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The University of Southampton
Geography and Environmental Science

Outreach

Athena SWAN Bronze Award
We were awarded the Athena SWAN Bronze Award in 2017

We want to pass on our passion for geography and environmental sciences on to new generations and to inspire children and young people to look at the world through varied techniques, from human and physical to local and global. With our teacher training in Google Earth, and iPads for fieldwork, we aim to bring the power of new mapping tools into the classroom.

Activities

Whether you are a teacher, a careers adviser or have a personal interest, we are involved in a range of activities and events to help you find out more.

Schools & colleges liaison

As well as having a high profile nationally, the University is also very much focused towards engagement with the local community.

More than Maps project

More than Maps is a public engagement initiative

Find out more

Workshops project on coastal adaptation research methods

The More than Maps project is designing and delivering workshops to share replicable and open-access skills in mapping and social science analysis as to empower young people in climate change adaptation. The project launched from the School of Geography and Environmental Science in autumn 2020, and has since grown to include University of Southampton researchers across multiple faculties, as well as partnered with other research institutes include the University of Ghana, Mona Geoinformatics Institute in Jamaica, The University of Western Australia and The University of Sydney. The workshops on offer range from thirty minutes to two-and-a-half hours in duration, can be run online and in-person, are adaptable to a range of different audiences, and all share a common focus on teaching coastal climate change adaptation research methods and frameworks.

At the University of Southampton, the project currently has the materials and capacity to run six different workshops. These workshops cover case studies including: sargassum seaweed influx events in the Caribbean, river flooding in Ghana and England, and coastal flood risk in England. The methods covered in the workshops encompass an introduction to Google Earth Engine and environmental mapping, stakeholder analysis, interpreting satellite derived maps, studying human adaptation to hazards, and developing interdisciplinary public engagement projects. Across the international partnership, further topics currently on offer comprise further case studies of cyclones, fisheries management, climate change, and coastal hazards, as well as methods including remote sensing and marine studies, causal loop diagrams of hazard impact management, geospatial impact assessment, community science, QGIS for environmental monitoring, field-monitoring methods and mobile data collection. The workshop offering is continuing to expand as the team and partnership grows.

More than Maps origin and ambition

The More than Maps project is an interdisciplinary collaboration between PhD students, early career researchers and established academics. The project was launched as part of the ESRC Festival of Social Sciences 2020, and engaged over thirty A-level students from across the UK in a two-part online workshop series. Since this first iteration, the project has receives support from the Public Engagement with Research unit (University of Southampton), the UK/Australia Season Patrons Board, the British Council and the Australian Government as part of the UK/Australia Season. In its first two years, the project has engaged well over 200 students and early career professionals in workshops internationally at online and in-person events.

In 2022, the project will build on the existing workshops and successes by inviting researchers to contribute to new workshops on research methods in coastal adaptation, adding interactive learning materials to the website, and running workshops at popular events such as the Southampton Science and Engineering Festival (SOTSEF) and the Festival of Nature.

For more information on the this project, visit https://morethanmaps.sartrac.org/ or email Dr Sien van der Plank at sien.vanderplank@soton.ac.uk

My Geography degree has definitely opened doors for me. The broad range of topics studied and issues covered helped to open my eyes to new interests and career paths. Without my degree I wouldn’t have the graduate job I have now.

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