Human Environments Research Group

The Human Environments Research Group (HERG) pursues research in frontier areas of human geography in which it has, or is developing, comparative advantage. Members of the group have been or are currently in receipt of research grants from ESRC, EPSRC, The Leverhulme Trust, British Academy, the National Geographic Society and Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA).

Key Areas

Geographies of development

Work enhances and extends the department's long-established reputation in both theoretical and policy-oriented research on urban and regional development, covering three areas:

• The Political Ecology of Extractive Industries and Changing Waterscapes in the Andes
• The Governance of Economic Development and Regional Competitiveness: the politics of local economic development with particular reference to devolution and business agendas; the governance of brownfield development; urban and regional planning and the neo-liberal world order, with particular reference to the Caribbean.
• Sustainable Development: the influence of sustainable development indicators in policy; the adoption and benefits of genetically modified crops in South Africa and India; methodologies for stakeholder participation in sustainable development.
• Transnationalism and Development; global forces and local urban responses in developing societies; migration and hybrid identities, with specific reference to the social dynamics of 'young' and 'foreign-born' returning nationals to the Caribbean.

Social and Cultural Geography

Work reflects significant theoretical debates in social, cultural and political geography. Issues of representation, media and communication, plus the gendering and racialisation of social processes are central to current research involving:

• Ethnicity and Gender: the imbrication of racialised and gendered identities in labour market practices; social exclusion in Britain; post-colonial identities and citizenship in Zimbabwe; second generation Caribbean populations in British urban areas.
• Landscape, Culture and Politics: historical geographies of mobilities and the car; internal and external modes of representation of the rural; the politics of landscape heritage in South Africa.

Research Projects

• Access to land, food security and the intergenerational transmission of poverty in the Brong-Ahafo region of Ghana collaborative pilot project with the Department of Geography and Regional Planning, University of Cape Coast (2012-13).
• Inheritance, access to resources and family relations in Senegal.
• Asset inheritance, poverty and HIV/AIDS: experiences of widows and orphaned youth heading households in Tanzania and Uganda
• Priority Habitats, Protected Sites and Climate Change 
• Children's embodied social capital and (dis)ability: connecting micro- and macro- scales of exclusion/inclusion. (ERSC)
• Young people caring for their siblings in child-and-youth-headed households: participatory feedback and dissemination of pilot research in Tanzania and Uganda. (Royal Geographical Society)
• East of England regional landscape framework. (Natural England)
• Urban renaissance developments: searching for inclusive alternatives to (re) constructing young, middle class and childless central and inner cities (British Academy).
• Informal Solidarities: social capital and communities of volunteering in Reading.
• The Living Landscapes Project. (A joint project with Agriculture). (The Landscape Partnership Ltd)
• Research into the social & economic value of volunteering. (Reading Voluntary Action)