Although interest in the maritime world has been growing steadily within human geography over the past decade, the ship remains a largely neglected figure in its own right. In spite of facilitating the emergence of modern geographical study and being bound intricately to the movement of ideas, goods and people around the globe, past and present, the ship is an elusive, often invisible, and largely forgotten space. In this paper we seek to move the ship from the margins to the centre of geographical research. To do so, we firstly explore the potential of the ship for making geographical knowledge and as a means of understanding the world. We then go on to review studies from within the discipline and also from further afield which employ the ship as a vehicle for knowing and understanding colonialism, commerce, trade and conflict; embodied and resistant performances, and residual materiality, demonstrating the place of the ship in geography. We then contend that the ship could have a greater role in the discipline if it were not only utilised to make empirical and theoretical inroads in relation to broader geographic themes, but if it were the focus of study itself. Here we argue that geographies of ships would allow scholars the opportunity to reframe the history of the discipline, whilst also raising new questions and lines of enquiry relating to mobilities and more‐than‐human geographies, enriching wider academic projects beyond the discipline through employing the ship as a vehicle for novel empirical examinations.

Document embargo until 04/03/2016

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The development of graduate employability and skills are an increasingly important driver of UK Higher Education strategy and policy, but less is known about how students perceive and access opportunities for skill development. This study explores students’ perspectives on how curricular, co-curricular and extra-curricular activities contribute to their development of skills and preparedness for the graduate workplace. We surveyed 319 students from a range of disciplines studying at 15 higher education institutions (HEIs) about how they perceived graduate, global and digital skills, focusing on the types of activities they believed had contributed to their skill development and their readiness for the workplace. Findings indicate that: 1) graduate, digital and global skills predicted readiness for employment; 2) curricular activities associated with graduate skills predicted readiness for employment and graduate skills mediated this relationship; 3) co-curricular and extra-curricular activities in the digital domain predicted readiness for employment and digital skills mediated this relationship; 4) Global skills predicted readiness for employment but activities associated with global skills (e.g., study abroad) did not; 5) Activities such as coursework, study skills, training in and access to IT, use of social media, and committee membership were among those reported as most helpful for students’ skill development. These findings suggest that active reflection on skill development strengthens the link between participation in curricular, co- and extra-curricular activities and readiness for the workplace. The paper explores the implications of this for the formation of professional identities and discusses how institutions can support students to reflect upon their skills.