Geography

This course involves student-led research and dissemination around contemporary environmental topics e.g. renewable energy, food security etc. Working in groups, students explore an issue or problem, undertake research on it, and communicate their work in a form accessible to non-academic audiences e.g. a policy note or a science communication piece. This helps students to develop key graduate attributes and consider their own employment prospects beyond the academy.

This course explores the Anthropocene, a proposed geological epoch marked by significant human impact on Earth's ecosystems, climate, and geology. By focusing on pluralizing the Anthropocene, the course examines a diverse range of perspectives, including postcolonial, feminist, indigenous, and ecological frameworks.  The course interrogates how the term 'Anthropocene' can be problematized and expanded, reflecting on how different cultures, knowledge systems, and disciplines engage with the concept.  

This course explores the idea of the Anthropocene in two parts: 

(1) Theory and Concept: The course analyzes how scholars define the Anthropocene with different theoretical backgrounds, providing diverse understanding of nature-social and human-nonhuman relations. 

(2) Case studies: The course dives into various case studies to learn how geographers and anthropologists adopt diverse methods to study the uneven impacts of the Anthropocene across the world.  

This course examines the impact of global change - broadly defined as the impacts of climate change and demographic change influencing global-scale changes in land use, environmental degradation and pollutant emissions - on physical and human environments in Africa and Asia with a specific focus (thread) on water supply. The course deliberately engages issues of climate injustice, equity, and adaptive capacity from the local to the global. A distinctive aspect of this course is its engagement not only with the hydrological science underlying the impact of global change on water supplies but also with the pathways and processes of water governance including transboundary issues that inform solutions towards more equitable and sustainable water supplies in a warming world. The course draws from case studies informed by active research programs in Nigeria, Niger, Tanzania, Bangladesh, and India.

This course investigates how human societies adapt to climate change and variability. Central concepts and theories in current adaptation research are presented and discussed using case studies from different parts of the world. In doing so, central actors, policies, and management strategies are analyzed. This includes private and public stakeholders and institutions, and adaptation strategies and initiatives at different geographical scales (local, regional, national, and supranational).

This course examines some of the issues that face human kind at the beginning of the 21st century and show how geographers approach the problems facing the modern world. It includes topics that are currently reported in the media and examine the realities and uncertainties behind these issues, focusing particularly on the tools available to address key questions. The course facilitates cross-disciplinary discussion and to promote an in-depth understanding of problems facing us all. The course provides an insight into how these issues are influenced by complex interactions between social, cultural, economic, physical, and biological processes.

This course examines how cultural, social, political and economic dynamics shape landscapes, these being rural, urban, in transitions or ‘natural. You will garner a theoretical expertise for interpreting and making sense of different places, and how there are shaped by multiple dynamics across scales (from the local to the global). 

This course reviews the fundamental theories associated with the spaciality of rural areas.  The class focuses on the pressing issues faced by people within rural areas, especially farmers within Mexico and Latin America.  It also covers a detailed explanation of how agricultural markets function in terms of productivity and values.  Last, the course evaluates the impacts of industrialization and technological advancements of agricultural economies.

The class first covers the historical-social process of capitalism through a geographic perspective by explaining the different theories of political economy and its critics, mainly Marx.  The course begins with the physiocrats, then to the mercantiles, and classical political economic theories.  The course covers feudal societies, class antagonisms, creation of port cities, and centralization of markets and power within cities.  It also addresses the hierarchical dynamics of capitalism on a global scale and changes in use value and exchange value as a result of higher quality of life.