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Welcome to the website of the Digital Geographies Research Group (DGRG).

We are an academic research group of the Royal Geographical Society with the Institute of British Geographers (RGS-IBG).

Digital technologies are changing the life worlds we research as well as the very way we ourselves undertake research and teaching. Therefore this group seeks to be a welcoming forum to discuss these changes for geographers from different epistemic and methodological traditions, and for those conducting theoretical as well as applied research work. The DGRG is a platform for exchanges within and between sub-disciplines, engaging with the diversity of geographies of and through the digital, and thereby nurtures and deepens discussion of geographical digital scholarship and practice.

Our 2024 Annual General Meeting will be held during the RGS-IBG Annual International Conference which will be chaired by Professor Stephen Legg on the theme of Mapping and will take place in London from Tuesday 27 August to Friday 30 August 2024.

Our AGM is the point of the year when the committee reports to the membership and we all reflect on what has been achieved in the last year, plan the next year, and hear new suggestions for how the group is run and what it can do. We also elect committee members for open positions, and farewell previous committee members who are leaving. All ideas and suggestions are very welcome. 

Digital Geographies Research Group Annual Symposium 2025: Global Digital Geographies: Digitalising the Territorial / Territorialising the Digital

Date: 19-20 June 2025, online.

The Digital Geography Research Group of RGS-IBG invites submissions for its annual symposium 2025.

Contributions are welcome on, but not limited to, the following themes:

  • Digital sovereignty, cybersecurity, and data governance
  • Digital technologies and their re-presentation of territories 
  • Digital infrastructures
  • New patterns of territorial development (circulation, logistics, and enclosure ) shaped by digitalization
  • Techno-nationalism and digital statecraft on all fronts, from the jurisdiction of data and digital        infrastructure to citizen-subjects
  • Ontological approaches to digital territories and (geo)politics

We are seeking individual papers, practice-based sessions, pre-organised/panel sessions and digital shorts. 

Confirmed speakers

Deadline for Abstracts/sessions/digital shorts:  April 30 2025, Monday
Notification of Acceptance: May 15 2025, Monday

Submissions and Inquiries: Please send abstracts to this link and questions to June.wang@cityu.edu.hk

DGRG Dissertation Prize Winner 2024 Announced!

We are delighted to announce that the winner of our 2024 Dissertation Prize is Benjamin Thompson from the University of Nottingham.
 
His dissertation, ‘DIY Sovereignty? Asserting Physical-Digital Autonomy in Deptford Creek, London’, examines how community-owned Wi-Fi networks become entangled with the spatial practices and politics of the communities in which they are established. Focusing on the EU-funded MAZI project, a community-owned network which ran from 2016 until late 2018 in Deptford Creek, London, Benjamin’s research considered what functions the network provided for communities, how space was constituted and mediated through it, and the implications MAZI had for citizenship and power relations within Deptford.
 
Benjamin’s dissertation scored highly in all our assessment criteria. However, reviewers particularly praised the originality of the chosen topic, the contribution that the dissertation’s findings make within the field, and the way Benjamin’s findings are discussed throughout the work.
 
Benjamin will have an opportunity to share more about his work via our channels over the coming months. Stayed tuned for this and for news of our 2025 Dissertation Prize offering.
 
Meanwhile, you can watch a recorded conversation with our 2023 Dissertation Prize winner Lucas Evans here, which discusses his research on the Forest app, a popular productivity app that enables users to support forest restoration.
 

Our latest Work in Progress video series is up now – Eurovision fandom, working from home privacy, place and location, and more! View on our YouTube channel