A welcome from the CUGS President…

It is my pleasure to welcome all students to the Cambridge University Geographical Society. Geography is the bridge between the natural sciences and the humanities: it ground’s not only the abstract theories of the political, social, and economical sciences, but the physical, biological and the chemical.

Geography has also moved on from its early colonial framework. It is no longer simply a tool to map, survey and quantify the territory of empires, nor to justify the expansion and evolution of nations. I like to think that the Argentinian satirist Jorge Luis Borges laughed this application of geography out of existence a long time ago, in his short story ‘On Exactitude in Science’.

He takes colonial geography to its logical extreme: envisioning an empire where the discipline has attained such perfection, that its cartographers are able to craft a map of the colonies that is life-sized! To the scale of a mile to the mile! The issue, however, is that the map is so accurate, that it becomes completely useless – covering the entire empire. By the end of the story, only the tattered ruins of this stupid map remain, scattered about the desert and blocking out the sun.

The 21st geographer has instead emerged as someone who uses the country itself as its own map! Someone who can keep the social and physical sciences real, by quite literally ‘grounding’ them in the realities of the natural environment.

CUGS has much to offer in terms of intellectual enrichment and social exchanges, this is expressed through our regular socials, speaker events and panels. 

— Ruben Francis: President 2025

Please feel free to contact our executive committee via email:

• rf494@cam.ac.uk – Ruben Francis: President
• mrc90@cam.ac.uk – Martha Currie: Vice-President
• ed663@cam.ac.uk – Edward de Ferrars Green: Treasurer