Geography

Geography provides a particularly relevant university choice for young people interested in addressing the complex challenges of the contemporary world.

Our role at Mansfield is to facilitate your engagement with the wide range of critical, analytical, and technical skills offered by the Geography degree at Oxford. We provide a supportive and academically stimulating environment in which all our students, regardless of background, can realise their potential as scholars and as people.

Eight Geography students join our lively and diverse community each year.
With 24 undergraduates, Mansfield is one of the larger Geography colleges in Oxford.
Combine the social and natural sciences to understand complex global challenges.
Realise and develop your capacities to transform the world you live in.

Eleanor Luxton, Mansfield Geography student

Your Geography tutors

For much of the teaching on core and compulsory components in years 1, 2, and 3, you’ll be taught in tutorial groups of between 2 and 4 students, usually with one of our three Geography tutors who teach much of the core human geography papers. In the second and third year you’ll choose a range of optional subjects which are taught by specialist tutors inside and outside the College.

Professor Derek McCormack

Tony Lemon Fellow; Professorial Fellow in Geography and Harassment Officer

Dr Amber Murrey-Ndewa

Tutorial Fellow in Human Geography

Contact

amber.murrey-ndewa@ouce.ox.ac.uk

Dr Amber Murrey-Ndewa

Tutorial Fellow in Human Geography

A decolonial political geographer with interests in environmental justice, resistance studies, and social change, Dr. Amber Murrey is an Associate Professor of Human Geography at the University of Oxford and Tutorial Fellow at Mansfield College. Before joining the faculty at Oxford, Amber taught at the American University in Cairo, Jimma University (Ethiopia), Clark University and Boston College.

She is the editor of "A Certain Amount of Madness": The Life, Politics and Legacy of Thomas Sankara (Pluto Press, 2018). Listen to her interview on the legacy of Thomas Sankara on the BBC World News programme, The Forum. Amber has authored more than a dozen articles and chapters on race and racism, extraction, and decolonial ethics in the social sciences. She tweets @Amber.Murrey.

Books

Murrey, A. (forthcoming) Colonialism. In, Kobayashi, A. (ed.) International Encyclopedia of Human Geography, 2nd Ed. Elsevier.
Murrey, A. (forthcoming) Thomas Sankara and the political economies of justice. In, Falola, T. and Oloruntoba, S. (eds.) The Palgrave Handbook of African Political Economy. Palgrave MacMillan, London.
Murrey, A. and Jackson, N. (forthcoming) Africa and the resource curse idea. In, Falola, T. and Mbah, E. (eds.) Routledge Encyclopaedia of African Studies. Routledge, London.
Murrey, A. (2019) Constant questioning on-and-off the page: Race, decolonial ethics and women researching in Africa. In, Jackson, R. and Kelly, M. (eds.) Women Researching Africa. Palgrave MacMillan, London.
Murrey, A. (2019) When spider webs unite they can tie up a lion: anti-racism, decolonial options and theories from the south. In, Fiddian-Qasmiyeh, E. and Daley, P. (eds.) The
Handbook of South-South Relations. Routledge, London.
Murrey, A. (2018) Africa’s Sankara: On Pan-African leadership. In, Murrey, A. (ed.) “A certain amount of madness”: The life, politics and legacies of Thomas Sankara. Pluto Press, London.
Murrey, A. (2018) Conclusion. In, Mubangizi, O. (ed.) What and whose justice? African perspectives on transitional justice. Fahamu Press, Nairobi, Dakar, Oxford.
Murrey, A. (2018) Introduction. In, Murrey, A. (ed.) “A certain amount of madness”: The life, politics and legacies of Thomas Sankara. Pluto Press, London.
Murrey, A. (2017) A post/decolonial geography beyond ‘the language of the mouth’. In, Woons, M. and Weier, S. (eds.) Borders, Border Thinking, Borderland: Developing a Critical Epistemology of Global Politics. E-International Relations Publishing. pp. 79-99.
Murrey, A. (2015) Sankara, Thomas (1949-87). In, Ness, I. and Cope, Z. (eds.) The Palgrave Encyclopedia of Imperialism and Anti-Imperialism. Palgrave Macmillan, London and New York.

Book Reviews

Murrey, A. (2017) Leonard, Lori (2016) Life in the Time of Oil: A Pipeline and Poverty in Chad. Bloomington: Indiana University PressLeonard, Lori (2016) Life in the Time of Oil: A Pipeline and Poverty in Chad. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. The Extractive Industries and Society, 4(2): 419-420.
Murrey, A. (2016) Hannah Appel, Arthur Mason and Michael Watts (eds) Subterranean Estates: Life Worlds of Oil and Gas, Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2015. ISBN: 978-0-8014-5344-1 (cloth); ISBN: 978-0-8014-7986-1. Antipode, 48(2).
Murrey, A. (2015) Review “Concerning violence.” Directed by Göran Olsson. Produced by Final Cut for Real, Helsinki Filmi Oy, Louverture Films. 2014. Journal of Black Studies, 46(8): 837-842.
Murrey, A. (2014) Learning from the African awakenings of 2011 – struggle and acts of imagination. Capital and Class, 38(3): 622-625.
Murrey, A. (2011) Barack Obama and twenty-first century politics, Horace Campbell. Imhotep: Africana Studies Graduate Student Journal, 2(1): 38-41.

Other Publications

Murrey, A. and Jackson, N. (2018) The Lives and Afterlives of Thomas Sankara. Pluto Press Blog.

Articles & book chapters

Bujra, J., Mgumia, J., Zeilig, L., Shivji, I., Swagler, M., Hopfmann, A., Zack-Williams, T., Murrey, A., Gachihi, G., Nyamsenda, S., Chachage, C. and Mbilinyi, M. (2019) Connections 2: Roape Workshop in Dar es Salaam, 16–17 April 2018. Review of African Political Economy, 45(158): 609-677.
Murrey, A. and Jackson, N. (2019) A decolonial critique of the racialized “localwashing” of extraction in Central Africa. Annals of the Association of American Geographers.
Murrey, A. and Tesfahun, A. (2018) Conversations from Jimma, Ethiopia on the geographies and politics of knowledge. Ufahamu: A Journal of African Studies, 40(2): 27-45.
Murrey, A. (2017) Decolonising the imagined geographies of ‘witchcraft’. Third World Thematics, 2(2-3): 157-179.
Smith, T., Murrey, A. and Leck, H. (2017) ‘What kind of witchcraft is this?’ Development, magic and spiritual ontologies. Third World Thematics, 2(2-3): 141-156.
Murrey, A. (2016) Slow dissent and the emotional geographies of resistance. Singapore Journal for Tropical Geography, 37(2): 224-248. Winner of Best Annual Graduate Student Article.
Murrey, A. (2015) Invisible power, visible dispossession: the witchcraft of a subterranean pipeline. Political Geography, 47: 64-76.
Murrey, A. (2015) Narratives of life and violence along the Chad-Cameroon oil pipeline. Human Geography – A New Radical Journal, 8(1): 15-39.
Campbell, H. and Murrey, A. (2014) Culture-centric preemptive counterinsurgency and US Africa Command: assessing the role of the US social sciences in military engagements in Africa. Third World Quarterly, 35(8): 1457-1475.
Elliott-Cooper, A., Murrey, A., Kumar, A. and Younis, M. (2014) Labour and resistance across global spaces: Introduction. City – analysis of urban trends, culture, theory, policy, action, 18(6): 771-775.

Dr Alexander Manby

Lecturer in Geography

An introduction to Geography at Mansfield

Teaching and learning

We encourage cooperative and collaborative learning between our students to support the development of your individual learning throughout your degree. You’ll be taught in small tutorial groups – supplemented by slightly larger classes where appropriate. In these tutorials you’ll explore in depth the material you cover in lectures at the School of Geography and the Environment.

Beyond the classroom we include more experiential and experimental forms of learning – such as walking tours of Oxford, to consider the histories of imperialism through the architecture and spatiality of the city and the university.

Projects and prizes

In your second year, we’ll help you develop your dissertation projects – designing and undertaking a significant piece of independent research. Students often find the dissertation to be one of the most rewarding aspects of their degree, pursuing a remarkably diverse range of independent research topics that in many cases inform their future careers.

Recent students have worked on projects on climate change, transport infrastructure, healthcare and refugees, social media and tourism, and many other topics. Our students produce excellent work that’s often nominated or awarded dissertation prizes by the research groups of the Royal Geographical Society-Institute of British Geographers. They’ve also achieved a range of university prizes for their outstanding performance in first year and final exams.

Life after Mansfield

After your three years in our inclusive community, you’ll be well placed to pursue the many career pathways opened up by Geography – and also more informed of your capacities to transform the world in which you live. We know from experience that Geography graduates are eminently qualified to pursue careers across many different fields. Employers value our graduates’ combination of demonstrable expertise in written and oral communication, analytical skills, and understanding of important social-economic, political and environmental issues.

Our Mansfield Geographers have gone on to:

Research degrees
Vocational postgraduate degrees
Law conversion courses
Management and consultancy
Commercial research
Teaching
Health administration
Local government

We’re as proud of the success of our students after they leave us as we are of their achievements during their studies here. We’re also fortunate to meet frequently with members of our extended community at an annual event to which many former students return.

How to apply

Mansfield has a longstanding reputation as an intellectually rigorous college that’s particularly welcoming of students from state schools and from marginalised and disadvantaged communities.

Don’t worry if you haven’t previously studied Geography – we welcome applications from anyone, from any background, who’s interested in understanding why the world is the way it is and how it could be different. For more information visit the University of Oxford Geography course page and the School of Geography and the Environment website.

How to apply

Useful resources for students

Our Access and Outreach team have put together a range of resources to help you get to know Mansfield, your subject, and your potential Oxford application.

Access and outreach

Main menu

Your Geography tutors

Professor Derek McCormack

Dr Amber Murrey-Ndewa

Books

Book Reviews

Other Publications

Articles & book chapters

Dr Alexander Manby

An introduction to Geography at Mansfield

Teaching and learning

Projects and prizes

Life after Mansfield

How to apply

Useful resources for students

Related Subjects

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