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Amanda Goodall and Andrew Oswald¡¯s lament about the state of the social sciences (¡°Time for a makeover?¡±, Features, 9 October) suggests that they are unfamiliar with the healthy and vibrant discipline of geography. Both a social science and a natural science, and comfortable with the humanities, in geography Goodall and Oswald will find all that they are looking for, and more ¨C geographers contributing knowledge to complex challenges such as climate change, obesity and terrorism; students studying both geophysics and geopolitics, often in successive lectures; academics publishing policy-relevant inter-disciplinary science in journals such as Nature and Science; hybrid degrees on offer, such as in geocomputation, climate change and sustainable cities; and intellectual currents of thought continually refreshed through geographers¡¯ ability to study the world without theoretical or methodological prejudice.

The ¡°makeover¡± has been with us a long time, and its name is geography. Come and join us.

Mike Hulme
Professor of climate and culture
Department of geography, King¡¯s College London