Exploration Links
The web is a great place to look for ideas, for collaborators, for expedition members and for all manner of information, maps and data.
Exploration web-sites are often quite ephemeral, and if one of these links is broken, please do let us know; equally, if you know of a link that isn’t here, e-mail us and we’ll add it on - we’re keen to expand this page.
The Royal Geographical Society
The RGS is Britain’s foremost organization for funding, supporting and equipping university expeditions (it does other things too!). An extremely useful website. See especially the Fieldwork and Expeditions section at www.rgs.org/go.
Conservation organizations
Conservation organizations, and their websites, can be very useful in giving you ideas about the sorts of research that need doing, the funding available, and sometimes even contacts to get you started. FFI are especially friendly. BP run a massive grants programme and have an early deadline - act fast!
IUCN
WWF
Fauna & Flora International
BirdLife International
People’s Trust for Endangered Species
The BP Conservation Programme
Global Vision International
GVI send out approximately 1,500 volunteers per year on a variety of responsibly run projects and expeditions. Nine expeditions run throughout the world with themes as varied as Patagonian exploration and trekking to marine conservation in Seychelles and Mexico, and predator prey interactions in South Africa to rainforest and coastal conservation in Ecuador and Costa Rica. Global Vision International also run an intensive and practically based TEFL school in Tulum, Mexico. Global Vision International’s projects are generally more flexible on start dates and durations and cover a huge number of different fields, with humanitarian work and teaching in a number of countries in Asia and South and Central America and conservation and research projects globally. There are over 50 programmes in more than 25 countries.
Scientific charities
Often very generous if you are working in the right area. The Linnean Society requires you to be a member (associate or fellow), but they have helped Oxford expeditions in the past where an expedition member has been an Associate of the Society. The BES have a generous grant scheme, but be prepared for a raft of paperwork.
British Ecological Society
Linnean Society of London
Sources of information
Sinister as these might sound, they both have websites with all sorts of useful information which you should ensure you’ve read before you go before the Expeditions Council. On the FCO website, go to the ‘Travel’ section (under ‘Services’) and read about ‘Country Advice & Tips’, ‘Know Before You Go’, ‘If Things Go Wrong’, ‘Services for Britons Overseas’. Bear in mind that the Expeditions Council are extremely unlikely to let you go anywhere that the FCO say that British nationals shouldn’t go to or should only go to on essential business.
UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO)
US Central Intelligence Agency World Factbook
History of Exploration
The Hakluyt Society
A society for keen bibliophiles with an interest in the early history of exploration.
Other societies in Oxford
Oxford University Mountaineering Club
Oxford University Underwater Exploration Club
Oxford University First Aid Unit (OUFAU)
Oxford Polar Society
Oxford University Cave Club
The Cave Club is our sister club, with whom we have a longstanding reciprocal membership arrangement - you’re entitled to go caving with them, and they’re entitled to go on University Expeditions, turn up at our meetings, etc. For the gory details, see section C.4 of our constitution.
University exploration societies elsewhere
Many universities have Exploration or Expeditions societies, but not all are primarily scientific or geographic in intent: these are among the few that are. Cambridge and Glasgow are both especially good and especially active.
Cambridge
Glasgow
Bristol University Explorers Society
Old Oxford University Expedition websites
Andinoherps 2000: Oxford University Expedition to Ecuador
Oxford University Expedition to New Caledonia 2000-2001
Yungas 2001: Oxford University Expedition to Bolivia
Polillo Expeditions 1999-2002
Hong Meigui Yunnan 2002
Yunnan 2003
The Ships’ Graveyard of Northern Mauritania 2004
