Winners - Animal Geography Working Group Undergraduate Dissertation Prize
We are delighted to announce our main and a runner up winners!
Anna Meller (Durham University) has won the prize for the best undergraduate dissertation with work titled ‘A GIS-Based Study of Emperor Penguin Colony Dynamics and Their Environmental and Ecological Influences in Antarctica’. Our judging panel has offered the following statement:
This is an exceptional, highly innovative dissertation that offers both empirical and methodological novelty. The topic of study is highly relevant to contemporary conservation concerns, which are at the forefront of much work in animal geography. The dissertation explores how emperor penguin colony dynamics in Antarctica respond to environmental variability in the southern Weddell Sea, using satellite derived data regarding guano distribution as a proxy for measuring population change. The literature review and methodology demonstrate an expert grasp of the field, covering a wide range of debates with a commanding, clear voice. We were impressed with the author’s communication skills and their ability to convey to a broad readership the methodological challenges of monitoring emperor penguins at the colony scale. Indeed, their methodology is highly rigorous, systematic, detailed, and well-presented. The exhaustive, forensic way in which the author evaluates and presents results from each monitoring method is brilliant, aided by GIS maps and diagrams to explain their processes. The caveats and limitations are well acknowledged, and the suggestions of ways to integrate and improve metrics and methods is excellent in discussion and conclusion. The judging panel suggest the author pursues publication of this work in a peer-reviewed journal. We are delighted to award Anna Meller of Durham University the 2025 Animal Geographies Working Group undergraduate dissertation prize.
Adam Newton (University of Nottingham) has received the runner-up prize for the undergraduate dissertation award with work titled ‘Out of Place in the Home of Leviathan: Historical cultural geographies of British whaling 1733-1887’. Our judging panel has offered the following statement:
This is a brilliant dissertation which explores the hybrid geographies of British whaling practices in the 19th century in the fluid and active production of meanings, identities, and social relations of oceanic spaces. The author should be commended for their ambitious approach, which draws from a diverse body of literature, predominantly poststructuralist theory. The dissertation advances the concerns of the AGWG through its focus on the geographies with/of/for animals and its conceptualisation of oceanic spaces (and whales) in a way that challenges the fixed binaries of nature and culture. Using whaling in 18th and 19th century Britain as an example, it explains that whaling ships and the maritime industry facilitated enlightenment ideas and sites of contestations over Western modernity, progress, and biopower over animal bodies. The methods employed include a significant body of primary archival work, which the author should be commended for. Their use and presentation of archival materials and quotes with embedded analysis is exemplary. We are delighted to award Adam Newton of the University of Nottingham the runner-up prize for the 2025 Animal Geographies Working Group undergraduate dissertation competition.
Our big congratulations to Anna and Adam!
