Environmental & Geographical Science

The Environmental and Geographical Science department is a dynamic and thriving academic community that focuses on the most pressing challenges of our time, from environmental change to social justice. We are committed to high standards of research, covering a broad array of subjects including the Anthropocene era, urban and rural dynamics, geopolitics, global development, earth systems, sustainability and climate change. Engaging with complex contemporary issues that are of relevance to society necessitates that the questions we ask draw upon philosophies and methods that integrate across the natural and social sciences as well as the humanities. Our focus on complexity is supported through collaborations and engagements with a range of knowledge bearers beyond the university, including community groups, and the public and private sectors. The curriculum is enhanced through research-led teaching, using theory, case studies, practical and field-based approaches. We cover a range of conceptual debates that critically engage relationships in place and across space and time in order to understand social, human, physical and biophysical interactions shaping contemporary challenges facing us at different scales - locally, nationally, across the continent and globally. We offer a learning journey that graduates change makers who are equipped with relevant skills for a range of professions that engage with our changing world. To be a member of the EGS department is to be part of a community that strives to be relevant, rigorous, respectful, collaborative and caring - as we believe that these are the values that are needed to shift current trajectories to become sustainable and socially just.

Why study EGS at UCT? Click pictures to watch video: