Sussex Geography faculty enjoy reputations for world-class academic research as well as policy-relevant studies.
Our engaged research and critical pedagogy, aims to address the most pressing global issues of our times – global inequalities and global justice, climate and environmental change, war and peace, global health and finance crises, intolerance and discrimination, and the legacies of colonialism and conflict.
Our mission is to generate knowledge and understanding that can make a difference, for a fairer, safer, more sustainable and more inclusive world, via conceptually-sophisticated yet purposive geographies.
This research includes a number of research projects funded by UK research councils such as ESRC, AHRC and NERC, as well as major contributions to policy debates within the UK government, EU and other international organisations. Research projects place significant emphasis on collaboration beyond academia throughout the research process and are based on a commitment to co-producing knowledge with research users.
Our Research Excellence Framework 2021 results
100% of our Geography case studies were graded as 4* or 3* in the most recent Research Excellence Framework (REF 2021). Our Geography Department’s research (as submitted to UoA 14 Geography and Environmental Studies) was assessed overall to be 45% ‘world leading’ (4*) and 49% ‘internationally excellent’ (3*), meaning that 94% was in these top two quality levels. In particular, 83.3% of its Impact was considered to be 'outstanding' with the rest of its impact ‘very considerable’.
Research clusters
Organisationally, research in the Department of Geography is divided into five research clusters. All of the clusters engage in significant interdisciplinary work with other departments in Global Studies and across campus, through strong relationships with interdisciplinary research centres.