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Summary and conclusion

Chapter 4 An Analysis of Web Content: Departments & Research Groups

4.4 Summary and conclusion

The analysis of web content from 49 institutions which participated in RAE 2008 Geography and Environmental Studies provides an understanding of how geography as a discipline is structured and organised within institutions. Disciplinary and subfield structure plays an important role in the organisational structure of geography. More than half of the institutions have individual departments/schools with disciplinary labels such as, ‘geography’, ‘geographical sciences’,

‘geography and environment’. However, there are clear differences between top, middle and low ranking institutions in how geography is structured. Top ranking institutions tend to have an individual geography department with strong independent disciplinary identity; middle ranking institutions tend to have departments/ schools which geography are joined with some closely related disciplines, e.g. geology, and in low ranking institutions, geography tends to be structured into multi-disciplinary schools, in a very broad disciplinary level, e.g. school of applied sciences, school of science and technology.

86 This study also explored the nature of research groups within institutions. All institutions have research groups related to geography. Some Institutions explicitly identified the purpose of research groups on their websites, e.g. providing a forum to discuss and coordinate research, encouraging collaboration within and outside the discipline. As not every institution is active in research of all geography subfields, the organisation of group-based research reflects the focus / research strategy of a department/school.

A mapping exercise was carried out to investigate the relationships between research groups and subfields. In general, this study has shown that research groups are closely related to a sub-field of a discipline. Yet, each research group does not represent a single sub-field of geography.

Departmental research groups are commonly combinations of a number of subfields. Some subfields are nearly always grouped with others, e.g. economic geography and political geography. On the other hand, some subfields tend to be on their own, mainly because they are relatively rare, e.g.

transport geography, health geography. This study found that political geography, social geography and cultural geography are the most frequent subfields in human geography. Furthermore, an interesting subfield was identified, quantitative geography which applies quantitative methods and uses big datasets in human geography.

Compared to human geography, physical geography seems to be more integrated. Conventional sub-divisions of physical geography, such as climatology, hydrology, geomorphology, biogeography, soil geography commonly integrated into one single research group. Yet, this study identified some popular areas in physical geography research groups, including, environmental systems, processes and change, earth surface (landscape), quaternary Science and ecosystems. Furthermore, it was found that the division between human and physical geography is clear at the research group level.

Even though most departments include both, only a very few groups, six out of total of 173, have both physical geographers and human geographers. Most of these research groups are related to the topic of environment.

It is also clear that interdisciplinarity has become an important agenda in institutions. This study has shown that institutions merge departments into bigger schools, cluster subfields into research groups, unite research groups by a theme rather than subject matter and establish interdisciplinary research centres. All these phenomena suggest that institutions are supporting interdisciplinary initiatives, encouraging collaborations and making connections within and outside disciplines and subfields. Yet, one of the findings to emerge from this study is that despite the increasing promotion of interdisciplinarity in the institutions, the divide between human geography and physical

geography is still strong.

87 In conclusion, this web study investigated the organisational aspect of geography at an institutional level (Repko et al., 2013; Chettiparamb, 2007). It provided an overview of research structure and characteristics of geography within institutions. In addition, some key subfields of geography were identified. Academic departments and research groups provide institutional homes for researchers.

The institutional structure of geography is likely to have implications for communications among researchers, which could affect researchers’ data practices, such as, data sharing. For example, Parsons (2013) and Winn (2012) found that most researchers only share their data with researchers who create the data and researchers within their own research groups or departments. Combining the results of this section with material from the other studies in the following two sections, the results of the study are valuable in selecting suitable interviewees for in-depth interviews and informing interview questions. For example, the finding that there is a clear divide between physical and human geography suggests that interview participants should be sampled from both branches.

And the findings of quantitative geography in human geography can be highly relevant to data changes. This section has also thrown up important questions in need of further investigation in the planned interviews, e.g. what is the meaning of research groups and subfields to researchers, what are their views on the divide between physical and human geography and how organisational structures affect their data practices?

Having examined geography at the level of departments and research groups, the study reported in the next section will be examining individual researchers. Looking at the individual level, the internal disciplinary characteristics of geography are more likely to be clear, i.e. the intellectual, e.g.

research methods, research topics, and the social characteristics (collaborations and

communications) (Becher & Trowler, 2001). Therefore, the next content analysis will examine geography researchers’ web profiles, focussing on their research topics, research methods,

publications and collaborations. The next study will continue to help answer research sub-questions (1) What are the characteristics of geography as a discipline, focussing on the intellectual

characteristics of geography.

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