Cardiff to host prestigious Royal Geographical Society (with IBG) Conference

The RGS-IBG Annual International Conference will be hosted by the School of Geography and Planning for the first time.

The Royal Geographical Society (with the Institute of British Geographers) is the UK's learned society and professional body for geography, founded in 1830. The RGS-IBG is a world leader in advancing geography and supporting its practitioners in the UK and across the world.  Since 2004 the Annual Conference has been held out of London every three years: most recently Manchester (2009), Edinburgh (2012), and Exeter (2015). The 2018 conference will be hosted by the School of Geography and Planning, Cardiff University.

Professor Hywel Thomas, Pro Vice Chancellor for Research and Innovation, Cardiff University said: “I am delighted that the international conference of the Royal Geographical Society (with the IBG) will be held in Cardiff in 2018. With our emphasis on internationalisation, Cardiff University is proud to be hosting a conference that will bring more than 1,000 geographers from around the world to Cardiff to discuss their research. Geography represents a particularly important academic discipline within Cardiff University and I very much hope that this prestigious international geography conference will also help to highlight the research achievements of Cardiff geographers to the wider world.”

Professor Paul Milbourne, Head of School, School of Geography and Planning said: “I am really pleased that the 2018 conference of the Royal Geographical Society (with the IBG) is coming to Cardiff. This is a wonderful opportunity for the School to welcome geographers from around the world as well as to showcase some of the distinctive aspects of geographical research in Cardiff and Wales as a whole. I look forward to working with the RGS during the next few months to develop a conference that provides academic, social and cultural value.”

The origins of the RGS-IBG annual conference can be traced back to January 1933 and the inaugural meeting of the then newly founded Institute of British Geographers (IBG). For the first few years of its existence, the IBG annual conference and AGM ran alongside the conference of the Geographical Association and was held at the London School of Economics. In 1949, the conference was held outside of London for the first time, in Oxford, beginning the tradition of the conference being held at a different UK Higher Education Institution each year. This continued during the early years of the newly merged RGS-IBG – more information about past conferences is available here.