It's Black History Month! If you're new to our work, welcome to Black Geographers, we're a network (officially a CIC, community interest company, aka a social enterprise or non profit) of black geography (and geoscience) students, graduates and professionals, working to tackle the erasure of black people in geography.

I founded Black Geographers in April of last year. I only ever wanted this to be an Instagram page where I would share what it's like to be black in geography, field trips, book recommendations and insight into life as a geography student. As you can see, it's a lot more than that now and we don't only document our experiences in geography but through collaborative work, we aim to not only encourage more black students to study geography but to also begin transforming Geography as a discipline, to make it more engaging and inclusive at every level of education. 

We provide resources, mentoring, networking, and internship opportunities to the students and academics we work with. We also work with other educational institutions and geography organisations to improve representation, accountability, and access across schools, universities and the green and environment sector. 

Last year, we ran our first digital campaign, #7in1000, in response to our first ever research paper, The Participation of Black students in geography, which analysed a selection of statistics pertaining to black students and professionals within the field. 

Our report discovered that in 2018, there were only TEN black geography professors in the UK. Given the number of professors in the UK, this equates to 7 in 1000 geography professors in the UK being black.

This year, we're running a new campaign combining two things that I love, books and geography.  If you follow me on my personal Twitter, I am always banging on about books and the lack of literature on Black Geographies and other areas of geography, e.g. physical geography. So, this year I wanted to showcase (and giveaway) literature written by black academics, geographers and non-geographers on social geographies, cultural geographies, feminist geographies, geographies of sexuality and so much more! 

#BlackFacesWhiteSpaces

Black Faces, White Spaces was inspired by Carolyn Finney's book, Black Faces, White Spaces: Reimagining the Relationship of African Americans to the Great Outdoors. Finney uncovers why African Americans are so underrepresented in nature, outdoor recreation and environmentalism by bridging the fields of environmental history, cultural studies, critical race studies, and geography. She argues that the legacies of slavery, Jim Crow, and racial violence have shaped cultural understandings of the "great outdoors" and determined who should and can have access to natural spaces.

Like last year, we will be fundraising alongside our campaign to help with the costs of distributing books from our #BlackFacesWhiteSpaces reading list. 

CLAIM YOUR FREE BOOK

(one book per person and you must be based in the UK)

Choose a book from our #BlackFacesWhiteSpaces reading list and request it by emailing blackgeographers@gmail.com*

*subject to funding and availability in bookstores

 Ending Friday 22th October at 18:00 BST

Francisca Rockey

Founder and Director