Even if we aren’t aware of it, overland travel provides countless immersive lessons in geography. Mobility allows us to observe how cities and towns are connected, whether by fields of cheerful canola flowers, hills punctuated by wind turbines, or riverways choked with litter. We notice how environments change from one place to the next and how the onset of valleys, mountains, or deserts affect the way people live their daily lives, from what they eat to the clothing they wear and their role within the local community, society, and economic systems. If we’re in tune, we also notice how the places, landscapes, and people influence us. Understanding how humans and their surroundings interact helps us make sense of the world around us—something which the Royal Geographical Society (RGS), with the Institute of British Geographers (IBG), believes helps us to be more socially and environmentally sensitive, better informed, and more responsible as citizens, employees, and travelers.
As a global leader in geographical learning, the London-based Society supports education, teaching, research, and scientific expeditions while promoting public understanding and enjoyment of geography. While the charity is member-supported and responsible for advances in geographic education, including developing geography-based university programs in the UK at the turn of the 20th century, we often associate the RGS with early colonial exploration and notable expeditions led by Livingstone, Stanley, Shackleton, and Hillary. The Society took root at one of many exclusive gentleman’s dining clubs of the Victorian era, where members held informal debates on current scientific issues and ideas. The Geographical Society of London was founded in 1830 to promote the advancement of geographical science, which it continues to do today. In 1859, the organization underwent a name change, becoming the Royal Geographical Society, and was granted a Royal Charter by Queen Victoria. By 1913, the RGS had moved into its current home, the Lowther Lodge in Kensington, London.
The Map Room. Photograph courtesy of Royal Geographical Society (with IBG).
The Main Hall. Photo courtesy of the Royal Geographical Society (with IBG).
If this sounds very “old boys’ club,” that’s an accurate assessment. The initial focus of the Society was exploration—supporting and enabling expedition leaders of the time, largely wealthy white men, to travel overseas, bringing information and artifacts back to London. Women weren’t formally admitted to the RGS until 1913, and many collaborators were under-recognized until more recently. Today, while the Society and the subject of geography in the UK is more balanced in terms of gender, Senior Press and Communications Officer Róisín Tarrant says there remains a significant under-representation of geographers from ethnic minorities and lower incomes. “Fieldwork and expeditions have been at the core of the Society from the outset. How they were done in the past is different [from] how they are done today, and the Society has led calls in the last 50 years or so for fieldwork to be more inclusive, to be co-designed and co-produced with local communities, and to be attentive to social, environmental, and cultural impacts.”
One of the biggest misconceptions about the Royal Geographical Society, Tarrant says, is that it is an exclusive or elite organization. I’ll admit that going into this piece, I believed the RGS was solely for scientists, geographers, or folks who had completed hard-core expeditions. My limited knowledge revolved around the fact that to become a Fellow, you had to be recommended by two other Fellows. That sounded pretty exclusive to me. But the more time I spent on the RGS website, connecting with RGS contacts like Tarrant, or speaking with current RGS Fellows, the more I realized the Society offered some tangible benefits to someone like me—an overland traveler with endless curiosity and intrigue about the places I pass through. Going forward, fieldwork remains at the core of the RGS and, according to RGS Director and Professor Joe Smith, “We are here to play an active part in helping people understand the world and change it for the better.”
.
Non-members may find helpful information about grants, workshops, and expeditions (planning, joining, and funding) on the Royal Geographical Society (with IBG) website, while online exhibitions such as Shackleton’s Legacy and the Power of Early Antarctic Photography or The Lost Voices in the Archive provide additional imagery and background details about historical expeditions and acknowledge those who were crucial to the success of an expedition but were previously excluded from the narrative. I happily enjoyed a lecture called Finding Freya’s Assassins, A Journey Through Remote Northern Iran by Elise Wortley, who retraced the footprints of Freya Stark’s 1929 expedition in vintage walking attire.
For $222 per year, you may apply for an RGS membership, which includes access to hundreds of Monday night lectures (30 per year), discounts for public events, an opportunity to apply for a Chartered Geographer designation, access to the monthly Geographical magazine (digital or print, with photography, culture, wildlife, and exploration features), and online access to scholarly journals. There are membership options for students, schools, and corporations as well. If you are an international member visiting the UK, you can use the Members’ Room for meetings and investigate the Foyle Reading Room to view the library of maps, books, and guides or request access to items in the Society’s historic collections, which contain over two million documents, including one million sheets of maps and charts, 3,000 atlases, 40 globes, 1,000 gazetteers, and half a million photographs, negatives, slides, and albums. Documentary filmmaker, author, and television presenter Alex Bescoby and Expedition Manager Marcus Allender of the Last Overland Expedition held many initial planning meetings in the Reading Room. “It always fills me with nostalgia stepping back in there,” Bescoby says.
History buffs will no doubt be fascinated by many artifacts in the RGS collection. Some noteworthy items include Shackleton’s Burberry helmet and David Livingstone’s account of his search for the source of the Nile—but for me, seeing Gertrude Bell’s notebooks filled with penciled archaeological notes from her travels in Turkey, Iraq, and Syria would be undeniably cool. The Society’s film collection has been fully digitized, so documentaries from a host of Everest trips and Oxford University expeditions are freely available for UK residents at player.bfi.org.uk. The amateur film footage of Ralph Bagnold’s first east-west crossing of the Libyan desert in a Model-T Ford in 1932 looks particularly compelling.
Gertrude Bell sketch of section of the inside of the Kharauch.
Gertrude Bell’s tent.
A quick visit to the Royal Geographical Society website reveals that Fellowships aren’t shrouded in secrecy, requiring rituals, private gatherings, or candlelit ceremonies where inky-cloaked insiders murmur their allegiances in Latin. A Fellowship application is open to anyone who can demonstrate “a sufficient involvement in geography or allied subject through training, professional work, research, publications or other work of a similar nature” or at least five years as an RGS member. Geography teachers and professors are automatically nominated by the council, but if you have relevant experience relating to research, expeditions, travel, or teaching, you need the recommendation of an existing Fellow who knows you personally. Fortunately, if you don’t know a current Fellow, you may submit a short paragraph about how you meet the eligibility criteria, and a Staff Fellow may act on your behalf.
Fellowship benefits are similar to those experienced by members. However, the networking and archival components are prized by many current Fellows. Naturalist and explorer Roseann Hanson has been a Fellow of the RGS since 2009 and works with the Society on its mission to advance geographical science through expeditions and as a field artist. She has published countless articles and books in the fields of natural history, exploration, and conservation, and this, combined with over a decade of professional work in East Africa, Northern Mexico, and the Southwestern United States, caught the eye of Shane Winser, director of the RGS Geography Outdoors Program and annual Explore Festival, who invited her to apply. Roseann and her husband, Jonathan (former executive editor of Overland Journal), have participated annually as presenters and panel leaders for the RGS Explore event, an eight-day celebration of expeditions and fieldwork. “By participating in and helping lead the Explore Festival events, I’ve made extensive contacts in the UK, Europe, and even in the US in the fields of geography, field arts, and expeditions,” she says. “I feel that RGS plays a unique role as a global leader in geographical science and exploration but also as a community convener and incubator for new explorers—something I don’t think any other organization does as well.”
Extricating car from sand (Bagnold).
Expedition leader, instructor, and filmmaker Graham Jackson has been a Fellow of the RGS since 2008. Similar to Roseann’s experience, presenting at the Explore event helped Jackson link up with archaeology experts from Oxford University to discuss an upcoming expedition and filmmaking project in Mauritania. The event also introduced him to differing viewpoints within the Society about vehicle-based travel in remote locations. “There were climate activists in the audience during my presentation, and seeing people driving through the jungle in diesel trucks [was upsetting to them]. That really opened my eyes. You see why you’re doing [an expedition] and why it’s valuable for the planet as a whole, rather than just ‘mastering the jungle’ and cutting down trees. That was really good.” Graham’s recent project, the Mundo Perdido Expedition, took him to Mayan archeological sites in Belize and Guatemala, where he and his team measured ground-level carbon dioxide levels to augment the traditional satellite and aircraft data.
While most of us don’t need to pick the brain of an Oxford scholar for an upcoming expedition (although it does sound fun), the range of resources provided by the RGS means we can add one more tool to our overlanding kit, ultimately creating a much richer experience on the road. And who knows—maybe I’ll send in a Fellowship application one day to get the inside scoop. I’ll keep you posted if secret handshakes or cryptic letters are involved.
A group of Sherpas gather to eat and write notes at Camp IV wearing high altitude boots (1953 Mount Everest Expedition).
Freya Stark in Jebel Druze.
Resources:
Royal Geographical Society (with IBG) Website: rgs.org
Frank Hurley with movie camera on the ice, beneath the bow of the Endurance.
Editor’s Note: This article was originally published in Overland Journal’s Summer 2024 Issue.
Our No Compromise Clause: We do not accept advertorial content or allow advertising to influence our coverage, and our contributors are guaranteed editorial independence. Overland International may earn a small commission from affiliate links included in this article. We appreciate your support.
