Thinking geographically

This is my first editorial and I am delighted to introduce an exciting and diverse collection of articles. In this issue, three articles focus on aspects of geography education, two articles provide insight into the historically embedded geographies of an everyday object and one article confronts the shocking nature of some UK poverty statistics. The articles clearly deal with different topics, but each of them provides examples of thinking geographically that can help to extend students’ knowledge beyond the limits of their everyday experience. Understanding and thinking in ways that are outside what is immediately familiar are central to the concept of ‘powerful knowledge’ (Maude, Citation2016) that is explored in the first article in this issue. Fostering powerful knowledge is argued to be the main purpose of education in and beyond geography, with this in turn enabling new ways of thinking about the world, better forms of analysis and explanation and more empowered and informed participation in debate and discussion. The articles in this issue are also characterised by a focus on overlooked or understudied geographies and the diverse and often novel methods used by geographers to derive answers to important questions.