PhD Awards for Geography Students

Since September 2021, ten Postgraduate (Research) students from the Department of Geography have gone on to be awarded their PhD certificates.

Dr Markus Löning

Topic: Understanding the new digital retail landscape

Topic: Connecting science and policy for sustainable development of urban ecosystems

Supervised by Professors Paul Longley, James Cheshire and Dr Franz Kiraly of the UCL Department of Statistical Science, Markus was also an Enrichment Student at the Alan Turing Institute.

His research focused on supervised learning with time-series/panel data including observations on multiple independent individuals (such as customers, patients or machines) collected over time.

Dr Mikael Maes

Topic: Connecting science and policy for sustainable development of urban ecosystems

Mikaël was supervised by Dr Ben Milligan and Professor Kate E. Jones, along with Professor Mireille B. Toledano of Imperial College London.

His work looked at the link between children’s mental health and cognitive development in the context of green infrastructure in Greater London.

Dr Liu Hui-Chun

Topic: Privileged Expatriates: Economic Zones, China’s Statecraft and Geopolitics with Taiwan

Supervised by Professor Jennifer Robinson and Dr Fangzhu Zhang of the Bartlett School of Planning, her research looked at how geopolitical relationships across the Taiwan Strait shape the formation of economic zones in Southeast China.

Dr Eleri Pritchard

Topic: New approaches for exploring signal crayfish invasion biology and ecological impacts in headwater streams

Dr Pritchard's research utilised novel methodologies to investigate the impact of invasive crayfish on native aquatic ecosystems

She was supervised by Professor Jan Axmacher, Professor Carl Sayer and Dr Michael Chadwick of King's College London and was funded by London NERC DTP.

Dr Laura Cuch Grases

Topic: Food, Faith, Home: A visual exploration of religious and domestic material culture

Dr Cuch Grases's practice-based PhD utilised her skills as a professional photographer to explore the spiritual material cultures of faith in suburbia, with a particular focus on food, through documentary and participatory approaches that included photography, film and visual methods.

Her work was supervised by Dr Claire Dwyer and Dryden Goodwin, Reader in Fine Art at UCL.

Dr Stephen Long

Topic: Sustainable fishing in Greenland: Impact of deep-sea trawling on benthic ecosystems

Dr Long’s interests lie in ensuring the sustainable management and exploitation of natural resources, particularly in marine environments. His research has addressed fishery management in the UK, Madagascar and now Greenland.

He was supervised by Dr Peter Jones, Drs Chris Yesson and Kirsty Kemp of the Institute of Zoology, and Dr Martin Blicher of the Greenland Institute of Natural Resources.

Stephen was funded by the London NERC Doctoral Training Programme (DTP).

Dr Joanna Tindall

Lacustrine oxygen isotopes as tracers of past climate change in NW Europe

Dr Tindall was investigating climatic change at various points in the Holocene using oxygen isotopes from lake sediments, in addition to monitoring modern lake conditions where possible. Her work then used a data-model comparison approach to try and further our understanding of the driving mechanisms behind climatic change in her study area.

She has been supervised by Professor Jonathan Holmes and Professor Ian Candy of Royal Holloway, University of London and received funding from London NERC DTP, UUCL Widening Participation and Access Grant for Summer Challenge 2019, NERC Isotope Facility at the British Geological Survey and the QRA INQUA2019 fund.

Dr Tindall said, "UCL Geography was a friendly and supportive place to do my PhD. This was really evident with the backdrop of the pandemic where my supervisors and the laboratory staff went above and beyond to help me get to the finish line.

"I'm really proud to have completed my PhD and despite the challenges working towards one inevitably brings, I have many fond memories of my time with UCL Geography."

Dr Nilufer Sari Aslam

Identification of Human Mobility Pattern Using Smart Card Data

In her research, Dr Aslam used smartcard datasets for transportation modelling, as a way of establishing the dynamic needs of urban transportation in modern societies.

Her work, in collaboration with the Consumer Data Research Centre (CDRC) and SpaceTimeLab for Big Data Analytics and Transport for London, was supervised by Professor James Cheshire and Professor Tao Cheng of the Department of Civil, Environmental and Geomatic Engineering.

Dr Jack Layton

Urban public sports facilities: Social infrastructure and the public life of cities

Focusing on three well-used public spaces, Dr Layton's research looked at the social life of amateur sport and fitness in urban environments through the lens of social infrastructure.

His work was supervised by Professor Alan Latham and Professor Iain Borden of the UCL Bartlett School of Architecture.

Dr Layton said, "It took a lot longer to finish than initially planned, but I'm grateful for the support I received from Alan and from the department.

I'm really pleased with the final thesis, and am proud that I was stubborn enough to finish the thing off! I now really hope I get to develop the project going forward."

Dr Tania Guerrero Rios

Using financialised housing as a planning instrument: the impact of urban containment policies on affordable housing in Mexico City

In her research, Tania looked at the implication of using housing financial regulation as a way to control urban development patterns. She looks at the Urban Containment Perimeters (UCPs) in Mexico, examining the narratives and political setting behind the origins of the policy, its effectiveness in controlling urban development and the repercussions that using housing as planning has had for the strategies played by different actors.

By reading the UCPs as ´peripheral planning´ Tania highlights its potential to respond to peripheral urbanisation processes in a way conventional planning strategies have failed.

She was supervised by Professors Ann Varley and Pushpa Arabindoo.

Please join us in giving each of our new graduates a huge congratulations.