamics of inequality in a city like London to the cultural processes underpinning the rise in populist politics and social movements across the world. To support the development of learning in areas that are of particular interest, you can choose option modules from a wide variety of subject areas such as urbanisation, culture and development, social anthropology, politics, religion and society.
In addition to core content, you will learn research methods that will enable you to specialise and undertake the researching and writing of a dissertation on a subject that appeals to you, as well as develop skills to conduct independent research in both academic and non-academic contexts.
At Birkbeck, almost all of our courses are taught in the evening and our teaching is designed to support students who are juggling evening study with work and other daytime commitments. We actively encourage innovative and engaging ways of teaching, to ensure our students have the best learning experience. In the 2017 Teaching Excellence Framework (TEF), the government’s system for rating university teaching, Birkbeck was allocated a Silver award.
Teaching may include formal lectures, seminars, and practical classes and tutorials. Formal lectures are used in most degree programmes to give an overview of a particular field of study. They aim to provide the stimulus and the starting point for deeper exploration of the subject during your own personal reading. Seminars give you the chance to explore a specific aspect of your subject in depth and to discuss and exchange ideas with fellow students. They typically require preparatory study.
Our distance-learning and blended-learning courses and modules are self-directed and we will provide you with interactive learning opportunities and encourage you to collaborate and engage via various learning technologies. These courses involve limited or no face-to-face contact between students and module tutors.
In addition, you will have access to pastoral support via a named Personal Tutor.
Teaching is via lectures, seminars, presentations and fieldwork.
On our taught courses, you will have scheduled teaching and study sessions each year. Alongside this, you will also undertake assessment activities and independent learning outside of class. Depending on the modules you take, you may also have additional scheduled academic activities, such as tutorials, dissertation supervision, practical classes, visits and fieldtrips.
On our taught courses, the actual amount of time you spend in the classroom and in contact with your lecturers will depend on your course, the option modules you select and when you undertake your final-year project.
On our distance-learning and blended-learning courses, discussion, collaboration and interaction with your lecturers and fellow students are encouraged and enabled through various learning technologies, but you may have limited or no face-to-face contact with your module tutors.
Class sizes vary, depending on your course, the module you are undertaking, and the method of teaching. For example, lectures are presented to larger groups, whereas seminars usually consist of small, interactive groups led by a tutor.
On our taught courses, much of your time outside of class will be spent on self-directed, independent learning, including preparing for classes and following up afterwards. This will usually include, but is not limited to, reading books and journal articles, undertaking research, working on coursework and assignments, and preparing for presentations and assessments.
Independent learning is absolutely vital to your success as a student. Everyone is different, and the study time required varies topic by topic, but, as a guide, expect to schedule up to five hours of self-study for each hour of teaching.
On our distance-learning and blended-learning courses, the emphasis is very much on independent, self-directed learning and you will be expected to manage your own learning, with the support of your module tutors and various learning technologies.
Assessment is an integral part of your university studies and usually consists of a combination of coursework and examinations, although this will vary from course to course - on some of our courses, assessment is entirely by coursework. The methods of assessment on this course are specified below under 'Methods of assessment on this course'. You will need to allow time to complete coursework and prepare for exams.
Where a course has unseen written examinations, these may be held termly, but, on the majority of our courses, exams are usually taken in the Summer term, during May to June. Exams may be held at other times of the year as well. In most cases, exams are held during the day on a weekday - if you have daytime commitments, you will need to make arrangements for daytime attendance - but some exams are held in the evening. Exam timetables are published online.
All assessment is by coursework. You also write a 15,000-word dissertation.
Human Geography is a research field which focuses on studying the spatial behaviour of people, firms and organisations. Or, to put it simply, it is a study that observes the relationship between human activities and their spatial environment. Because it is an integrative discipline, Human Geography serves as an excellent platform for integrating knowledge from various related disciplines, such as Sociology, Anthropology, Psychology, International Relations, Economics, Business Administration and Development Studies.
The Human Geography Master's programme at Radboud University offers five specialisations and the option to develop your own specialisation:
- Conflicts, Territories and Identities
- Economic Geography
- Europe: Governance, Borders and Identities
- Globalisation, Migration and Development
- Urban and Cultural Geography
- Free specialisation: combination of courses of your own choice, subject to approval by the Examination Board
The Master's programme can also be conducted in dual mode (information in Dutch: studying next to working in the human geographic profession). Additionally there is a post-Master's programme for secondary teacher training also called educational Master's at the ILS (in Dutch).
Throughout the Master's programme you will be assessed by a mixture of written exams, essays, papers, projects, oral presentations and your Master's thesis.
Graduates of the Master's in Human Geography will be qualified for many different job positions. These jobs all require excellent analytical skills at an academic level, a critical perspective, thorough knowledge of societal relations and a clear vision of how crucial societal problems can be solved. Human Geography graduates find jobs rather easily at (international) research institutes, international companies, or at consultancy firms. Top-ranking positions, in private industry as well as in governmental and non-governmental organisations can also be found.
Human Geography is a research field which focuses on studying the spatial behaviour of people, firms and organisations. Or, to put it simply, it is a study that observes the relationship between human activities and their spatial environment. Because it is an integrative discipline, Human Geography serves as an excellent platform for integrating knowledge from various related disciplines, such as Sociology, Anthropology, Psychology, International Relations, Economics, Business Administration and Development Studies.
See the website http://www.ru.nl/english/education/masters/human-geography
Tourism is based on the cultural appreciation and value of the cities and landscapes tourists visit. Tourism also has a major economic, social and environmental impact on places and regions. This Master's specialisation allows you to understand the processes involved and how to use them in practice. In this specialisation you will mainly learn to understand and interpret advanced theories and practices of leisure and tourism and their influence on the social and physical environment. Since tourism is mainly about experiencing places and events, you will learn to understand where these experiences come from, what effects they have and how they can be influenced.
Why study Cultural Geography and Tourism at Radboud University?
•Tourists travel to places which are different, attractive, challenging and special, and which provide them with a thrilling experience. Geographers study, how these experiences actually evolve, how they are created and produced, how these experiences differ from group to group and how places can be designed accordingly?
•Tourism also has a profound effect on places, on the local economy, on the culture of the people who live there and on the ecology and landscape. Also these aspects are of central interest for the scholars in this Master's specialisation. Finally, not just places are affected, but the movements, flows and related streams of people, goods, money, information, images, and traffic have an enormous effect on our global landscape, which we study in the framework of this Master's specialisation.
•This Master's specialisation is a concise and intensive one-year Master's programme preparing you as a full-fledged academic in this field and as such is unique in the Netherlands. Our Human Geography Master's programme, regularly ranks as the best Dutch master programme in this field in the Netherlands.
•This Master's specialisation has an international character, with students and lecturers from all over the world, and at the same time offers many opportunities to do research abroad or to gain professional experience abroad.
•Although the foundation of this specialisation is geographical, our approach to this theme is highly multidisciplinary to include related fields as cultural studies, psychology, anthropology, economics, spatial planning, environmental policy studies, etc..
•You’ll conduct your Master’s thesis research in the framework of a research internship at an organisation active in a field related to tourism. This will give you a taste of professional life in the field and enhance your chances on the job market.
•You’ll also benefit from the advantages of the Master’s programme in Human Geography in general.
If you are interested in theoretical and empirical developments in cultural geography, this course will help you understand the cultural landscapes of rural and urban environments throughout the world.
You will explore key themes in cultural and historical geography, connecting theory and practice with disciplines throughout the humanities and social sciences.
This course is recognised by the Arts and Humanities Research Council as providing training appropriate for PhD research.
Academic English preparation and support
If you require additional support to take your language skills to the required level, you may be able to attend a presessional course at the Centre for English Language Education, which is accredited by the British Council for the teaching of English in the UK.
Students who successfully complete the presessional course to the required level can progress to postgraduate study without retaking IELTS or equivalent. You could be eligible for a joint offer, which means you will only need to apply for your visa once.
Key facts
This course comprises 120 credits of core and optional modules, plus a 60-credit dissertation. You will be allocated an appropriate dissertation supervisor who will oversee your progress.
Core
Optional
You can choose from geography modules or options from other schools/departments across the University, subject to approval.
The modules we offer are inspired by the research interests of our staff and as a result may change for reasons of, for example, research developments or legislation changes. This list is an example of typical modules we offer, not a definitive list.
Recent graduates have gone on to pursue fully-funded postgraduate research and successful academic careers. Others are working in the creative industries, or public and voluntary sectors.
Employability and average starting salary
100% of postgraduates from the School of Geography who were available for employment secured work or further study within six months of graduation. £25,721 was the average starting salary, with the highest being £29,847.*
* Known destinations of full-time home postgraduates 2015/16. Salaries are calculated based on the median of those in full-time paid employment within the UK.
Career and professional development
Whether you are looking to enhance your career prospects or develop your knowledge, a postgraduate degree from the University of Nottingham can help take you where you want to be.
Our award-winning Careers and Employability Service offers specialist support and guidance while you study and for life after you graduate. They will help you explore and plan your next career move, through regular events, employer-led skills sessions, placement opportunitiesand one-to-one discussions.
