UCL Geography Undergraduates Awarded RGS Fieldwork Apprenticeships

We are delighted to share that two of our first-year undergraduate students Lian Neha Holden and Luqa Ismail-Keyes, have been selected to receive the Royal Geographical Society’s Fieldwork Apprenticeships. Each student has been awarded £750 to support their participation in an exciting summer research project, working closely with an academic member of staff at UCL.

The Fieldwork Apprenticeships are part of the RGS’s Alexander Awards programme, designed to provide students from less advantaged backgrounds with meaningful opportunities to gain hands-on fieldwork experience. The awards help UK-based first-year geography undergraduates take part in academic research either in the UK or overseas. Winners are chosen on academic merit and their ability to show how the award would open up otherwise inaccessible fieldwork opportunities to them.

Lian and Luqa will spend several weeks this summer working under the supervision of Dr Jacob Fairless Nicholson on the ‘Remembering the Grenada Revolution: Education, Internationalism, and Solidarity’ project. The research focuses on newly deposited archival material at Black Cultural Archives in Brixton, which documents the Grenada Revolution and its broader global connections.

As part of their work, the students will analyse documents, ephemera and material objects, exploring themes of revolutionary education, transnational solidarity movements, and postcolonial politics. Their contributions will not only support Dr Fairless Nicholson’s research but also provide much-needed cataloguing and metadata for the collection, enabling future public and scholarly access to this important resource.

This experience offers both students an exciting opportunity to work with primary sources and develop key research skills early in their academic careers. As part of the award, they will also be encouraged to share their experiences with peers and prospective students, helping to inspire others to pursue fieldwork and archival research.

We warmly congratulate Lian and Luqa on their success and look forward to hearing more about their work later this year.