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Career enhancing opportunities Geography and geology

Geosciences are all about exploration and understanding the world, so fieldwork is a core component of all our courses. Fieldwork is a great learning experience, discovering the history beneath your feet. But it’s also an opportunity to get to know each other, and to learn to work as a team.

Fieldwork takes place in all three years of your undergraduate course, in both the UK and abroad, depending on the degree programme that you are studying, and involves no additional financial contribution from students. Recent fieldwork locations include Cumbria, Mallorca, Anglesey, Tenerife, Edinburgh, Outer Hebrides, Amsterdam and Seville.

Alongside field trips we have also developed virtual fieldwork options, to supplement delivery of campus-based modules, further bridging the gap between the lecture room and the real world, and enhancing the development of skills required for a career in this sector. Students have been digitally transported as close to home as Red Rocks on the Wirral peninsular and as far afield as Mallorca. Next stop Mars?

An image of the outer hebrides islands.

Outer Hebrides

The bleak and majestic Outer Hebrides Islands are like no other place on earth. Miles of pristine white beaches with azure blue seas. You could almost mistake this for a tropical paradise, until you open the minibus door and the biting wind strikes. With archaeology older than the Egyptian pyramids, we study the geoenvironmental management of regional growth projects, such as the potential for a super-quarry or offshore wind farms that could power the whole of the UK.

Lecturer in Earth Sciences
An image of Mallorca.

Mallorca

Mallorca is a Mediterranean tourists delight, but on this fieldtrip we visit its many beautiful locations to conduct field techniques in the mountains, on beaches, sand dunes and cliffs, and in caves, to discover the island’s geological history. We explore themes such as coastal management, vegetation biodiversity, torrents, human impacts on the landscape, and Quaternary sequences, things that happened 2.58 million to 0.012 million years ago. We still find time for an ice cream, though.

Dr Joanne Egan – Senior Lecturer in Physical Geography
An image of Amsterdam at night.

Amsterdam

Sex and drugs and rock and roll?’ Well, not quite. The Amsterdam fieldtrip is an opportunity for students to explore what goes on ‘below sea level’, examining water management, land reclamation, urban planning and design, tolerance, place identity and culturally-led regeneration, and discovering different sides to this fascinating city.

Dr Deborah Baldwin – Senior Lecturer in Human Geography

Virtual field trips: Mallorca

During the pandemic of 2020/21, we were given an online field trip experience. We were able to ‘travel’ around Mallorca online, using videos and images taken from data collection sites. The module was changed to accommodate all the things we weren’t able to experience on ‘real’ field trips, such as data collection methods. We were given a wide range of topics to allow us to engage in something we enjoy. It was disappointing to miss out on the real thing, but the online content was really engaging and interesting.

Ayse Ozcan – BSc (Hons) Geoenvironmental Hazards student

June 1, 2022