Royal Geographical Society award for Oxford Brookes Senior Lecturer

Dr Ingrid A. Medby, Senior Lecturer in Political Geography at Oxford Brookes University is to be awarded the Area Prize by the Royal Geographical Society (with the Institute of British Geographers).

The award is part of a series conferred annually, which recognises extraordinary achievement in geographical research, fieldwork, teaching, policy and public engagement.

Dr Medby has been recognised for the best article by a new researcher in the journal Area, with Political geography and language: A reappraisal for a diverse discipline. The paper argues for greater attention to language in the study of political geography.

Dr Medby commented: "I am absolutely delighted to be awarded this prize, and honestly still can't quite believe it! It is such an honour to have my work recognised in this way. I hope it will generate more discussion around the need to give greater analytical attention to language in the study of geopolitics and political geography."

The starting point for the paper was media use of the term “new Cold War”, which Dr Medby describes as “...a classical example of how language may evoke, condition, and circumscribe certain responses. Indeed, the end of the “old” Cold War is often credited with the rise of critical geopolitics.”

The paper also examines the use of language in the geopolitics of cybersecurity and analyses discussions centred around the decolonisation of political geography.

The award would ordinarily be presented by the Society’s President, Baroness Chalker, at a celebration at the Society in June, however this date has been postponed until later this year due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.

Dr Medby was recently interviewed about Arctic identities on The Arctic Institute’s Bookshelf Podcast

Find out more about studying Geography at Oxford Brookes via the Department of Social Sciences webpages