Geography

This course focuses on digital frontiers, geopolitical frontiers, and religious-health frontiers in Africa. It develops critical analytical skills for understanding and engaging with the challenges and opportunities related to the selected emerging frontiers in diverse African contexts. The course investigates various approaches to the notion of "frontier" – both theoretical and methodological – for investigating and analyzing a range of emerging empirical frontier forms and their effects. In keeping with an interdisciplinary, critical African Studies approach, it introduces ways of thinking about frontiers in their historical, spatial, political, social, cultural, economic, and technological contexts. The selected areas of focus include growing trends and new dynamics linked to widescale digitalization across the African continent; the effects within and beyond the continent of geopolitical shifts in interests, actors, encounters, and conflicts linked not least to changes from a unipolar to more multipolar world order; and changing relations, practices, and effects arising out of new encounters between religious and health spheres on the continent. Attention is also given to new epistemological/knowledge frontiers being generated on the continent.

Field Work III is a practical course, where students will be faced with a scientific problem, which must be determined through systematic and rigorous information gathering in the field and the subsequent analysis of this information. In this course, students must be able to face specific problems, generate a proposal for collecting primary source information, execute what was planned and then process the information obtained by contrasting it with secondary background information, providing an answer to a scientific question.

The course deals with photographic and scanner remote sensing; basic principles of remote sensing; electromagnetic spectrum; the multiband concept of imagery interpretation; photographic remote sensing and its application in urban and rural land use studies. It also reviews the definition and types of remote sensing; a historical review of the development of environmental remote sensing, the physical basis of remote sensing (the electromagnetic spectrum), aerial photographs, characteristics, types, flying for cover and types, scale, overlaps, stereo-vision, relief displacement; photo evaluation (photo reading, analysis and interpretation); principles of object recognition: shape, size, texture; project procedure (including library search, reconnaissance survey, fieldwork, analysis and recording); application in urban and rural inventories; and principles of Geographic Information Systems.

This course studies contemporary economic changes of city-regions by focusing on urban and regional development. Focus is on the rise of the post-industrial knowledge economy and the new economic and social geographies, the new divisions of labor and social classes, and how these are linked to urban restructuring.

This is an independent research course with research arranged between the student and faculty member. The specific research topics vary each term and are described on a special project form for each student. A substantial paper is required. The number of units varies with the student’s project, contact hours, and method of assessment, as defined on the student’s special study project form.

This course offers a study of spatial and tourism planning. Topics include: planning and tourism-- concept and need for regional planning and tourism; territorial planning methodology and tourism; key concepts in regional planning and tourism; the different modalities of planning; tourist planning in Spain.

This course examines the human dimension of disasters which covers crucial concepts and theories, vulnerability and the causes of disasters, disaster risk reduction and management, post-disaster recovery and transversal issues such as culture and gender. The discussions encompass not only theoretical but also policy and practical materials and draw on examples and case studies from throughout the world with a particular focus on the most vulnerable and marginalized areas and communities.

The course provides students with experience in designing and executing a research project. Students will undertake a supervised project in collaboration with other students. Emphasis is placed on research design, including the scientific context of the project, logistics, and ethical considerations; application of appropriate methods and techniques; data collection, including field research and other information sources; data analysis and interpretation; and research communication.

This course offers a study of the risks arising from climatic, hydrological, and internal and external geodynamic and biological processes. It discusses the social repercussions of extreme events, the approach to preventative and mitigation measures, and the response of land use planning. This course analyzes extreme episodes of natural and associated risks including the extent to which they are influenced by direct anthropic intervention in the biophysical environmental and by the variability of natural factors.