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Some hesitate to combine their personal interests with their academic pursuits, but by doing so Inigo Holman (Geography 2021) has an award-winning dissertation to be proud of.

Inigo is joint-first prize winner for the Royal Geographical Society’s annual Social and Cultural Geography Dissertation Prize, for his undergraduate dissertation. "Climbing Out of the City: buildering and the rejection of the urban", supervised by , uses ethnographic methods to explore the climbing of the urban landscape as a means of intensifying the sensory experience of urban space. The research shows how new forms of tactile urbanity have wider implications for architecture, design, and the meaning of ordinary urban spaces.

Inigo’s dissertation was inspired by the “tradition of Cambridge night climbing”. The book, , was published in 1937, and ����Ӱҵ College students have been known to engage in the practice in the past. However, it is illegal and dangerous, with genuine safety concerns, including the possibility of death. Inigo mentions one night climber who broke their leg after an ascent went wrong.

There is a global, but discordant, subculture of buildering – as urban climbing is known – which is often broadcast on YouTube and social media. While Inigo highlights that most builderers do not climb for the sake of adrenaline and fame, some have developed followings and notoriety with increasingly illegal, dangerous and outlandish stunts. Interviews with night climbers were included in Inigo’s research, with many speaking on the condition of anonymity, aware of the consequences of their unmasking. He explored their reasons for partaking in buildering, but initially was uncertain of his dissertation’s direction.

The cover of Inigo's dissertation 

Inigo, President of Caius Rock Climbing Club and a member of Cambridge University Mountaineering Club, says: “Urban climbing is a weird niche which is quite unpopular and largely ignored by the wider community. I looked at it as a form of urban escapism and nature connection, which seems counter-intuitive, as you’re hugging a building. Indeed, for some it’s about more intimately engaging with the city they’re in. But climbing reorders sensory hierarchies to put haptics and kinaesthetics at the top – meaning one is able to distract themselves from otherwise pervasive visual and auditory urbanity.

“When I was picking the dissertation project I thought it was too weird initially. It was only thanks to Matthew Gandy, my supervisor, that I went ahead with the piece. He was absolutely amazing. I owe a lot of how it ended up to him.

“While doing Geography at Cambridge I’ve come to really enjoy the subject, because you go down these weird avenues you wouldn’t normally at A-Level, where most of what you learn is how mountains and oxbow lakes are made. I’d have never have thought you could do something like this in any subject, let alone the one I’d chosen.

“You can think out of the box in your undergraduate dissertation. You have a lot of latitude about what you can answer, a lot of freedom. I stumbled across a fun and interesting topic which made it a pleasure to write, which is a large part about why it did well.”

Inigo has continued at Caius and the Department of Geography for an , a taught masters which includes a project which he hopes will allow him to continue to integrate climbing and academia. He does mention that if he had known how well his dissertation would have been received, he might have been tempted by a full research masters, the . He has received funding from Caius in the form of the Syn Studentship.

“Going to the department and academics congratulating me was surreal,” he says.

Main image: Inigo climbing in Berlin. He says: "The Nazi bunker became one of West Berlin's few 'outdoor' climbing venues when the wall was up. It was while climbing that bunker that I realised I wanted to do the project on urban climbing."