Geography with International Year Abroad BSc (Hons)

Professor Ian Maddock

Professor Ian Maddock joined Worcester in 1993 and has teaching and research interests in River Science, Hydromorphology, Hydroecology / Ecohydrology, Ecohydraulics, River Restoration and Aquatic Habitat Measurement, Mapping and Modelling. 

Ian has international experience conducting research in Australia, Ireland and the USA. He has flown the University's drones for research in the UK, Chile and Slovenia.

Dr Cheryl Jones

As well as teaching a variety of modules on the Geography BSc (Hons) course and supervising PhD students, Dr Cheryl Jones also has a number of other roles within University of Worcester - as a KTI Fellow; Award leader in Physical Geography; Enterprise co-ordinator; and Examinations Officer.

Dr Alan Dixon

Research Interests

Alan is an interdisciplinary Geographer and Human Ecologist with research interests in sustainability, environment-development relationships in developing countries, and social-ecological systems. Much of Alan's work has focused on the importance of wetland environments at the community level, where he has explored how local knowledge, social capital and common property resource institutions contribute to sustainable wetland management strategies that produce win-win outcomes for both local peoples’ livelihoods and wetland ecosystem services.

Alan has been involved in various participatory action research and consultancy projects, ranging from ESRC-funded research examining the role of local institutional arrangements in wetland management in Ethiopia, to work undertaken for the FAO that led to the development of global Guidelines for Wetland-Agriculture Interactions. Since 2008 Alan has been working with the NGO Self Help Africa in Malawi and Zambia to develop and disseminate a ‘Functional Landscape Approach’ for wetland management. As well as informing wetland policy-making and management practice, Alan’s work has also had a direct impact on enhancing food security and building sustainable and resilient livelihoods among hundreds of thousands of households across sub-Saharan Africa.

Alan has co-authored the highly successful book ‘Africa: Diversity and Development’, which has become a key text in geography, international development, and African studies courses around the world (a new edition is forthcoming). In 2013 he also co-authored the Routledge book ‘Wetland Management and Sustainable Livelihoods in Africa,' which sets out a new agenda for wetland management in the 21st century.

Teaching

Alan is a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy and his teaching on our Geography courses reflects his research interests and enthusiasm for participatory, interactive and experiential learning. In the first year he leads fieldwork and class-based sessions in GEOG1312 People and Place and GEOG1311 Risk and Resilience, while in the second year he leads GEOG2110 Researching Geography, and GEOG2131 Geographies of Development. In the latter, students have the opportunity to engage with real-world practitioners and decision-makers in the field of international development by attending a public conference with local partners, Beacons Development Education Centre. For a quick taster of this have a look at our video here.  

In the final year, Alan leads the award-winning module GEOG3136 Environment and Development in Sub-Saharan Africa, in which students explore sustainable development either through virtual fieldwork in Ethiopia, or by going on a 12-day residential field course to Malawi. Have a listen to their experiences in Malawi here.  

Qualifications

• PhD 'Indigenous knowledge and the hydrological management of wetlands in Illubabor, Southwest Ethiopia' (University of Huddersfield, 2000)
• BSc (Hons) Human Ecology (Huddersfield, 1995)

Dr Fleur Visser

From Fleur's undergraduate degree in Physical Geography at the University of Amsterdam she gained strong field-based research skills, which she used to produce a sediment budget for tropical sugarcane land during my PhD project at the Australian National University and CSIRO Townsville. A subsequent opportunity to study soil erosion in a different way, using hyperspectral image data, sparked her interest in the use of Earth Observation (EO) image analysis for mapping and monitoring of the world around us.

Fleur's ongoing research investigates the possibilities for using very high and ultra-high resolution imagery (e.g. collected from drones) to detect and map submerged aquatic vegetation and algae in shallow river systems. Fleur uses Object-based image analysis (OBIA) and Structure from Motion (SfM) photogrammetry techniques, which makes it possible to remotely study river environments that until recently were beyond the reach of EO technology.

Dr Des McDougall

Des is a physical geographer with interests in glaciers and glaciation, mountain geomorphology, and Quaternary environmental change.

He enjoys teaching and has particular interests in learning technologies, fieldwork, and virtual reality. An example of the work he has done in this area is his VR Glaciers and Glaciated Landscapes resource, which is used by a growing number of schools, colleges and universities around the world. 

Professor Nick Evans

Prof Nick Evans joined the Geography Department at Worcester in the 1990s and has been dedicated to the development of excellence in both research and teaching during this time. His academic interests lie firmly within the arena of agricultural geography, contributing to reinvigorating its relevance in human geography as agri-cultural geography. Nicks work focuses particularly upon the social and cultural reasons lying behind the way agriculture in the Western World is practised, offering alternative explanations to those usually based on economics. Using this approach, he is striving to uncover how agricultural policies and farm families really work!