Dr Anna Lawrence

An historic black and white illustration of a paper nautilus floating on the ocean. There are boats, a city and hills in the background.

🎉 Huge news for BHL: The Field Museum is taking over the hosting of BHL’s website, servers & infrastructure, ensuring long-term stability and access for its 63+ million pages of open biodiversity literature. Learn more:
blog.biodiversitylibrary.org/2026/02/tran...
#BHLTransition #ILoveBHL 🌍 📚 🧪

This issue of @routesjournal.bsky.social features an editorial from my colleague Jasmine Roberts, introducing the fantastic work she is doing building networks for underrepresented geography students in the 'Geography for All' programme at @rgs.org - well worth a read ⬇️

Editorial Introduction Volume 5, Issue 1: Geography For All By Jasmine Roberts, Royal Geographical Society (with the Institute of British Geographers)

We're delighted to begin Volume 5, Issue 1 with an essay from Jasmine Roberts, coordinator of the Geography For All programme at the @rgs.org.

Jasmine's editorial introduction offers a guide for making geography more accessible, regardless of background

routesjournal.org/2026/02/26/g...

Our Geography for All Coordinator, Jasmine Roberts, reflects on the Geography for All initiative and what supporting underrepresented students means to her in this new @routesjournal.bsky.social editorial 👇

Read her thoughts on community-building, curated support, and ways to get involved.

Supporting underrepresented students If you're an underrepresented student, we have the resources, pathways and connections to help you thrive before, during, and after university.

More info on 'Geography for All' here on our website:
www.rgs.org/choose-geogr...

This issue of @routesjournal.bsky.social features an editorial from my colleague Jasmine Roberts, introducing the fantastic work she is doing building networks for underrepresented geography students in the 'Geography for All' programme at @rgs.org - well worth a read ⬇️

WE’RE HIRING! Please spread the word 📣
Prof. Cheryl McEwan is looking for a 30-month Postdoctoral Research Associate to support “Plants out of place: entanglements with ‘invasive weeds’ in the Anthropocene”. Start date 1 September. Application deadline 6 April durham.taleo.net/careersectio...

Snow-capped mountain peaks illuminated under a dark, cloudy night sky.

Can the Himalayas speak when brands make them a stage?

Yana Wengel and Ling Ma explore how the 2025 Arc’teryx campaign reveals the problematic implications of framing mountains as passive backdrops for spectacle.

Read more in the full Geography Directions blog post 👇
https://ow.ly/uxfW50YgK5N

LSE Press books are now available on JSTOR open access LSE Press is delighted to announce a new collaboration with JSTOR, providing access to open access books on the digital library’s widely accessed platform.

Good news for academic readers - LSE Press books are now available on @jstor.bsky.social open access! 🔓 📖

LSE Press’s recent partnership with @thoth-metadata.bsky.social has helped the Press extend its presence on a broader range of discovery platforms.

🔎 Read more: blogs.lse.ac.uk/lsepress/202...

A graphic publicising a new Special Section in Area called 'Map Room Conversations'. There are six tiles with the names of papers and authors as follows: 1) Map Room Conversations Stephen Legg, Katherine Parker 2) Mapping Indigeneity in the RGS-IBG map collections Peter R. Martin, Katherine Parker 3) Mapping Language: Names, Speakers and Voices Beth Williamson, Philip Jagessar 4) Map Room Conversations: Mapping Objects George Tobin, Jane Wess 5) Mapping Disjuncture: Internationalism and Palestine Zena Agha, Jake Hodder 6) Maps and Diaspora: Affect, Agency and Epistolary Praxis Rohini Rai, Iqbal Singh

A black tile publicising the new 'Map Room Conversations' Special Section in Area. There is a quote from Stephen Legg & Katie Parker's introduction. It reads: "This Special Section breaks down a false equation of active/passive to outdoor/indoor, or digital/paper, maps. Instead, the papers included show how the map collection is also a space of becoming and creation".

New Special Section in Area!

'Map Room Conversations' guest edited by @stephenlegg11.bsky.social, @kparkerhistorian.bsky.social & Jason Liu

Read the fully #OpenAccess collection here ⬇️

rgs-ibg.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/toc/10.1...

New report on The State of Geography in UK Higher Education UK universities are facing a financial crisis, with over 40% of institutions experiencing deficits. Others will likely face similar challenges.

Shout out for the learned societies keeping a beady eye on the state of the disciplines that university senior managers are so swiftly dismantling. Keep an eye on the state of UK university Geography with the help of the @rgs.org 's new report, published this week.

Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers | RGS Journal | Wiley Online Library With the home at the forefront of political and public health responses to COVID-19, the thresholds between domestic space and the world beyond acquired a new significance in people's everyday lives....

New in TIBG:

'Pandemic geographies of home: Domestic thresholding in response to COVID-19' by Alison Blunt et al.

This paper introduces the concept of 'thresholding' to explore how internal & external thresholds are materialised through embodied practice.

doi.org/10.1111/tran... #geosky

🔦 Book cover reveal

Geography and a Geographer: Reimagining the discipline after Ron Johnston brings together contributors whose work speaks to the geographies Johnston helped shape.

This book will be published as part of the @rgs.org monograph series #OpenAccess. Coming soon.

#RonJohnston

New report on The State of Geography in UK Higher Education UK universities are facing a financial crisis, with over 40% of institutions experiencing deficits. Others will likely face similar challenges.

Useful new report from @rgs.org on the state of geography in HE based on a snapshot survey. Most striking for me are textual responses which suggest larger/Russell Group institutions expect to face similar pressures in the coming year already felt by smaller institutions
www.rgs.org/about-us/our...

Another book from the @rgs.org Book Series due to be published #OpenAccess later this year ⬇️

The UK universities cutting geography have lost their bearings From climate change to geopolitics, the knowledge, skills and insights of geographers have never been more relevant, say five professors

Our new piece out today in Times Higher Education about the threats to Geography in the UK - particularly fieldwork - please do share. It links to a recent snapshot survey on the challenges being faced in UK HE, which highlights the inequities of the challenges, but also fears of what is yet to come

@fridaylast.bsky.social

Wetter the better: Gothenburg’s bold plan to be world’s best rainy city It rains nearly 40% of the time in the Swedish city – so why not try to make the most of it?

In Gothenburg, they’ve designed a playground that’s better when it rains:

Area | RGS Geography Journal | Wiley Online Library Click on the title to browse this issue

What happens when you put experts, prescient topics, engaged audiences, and #maps together? A Map Room Conversation!

Our Area special section is now available #openaccess

#geography #skystorians 🗃️

Close up photo of some snowdrops with blurry trees in the background.

Close up photograph of some snowdrops with a bit of sun lighting them up.

Area | RGS Geography Journal | Wiley Online Library This paper turns to the work of Henri Bergson to offer a distinctly geographic perspective on debates around attention by emphasising the intimate links between attention and the material environment....

Congratulations to @georgeburdon.bsky.social for his wonderful paper 'Displaced attention: Bergson, attentive habits and Tony Conrad’s drone music' which has been highly commended as part of the Cultural Geography Study Groups annual paper prize award! rgs-ibg.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....

The Geographical Journal | RGS Research Journal | Wiley Online Library The global visibility and political weight of the Olympic Games can inspire climate change action. Yet, at the same time, the Olympics are also significant carbon emitters. To date, however, there is...

New in The GJ:

'Past carbon emissions and future targets for the Olympic Games' by David Gogishvili & Martin Müller

As the 2026 Winter Olympics Opening Ceremony takes place today, this commentary reflects on the sustainability targets for the Games.

doi.org/10.1111/geoj... #geosky

Crowd waving Venezuelan and American flags.

What does Maduro’s capture reveal about the limits of traditional anti-imperialist thinking when it comes to supporting democratic change?

Francisco Llinás Casas and Erick Moreno Superlano unpack this in a new Geography Directions blog post. Check it out here 👉https://ow.ly/1Fob50Y4Ka5

Faculty Favorites: Critical Interventions in the Plant Humanities - Edge Effects Faculty recommend their favorite books and poems at the intersection of plants and the environmental humanities

Today on Edge Effects, we take our first dive into Botanical Imaginations with our Spring 2026 Faculty Favorites! Faculty across academic disciplines recommend plant-y books and poems they're excited to read/teach this semester 🌿 📖

Climate Hegemony: Confronting the Politics of Environmental Impasse by @laurieparsons.bsky.social is out May 2026.

This book will be free to read and download via #OpenAccess publishing. @rgsibg.bsky.social

A close-up photograph of a purple dwarf iris in a pot, covered with raindrops

First spring bulb has flowered & the sun will set after 5pm this Saturday 🌅

Screenshot of an intervention abstract in Transactions by Jay JD Todd & Felicity Callard (2026) entitled: 'A Critical Response to the UK's ‘Sullivan Review’ Into Sex and Gender in Research and Data' with a red banner at the top. This intervention argues that the UK Government-commissioned independent review of data, statistics and research on sex and gender (the ‘Sullivan Review’) implicitly promotes the erasure of trans and gender diverse people from research and data collection protocols and carries worrying implications for the inclusion of trans people within UK institutions and for critical social science research. Set in a context where trans and gender diverse people's rights are being rolled back in the United Kingdom and elsewhere, the Review attempts to install a singular model of binary, immutable, ‘biological’ sex as incontrovertible across data gathering on sex and gender across public bodies including government, universities, the health service and research organisations. It does so via appeals to science and to ‘clarity’, and by proposing to limit or even in certain cases remove default ethical review processes. The intervention argues that the Review can be situated within broader attempts to erase critical inquiry into the complex, intersectional production of social categories including sex, gender and sexuality, as well as inquiries that extend what ethical principles and governance involve. In sum, we contend that the Review carries deleterious consequences for geography and other social scientific disciplines and call upon scholars to refuse its vision and implications.

New Intervention in TIBG:

'A critical response to the UK's "Sullivan Review" into sex and gender in research and data' by @jaytoddgla.bsky.social & @felicitycallard.bsky.social

doi.org/10.1111/tran...

Outside the Level 2 Reading Room in @bodleian.ox.ac.uk there is a wellbeing display. Here are some it's little zines that genuinely made me smile.

"Parsons brilliantly unpicks the sophisticated web of lies, metaphors, and hollow promises that allow the fossil fuel industry to maintain its grip on our future."

— @assaadrazzouk.bsky.social, Author of Saving the Planet Without the Bullsh*t

Just finished correcting the page proofs for this. Very excited to see it in print shortly 🍾