About the Society
Need to know
The Royal Geographical Society (with IBG) is the UK’s learned society for geography and professional body for geographers. We are also a membership organisation and a registered charity.
The Society was founded in 1830 to advance geographical science and this remains our core purpose. We achieve this through supporting geographical research, education, and fieldwork and expeditions, as well as by advocating on behalf of the discipline and promoting geography to public audiences.
We value our independence as well as the breadth of our activities that support the understanding of the world’s people, places and environments. Everyone with an enthusiasm for geography, travel and exploration is welcome to join.
A message
From the Director
One of the defining qualities of the RGS is how it brings the wider society together via shared enthusiasms and purpose around geography, exploration and that simple but vital human quality of curiosity. Fellows and Members of the Society want to understand the world better – and also to help others understand it, their place in it, and their potential to improve it. We want to expand the impact and reach of our Society, hence we are currently working on making membership more accessible. In parallel we are working on a rebrand (generously supported by donors) which will see us move to a simplified identity as ‘the RGS’ and ‘The Royal Geographical Society’. Looking ahead, our 2026 programme includes a very strong Monday night lecture series, available in broadcast quality – live online and on demand – wherever you are. There will be evolutions this year in our public programming, which you will hear about via our new media studio and additional content generation made possible by a new staff appointment. We have a notable date in the diary for November 2026 – the Society will mark fifty years of the Explore expedition planning weekend. We will be sure to take a moment to celebrate fifty years of unique achievement and global impact, while fixing our focus on how the RGS can work to support the next fifty years through new grants, events and publications, all under the banner ‘RGS Explore’.
Image credit: Lucy Pope
Society
News
Save on your next trip
The Society is delighted to announce that it has launched a further range of our fantastically successful co-branded holiday itineraries with our travel partner Travelsphere. Members can now travel purposefully to Greece and Turkey, Jordan, Peru and Amazon, Indonesia, and India. What’s more, members can now access a discount on both European (£50pp) and world tours (£100pp).
New year honours
We are thrilled to congratulate past Society President Nigel Clifford on his receipt of a CBE ‘For services to Geography and to Geospatial Data Services’. Our congratulations also go out to Fellow Fiona Bloor on being awarded an MBE ‘For service to the Law of the Sea’.
Endurance from the Negative
This June the Society and Riverside Press will publish a new book of Frank Hurley’s photography from Sir Ernest Shackleton’s Endurance expedition. This photographic art book reproduces prints of Hurley’s work direct from the negative, alongside the negatives themselves, with essays from Lady Alexandra Shackleton, Mensun Bound, and Summit Photo speakers Jean de Pomereu and Frans Lanting. Copies purchased through the Society or Stanfords will have the members’ 10% discount applied. The book will also be available at all good bookshops.
Image credit: RGS
Corporate Benefactor support
Jaguar Land Rover have renewed Corporate Benefactor support for a further year, building on 45 years of dedicated commitment to our work.
A great ape at the Society
In early September, internationally renowned Australian artist Lisa Roet installed a 13m (43ft) sculpture of a chimpanzee on the Terrace at the Society as part of a wider call for conversations about climate action and deforestation. Lisa’s inflatable sculptures interrogate human–ape relationships and our environmental safeguarding responsibility.
Each year we seek an inspiring photograph which showcases an application of geographical thinking to appear on our membership card. This year we have chosen Romain Loubeyre’s The Glacial Snail. Taken in Scoresby Sund, Greenland, it is a captivating image which represents an enduring connection to an extraordinary place for the photographer.
Image credit: Romain Loubeyre
Education
News
Competition winners
The Society recognises the outstanding work of the next generation of geographers each year through the Young Geographer of the Year competition, which encourages young people to think creatively and analytically about geographical themes. The 2025 winners across each age category, who best responded to the theme of ‘Understanding islands’, are Amaryllis Thomas, Walhampton School; Labiqa Babar, John Burns Primary School; Kitt Sutton, Ponteland High School; Anaiya Patel, Northwood College for Girls; Alex Willett, The High School Leckhampton; Gemma Davies, Bristol Grammar School; Vivan Paul, Queen Elizabeth’s School and Ines Wall, Kings InterHigh Online School.
We also awarded the work of teacher Emelia Welch from Marling School for her lesson plans and accompanying resources that linked the theme directly to the curriculum. The 2025 School Essay Competition, organised in partnership with the Financial Times, invited students to answer the following question: what are the implications for different countries of international trade policies in the contemporary world? The winning entry belonged to Sylvester Parmar-Wickham from Fortismere, Muswell Hill who was recognised alongside several highly commended entries. Sylvester’s essay will be published on FT.com.
Image credit: James Tye
Curriculum recommendations
The Curriculum and Assessment Review’s final report and the Government’s response were published in November. The Society welcomes the recognition of the importance of studying geography and the recommendations in the report to build on the strength and real-world relevance of the existing geography curriculum. Commitments outlined in the report include to clarify and reinforce the requirements for fieldwork, update and refresh the programme of study at GCSE and embed more disciplinary knowledge at KS3, as well as climate change and sustainability across Key Stages. Thank you to those who shared their insights about the geography curriculum and informed our response to the Curriculum and Assessment Review’s consultation.
Image credit: RGS
From the field
News
Support for filmmakers
Building on the momentum of our pilot event in summer 2025, the Society’s film nights continue to showcase how stories of contemporary exploration are being shared through the lenses of emerging filmmakers. These bi-annual events support our core mission of advancing geographical knowledge by bringing unique and compelling narratives to the forefront of our public programme. The evening’s curated short films paired with filmmaker Q&A sessions highlight diverse stories, and the endeavours behind them, reclaiming and reshaping the concept of geographical exploration for a broad audience. The Society remains committed to empowering the next generation of explorers and creators. In parallel with our film series, we are now incorporating specialised filmmaking skills into the training and support offered to our grant recipients and the wider exploration community. In a crowded digital world, it is more important than ever that those at the forefront of discovery of new knowledge are equipped to be powerful storytellers. Our next film night will take place on the evening of 8 July.
Image credit: RGS
Research and higher education
News
Annual International Conference 2026
The Society’s Conference will this year be chaired by Professor Peter Hopkins (Newcastle University, UK), on the theme of Geographies of inequalities: towards just places. Geographers play an important role in challenging, addressing and seeking to overturn inequalities and injustices. Across seven panels and lectures, the plenary sessions will engage broadly with the conference theme, exploring inequalities in health, care and wellbeing; work to challenge racism; inequalities experienced through gender and sexualities; migrant justice and border abolition and more. These will sit alongside journal-sponsored lectures, workshops, field visits, exhibitions, and over 400 sessions of presentations and discussion. The conference will take place in London at the Society and Imperial College London, and online, from Tuesday 1 to Friday 4 September 2026. With a Society Fellowship or Associate Fellowship you benefit from discounted registration fees for conference attendance. Registration opens in spring 2026 and the full programme will be announced in May.
Image credit: Brendan Foster
Fi Wi Road Internship 2026
Applications for the next cohort of Fi Wi Road interns are now open. Since 2021 the Fi Wi Road Internship has welcomed Black heritage geography and geoscience students to join their paid summer internship. The internship focuses on centering Black geography undergraduate voices within their field. Interns are invited to build new networks, skills and experiences, and shape what the discipline looks like through group sessions, one-to-one mentoring, and hands-on conference administration experience. The Society is a partner of the scheme, which also includes the opportunity to work at our Annual International Conference. Sign up to our quarterly newsletter, News and Events in Support of Underrepresented Students, to stay up to date with opportunities and the latest community news.
Support for postgraduates
Our Research Groups continue to support postgraduate and early career colleagues. Through prizes, webinars, networking sessions and mentoring schemes they are showcasing and celebrating research, and provide opportunities for access to career support and networks.
Image credit: Nando Machado
Professional
News
Support for Chartership
Professional body membership is valuable at every career stage and demonstrates a commitment to your progression. The Society recently celebrated Chartered Week, recognising professional competence and standards. The Society joined with other professional bodies to sign an open letter highlighting the role that professional accreditation can make in gaining public trust in professions, particularly in the public sector. To support growth towards eligibility for accreditation our newly launched Professional Pathway scheme offers Fellows and Associate Fellows a structured development route to Chartered Geographer. The Pathway supports reflective professional development, with a range of activities, resources, and regular emails tailored to your stage of career. Recognising the commitment of employers in supporting their employees on the Professional Pathway to Chartered Geographer, we are inviting organisations to register their support of the professional pathway, displaying the Professional Pathway logo.
Early career webinar series
We have added a new series to our professional development webinars, which focus on early career challenges, though they are open to all. Our panel of professional geographers, share their experiences, thoughts and tips on topics which all professionals tackle, from writing persuasive CV’s, handling interviews, building networks, mentoring and planning professional development.
Image credit: Nando Machado
Events
Highlights
Spring events programme
Join us for a season that celebrates the best of visual storytelling both past and present. Through a series of events and exhibitions we explore the power of visual media and its ability to document physical and human landscapes. Earth Photo returns to showcase and award remarkable still and moving image makers highlighting the prescient issues affecting the climate and life on our planet. Fifty of the finest entries to the competition will be shown in an exhibition at the Society between 26 June and 24 July. In July we will be bringing together world-leading photographers, film makers, scientists, policy experts and the public to talk, debate and be inspired at Summit Photo. Over three days a series of powerful presentations, workshops, and micro lectures will inspire conversation and debate about our world. We also celebrate the launch of a new exhibition on the life and career of Gertrude Bell frgs, with the opportunity to hear presentations on the exhibition, see original archive materials as well as outputs from the digitisation project at our Private View. Browse our upcoming events in the following pages and make sure you are subscribed to our events newsletter to keep up with additional events in your area.
Image credit: Zula Rabikowska
Confluence Collective
Critically assessing legacies
This spring saw the launch of an exciting new exhibition in Kalimpong, Sikkim, drawing on the Society’s historic Collections on Everest and the wider Himalayas, and making use of the vast swathes of Collections material digitised and available through The Wiley Digital Archive (WDA). The collaborative work that sits behind this exhibition showcases new approaches to reactivating the Collections, and opens up exciting new possibilities for how the Society approaches community engagement with these materials.
The exhibition, titled Father has no Roof over his Head, focuses on two Sherpas: Ang Tsering Sherpa and Chetten Habadar Wangdi. Both men climbed Everest (and other mountains), and took part in multiple expeditions as both Sherpa porter and interpreter. They both appear in the archives from these expeditions held by the Society, and in locally sourced archives in Sikkim, including personal archives that are in various stages of repair and restoration.
All these archives have been brought together for this exhibition by the Confluence Collective (TCC), alongside oral history interviews with A. T. Sherpa and C. H. Wangdi’s surviving family members. TCC are a group of Sikkim-based researchers and artists seeking to preserve, archive and retell the histories of the Darjeeling-Sikkim Himalayan region, and to build a community which together can better understand and document their home. TCC’s vision is to collectively reimagine the hill societies – the people, community and places – through storytelling, moving away from distorting colonial representations and generating new ways of seeing and imagining the region.
Image credit: Adam Bannister
The Society’s partnership with TCC is part of our involvement with the Other Everests interdisciplinary research network from 2022-2024, which similarly sought to critically assess the legacy of the Everest expeditions and to re-evaluate the symbolic, political and cultural status of Everest in the contemporary world. As part of this collaboration, we enabled access for TCC members to the Wiley Digital Archive and over eight million images of digitised Collections content, including the Everest Expeditions archives. At the heart of their research for this new exhibition have been conversations with the families of the two Sherpas, who ultimately hold their memories and their history. As well as collating their personal archives, including postcards, letters, school magazines, and more, TCC have used the Society materials available via the WDA to add to these family histories, providing additional information that the families may no longer have access to. For example, family members have cross-referenced their own family photo albums with photographic collections at the Society, to help them identify their relatives in both sets of photographs. This two-way exchange is immensely valuable, and sets a standard for future reciprocal community engagement work with and by the Society.
All images: The Confluence Collective
A changing world
Neville Shulman Challenge Award journey
Northern Pakistan’s Kalash valleys, along the border with Afghanistan, are home to the country’s smallest minority; 4,000 members of the Kalash live here, a matriarchal tribe unique to the Hindu Kush, for which strict purification rites govern birth, life and death. Debate around their origins remains.
Festivals mark the sowing and harvest seasons, and herald the solstice at the end of each year. Women and girls undergo purification rituals ahead of each period of festivities, and uphold many of the community’s daily purification rites; bathing and washing clothes away from homes, and staying in communal homes during menstruation and after giving birth.
Photographer Rebecca Conway travelled to Pakistan recently to document how the Kalash are navigating growing challenges of climate change and outside influence while protecting their singular identity.
Owing to steep valley walls, the area lacks abundant flat, farmable land. Today, the community is increasingly squeezed by hoteliers buying up that land, with the government planning to take yet more for new roads. Increasingly erratic rainfall and temperatures, along with worsening landslides, flash-floods, and deforestation exacerbate these issues. Firewood resources are depleted, and some families are turning to polytunnels and makeshift greenhouses. Islam is taught in the area’s government schools, and a few Kalash convert every year. Others leave the area for greater educational and employment opportunities. The losses of land for subsistence farming and influx of new people and alien cultures pose a threat to the community, changing how and where the Kalash can live.
Elders say they are not concerned that the community will disappear or fade but do say continuing conflict between development in the valleys and a lack of preparedness around the impact of climate change will change how they live. Across the villages during the harvest season at the end of the summer, the community gathers maize to be ground into flour, dry beans and fruit on flat rooftops to be stored for winter, and collect and store grasses and crops grown for animal fodder. Women and girls begin to sew clothing and bead headdresses ahead of the winter solstice festival Chaumos, which not only marks the start of the new year but the renewed hopes for the seasons ahead. Rebecca’s trek from Chitral district and between each of the three Kalash valleys to document life and identity in the Kalash community was made possible with the support of the Neville Shulman Challenge Award. Each year, two awards of up to £10,000 are given to challenging research projects or expeditions that aim to further understanding and exploration of the planet – its cultures, peoples and environments. The next deadline is 30 November 2026.
All images: Rebecca Conway
Virtual work experience
Bringing real world careers to students
As the world of work changes, so must the way schools approach their careers education. Engaging young people directly with professionals from the world of work is one way in which we can ensure the next generation have access to inspirational role models and pathways that take them into and through the workplace.
We know that giving young people access to expertise and experiences is essential to building confidence and skills, it increases job readiness and is associated with lower levels of anxiety about job security. It can also be beneficial to employers, who can help shape the future labour market by highlighting the skills they desire and the types of jobs available - both now and in the future.
As part of our geographical careers offer to schools, the Society has teamed up with learning platform Springpod to produce a virtual work experience module focusing on careers using geography which showcases a range of real people with real jobs using geographical skills and knowledge in the workplace. Providing young people with access to experiences within the workplace is a core element of successful school career programmes, and whilst work experience is not a statutory requirement it is expected that all students participate in a form of work experience during their school years. There are, however, many barriers to accessing work experience placements in person, including not having contacts within the working world, dealing with personal difficulties and also the cost of getting to a placement. These barriers mean that for some, in-person work experience just isn’t possible.
The challenges around researching In these circumstances Springpod offers a vital alternative, delivering over one million experiences to over 700,000 young people. Working in partnership with organisations and companies across a variety of sectors, they offer access to online work experience modules that showcase the range of jobs available, introduce individual roles, and explain how to get there. Access to these online modules is free, and students can work through multiple modules over the course of eight to ten hours, gaining certification on completion. Our module with Springpod will introduce a range of organisations that employ geographers, and guide students through the range of jobs that professional geographers are employed to do. Spanning across four themes – hazards and risk in the real world, shaping cities and communities, sustainable resources, and mapping the world with GIS – we will inspire and encourage young people to see where studying geography can take them. With relatable examples we will show how green skills are used in the workplace to create a sustainable future and highlight how the geography learnt in the classroom is applied in real world settings. Virtual work experience is just one of the many ways we seek to connect young people with professionals and employers. If you are interested in getting involved in our outreach work with schools which includes a programme of events and teaching materials, as well as a Professional Ambassadors scheme, please get in touch. Our geographical careers online module is free for all students to access and will be available from late spring 2026.
Image credit: Nando Machado
Gift a membership
At the Society we nourish curious minds and bring together today’s most important environmental and social insights to inform, inspire, and address pressing global challenges. Give someone you care about a gift that will expand their horizons and help protect the future of the Society. With our events and publications your gift recipient will explore the world through expeditions and fieldwork, learn about the most fascinating intersections of people and place, and take part in stimulating conversations. A Society Membership not only supports our work to champion geography’s influence, advance careers and empower educators, it offers a route to Fellowship. After five years of Membership a Member has the option to apply for Fellowship, helping steer the direction of the Society and recognising their contribution. Find out more about gift Membership and Student Membership today.
Image credit: RGS