Geography (including a Foundation Year)

The Royal Geographical Society-accredited Geography BA/BSc (Hons) course at the University of Chester is ranked the best in the UK for student experience (Times Higher Education, 2025), with leading student satisfaction levels across many areas (UK highest ranking for Geography & Environment), including in subject explanation, knowledge and skills development, learning opportunities, learning resources and course organisation (National Student Survey, 2024).

Students studying geography at Chester have the option to focus their studies by selecting a human geography, physical geography or natural hazard management pathway, enabling subject specialism following Year 1. Alternatively, students can continue to study a combination of human geography, physical geography and natural hazard management content throughout the three years of their course. This ultimate flexibility allows a tailored learning journey - you choose the modules or subject pathway best aligned with your career goals and personal interests.

Our tutors, recognised for their teaching and research excellence, have wide ranging expertise ensuring a comprehensive, research-informed and engaging student-centred curriculum. Subjects covered currently include: sustainable development; refugees and migration; geopolitics; smart cities; climate and sea-level change; human impacts and environmental change; biogeography; coastal, fluvial, glacial and arid zone geomorphology; flooding and flood management; tectonic hazards; hazard preparedness and resilience; and disaster management.

Modules are designed in partnership with our students and the curriculum is continually updated and refined in consultation with our subject specific industry advisory group, comprised of former students working in a range of sectors who advise on the specific skills and expertise currently required by graduate employers. This ensures you develop the appropriate knowledge, skills, expertise and confidence to help tackle the most pressing social and environmental issues and to excel in your chosen career.

Wide-ranging employment-focussed skills are embedded throughout the course (e.g., GIS and remote sensing, laboratory analytical methods, environmental assessment and monitoring, big data set analysis, critical thinking, project management), and we provide an invaluable opportunity for you to build relevant employment experience by working in an external organisation as a part of a full-time placement at the end of Year 2. Our graduating students gain professional employment in a wide range of industries, allowing them to apply their knowledge and skills to drive change on the issues that matter to them.

Chester has been voted the world’s most beautiful city. Located on the banks of the River Dee, this ancient walled city with its vibrant nightlife, café culture, markets and shopping streets (including the unique 700-year-old ‘Rows’ galleries) contains Britain’s largest Roman amphitheatre and stunning examples of Tudor, Georgian and Medieval architecture, such as the 1000-year-old Chester cathedral. Situated nearby are the rivers, lakes and mountains of the Eryri/Snowdonia National Park, the urban and industrial centres of Liverpool and Manchester, the forests and peatlands of Delamere, and the beaches, dunes, estuaries and saltmarshes along the Cheshire and North Wales coastline. This enables fieldwork to be embedded throughout the course, allowing you to explore key processes and issues first-hand. This is further supported by international fieldwork opportunities, currently in Spain (cultural and urban change; arid geomorphology), Italy (volcanic processes and hazards) and Norway (glacial processes, cold environments).

The Geography BA/BSc (Hons) degree may also be studied with a year spent in industry or a year spent studying abroad. For more information on courses, subject pathways and graduate destinations, see our website by searching ‘Geography at Chester’.

For the latest example of curriculum availability on this degree programme please refer to the University of Chester's Website.

Modules are assessed via a range of coursework and practical assessment methods, many of which are designed to replicate forms of work common in the types of professions Geography graduates enter. These include (but are not limited to): presentations, reports, project proposals, infographics, podcasts, essays, and debates.

Professionally accredited courses provide industry-wide recognition of the quality of your qualification.

• Royal Geographical Society