The dissertation as part of my Geography course

My dissertation forms part of the third year course of a Geography BA degree at the University of Cambridge. The course is wide ranging through the first two years and I am now focusing more strongly on cultural and environmental geography.

My interest in how people create distinct identities for themselves started on a recent field trip to Mallorca, Spain, where I was carrying out a study into the significance of street names, monuments and statues in the capital, Palma de Mallorca. The deliberate renaming of streets and erection of new monuments in the town has been important for reasserting the Catalan identity of the islands after the Spanish national identity was forced on the region in the Franco era.

The images show one of the backstreets of Palma and the famous Cathedral on the waterfront.