Geography launches its new MA in Geopolitics, Resources and Territory

12 February 2021

Geography launches its new MA in Geopolitics, Resources and Territory

The King’s Geography Department is proud to launch the new Geopolitics, Resources and Territory masters programme.

The Geopolitics, Resources and Territory (GRT) programme reflects the Geography Department's widening base of geopolitical expertise in recent years, and delivers research-led teaching on critical and fundamental questions relating to international boundaries, sovereignty disputes and environmental geopolitics.

The programme draws on the successes of its predecessor, the MA in Geopolitics, Territory and Security, which produced alumni in the fields of international civil service and diplomacy, international law, academia, NGOs and specialised political and security risk agencies.

We’re excited to be offering this very unique programme, combining questions of territory and resources in understanding our contemporary inter-state relations. The programmes should be fun and challenging, engaging with critical global issues of conflict resolution, water scarcity, resource security in a changing climate and more! Our teaching team offers a breadth of experience and cutting-edge research with insights ranging from the Middle East, West Africa, Southern Africa, South Asia, Southeast Asia to East Asia.
Dr Naho Mirumachi, Co-convenor

GRT will engage students in the critical scrutiny of resource and territorial-related disputes, including their spatial manifestation in contested borderlands. It also offers a specialisation in resource geopolitics and associated questions of environmental security, drawing on the politics about water, energy, climate and beyond.

Students will be equipped with multidisciplinary lenses, applying geopolitical and political geography analysis, elements of international law, international relations theory and other approaches from the social sciences and humanities.

Given the enormous success of its predecessor, Dr Richard Schofield expressed his enthusiasm about the GRT programme’s unique dual focus on resources and territory:

There are two things that have really been crucial to the success of our postgraduate programme in geopolitics and territory since it started a quarter of a century back. Firstly, consistently being able to call on leading external practitioners, especially leading international lawyers, to share their experiences and expertise. Secondly, we have been able to attract a highly international, diverse and talented student base that has swelled in number as academic study of geopolitics first rehabilitated then progressed into the exciting (sub)discipline it is today.
Richard Schofield, Co-convenor

Meet your course convenors: Richard Schofield and Dr Naho Mirumachi

Richard Schofield

Richard Schofield founded the highly-rated Geopolitics journal in 1996 before launching and and convening the SOAS Geography master's programme in International Boundary Studies in 1997 - the progenitor of the MA in GTS and the new Geopolitics, Resources and Territory programme being announced here.

He is an internationally-recognised expert on boundaries and territorial disputes in the Middle East and has published extensively on these issues. He co-founded (with international lawyer, Robert Volterra) the London International Boundary Conference in 2013.

Dr Naho Mirumachi

Dr Naho Mirumachi is Reader in Environmental Politics at the Department of Geography. Trained in political science, international studies and human geography, she has over 15 years of experience and has published extensively. Naho convenes King’s Water, an interdisciplinary research hub on water, environment and development.

She served as lead author on freshwater policy for the 2019 UN Environment GEO-6 report and is currently working on the IPCC Sixth Assessment Report.