Department of Geography

REF Highlights

• More than 54% of our outputs submitted to the REF 2021 assessment have been classed as ‘world leading’, and more than 92% as ‘world leading’ or ‘internationally excellent’

• All of the Department of Geography’s Impact Case Studies were classed as either ‘internationally excellent’ or ‘world-leading’, reflecting the breadth and relevance of our cutting-edge geographical research to policy and practice

• The Department of Geography’s Research Environment received the maximum possible score, reflecting our ambitious, flexible and adventurous research culture.

About the Department

Durham Geography is a global node for geographical research – a destination and conduit for outstanding researchers from various countries and backgrounds. We provide an attractive, supportive, and innovative research environment within which to work, in order to enable our staff to follow their academic interests and passions, challenge existing approaches and understandings, and be experimental and take risks. This environment is enabled by a set of guiding principles:  

• To foster a research culture that is welcoming, ambitious, flexible, and adventurous, generating innovation and transformation in our practices, approaches, and outputs;  
• To ensure that we maximise our collective research strengths, by enabling individuals at all career stages to realise their potential while also contributing to a culture of collective endeavour;  
• To generate high-quality outputs that advance scholarship in and across a range of fields and address societal challenges at multiple scales, nationally and internationally; 
• To maximise the societal relevance and impact of our research through engagement with non-academic communities, nationally and internationally; and 
• To maximise access to our research through effective communication and the provision of open access to our outputs and data.