Category: News

A prize of £50 is offered each year for the best undergraduate dissertation in economic geography.

Nominated dissertations should be: 

• An innovative theoretical and/or empirical piece of work in economic geography;
• Usually 8,000 words or more in length
• Submitted for formal assessment in the current academic year (2021/2022) to a UK Higher Education Institution for a BA/BSc level geography degree programme;
• Include a full set of references and images (as relevant); 
• In PDF format;
• Written in English.

Please note that a department may not submit more than one entry and nominated dissertations should not be submitted for consideration for any other RGS-IBG prizes.

Please send your nominated undergraduate dissertations to the EGRG Prizes Officer: a.dales@yorksj.ac.uk (Dr Alexandra Dales)

Deadline: 15 July 2022

Following the Al-Jazeera Podcasts in their “Degrees of Abuse” investigation, the EGRG committee met to discuss and outline what forms of actions we could take as a group to make economic geography, and geography as a broader discipline, welcoming, diverse, inclusive and safe. You can read our statement here: https://egrg.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/EGRG-statement_Final_24Jan2022.pdf

We will announce specific steps and initiatives in the coming months.

We are pleased to open the call for submissions to the annual EGRG PhD Dissertation Prize. This award provides the opportunity to recognise excellent research undertaken by doctoral researchers in the UK in the field of economic geography (broadly defined) as judged by the committee. Previous winners are listed on the EGRG website here: https://egrg.org/prizes/

In order to be considered for the award, please email an electronic version of the thesis to the Prizes Officer, Prizes Officer – Alexandra Dales (a.dales@yorksj.ac.uk) by 1st March 2022. This must the final version of a thesis that has passed the PhD degree at a UK institution between 1 January 2021 and 31 December 2021.  If you have any doubts about eligibility, please email Alexandra Dales.

The theses will be reviewed by the EGRG committee and the prize winner will be announced in early May 2022.  

The Royal Geographical Society with IBG Economic Geography Research Group is pleased to announce the winners of the 2022 EGRG PhD Thesis Prize and the 2022 EGRG Undergraduate Dissertation Prize.

EGRG PhD Thesis Prize Winner:

The EGRG Committee would like to congratulate Dr Johannes Petry, University of Warwick, whose thesis ‘Capital markets with Chinese characteristics: Exchanges, state capitalism and China’s integration into the global financial order’ has won the PhD Thesis Competition 2022.

EGRG Undergraduate Dissertation Prize Winner:
Congratulations to Mr Junze Shi, University of Oxford, whose dissertation ‘Operating in the absence of proximity: A case study of a Chinese Bank in the City of London during the Covid-19 lockdown’ has won the Prize for best Undergraduate Dissertation 2022

Again, many congratulations to both Dr Petry and Mr Shi!

A list of previous dissertation prize winners can be found here: https://egrg.org/prizes/

We are pleased to announce that the annual EGRG PhD Dissertation Prize 2020 has been awarded to Misbah Khatana (Cambridge University) for her dissertation on ‘Navigating gendered space: The social construction of labour markets in Pakistan’. Huge congratulations!

Here is the abstract of the thesis:
Globalization has transformed labour markets around the world leading to an upsurge of women in the waged workforce and establishing them as the backbone of manufacturing industry. But globalizing forces are uneven and have disparate impacts. I explore why an influx of women workers is not found in some, more traditional, societies. I explore linkages between social, economic and political processes and fundamentals of inclusion and exclusion within spaces and places.

Women’s absence from industrial settings in Pakistan corresponds to an institutionally licensed general deficiency of women in the formal workforce. Pakistan’s labour market is deeply segmented and distinct tiers bifurcate the secondary segment. All skills, even those like stitching that globally are presumed “women’s work”, are given male attributes. Women are considered incapable of performing skills equal to men, raising barriers of entry even within the secondary segment. Homeworking women, who engage in industrial waged-work, operate in a monopsony. Capital exploits labour market monopsonies and deepens women’s precarious positions.

Gender prohibitive forces of this society manifest in women’s scarcity in industrial settings. I explore forces and processes of inclusion and exclusion that construct gender prohibitive space. Examining the nature of inclusion and exclusion can reveal particular societal hierarchies in place, indicate which traditions and beliefs have institutional sanction and are held valuable, and which may be displaced over time. The gendering of spaces – in the home, streets, transportation, factories – is a vital feature constraining women’s position in the workforce. I assess how different forces of discrimination including mind-body dualism manifested as public-private space interact and intersect to impact women’s navigation of spaces. I examine mobility as a pursued rather than assured “good” – an enabling factor that allows those that have mobility, economic and social advancement.