Valuing a geography degree

In a guest lecture to a new first-year undergraduate geography course, Professor Yolande Barnes, UCL’s newly-appointed Professor in the Bartlett Real Estate Institute, made connections between her time as a UCL Geography student and her later professional career in real estate.

These included what she learned from classes with Jacquie Burgess and a fieldtrip to Hebden Bridge with Richard Dennis. They demonstrated both the value of talking to people and the need to question carefully and critically how data are produced and represented.

After graduating from UCL in the 1980s, Yolande embarked on a 33-year career in property research, culminating as head of world research at Savills, a global real estate services provider, where she researched and commentated on property markets in London, the UK and internationally.

The new course, ‘Geographies in the Field’, convened by Dr Andrew Harris and Professor Jonathan Holmes, gives students practical experience of various field and data analytical methods, using London itself as a field site and resource. This year, a series of field-based activities have focused, firstly, on air pollution and then on social change.