Geography

This course examines differences in diverse people’s experiences of urban life, the opportunities and challenges it offers them, and their ability to shape the city. It looks at how how social differences such as class, gender, ethnicity, race, and disability have been understood in urban studies from varied theoretical perspectives, including liberalism, Marxism, feminism and postcolonialism. It explores these themes with case studies from many cities around the world, with a particular interest in Melbourne, where students will undertake independent field research. Specific issues to be investigated include: the social and cultural lives of rich, poor, middle-class and gentrifying neighborhoods; the negotiation of gender roles and relations in the private and public spheres of the city; intergenerational conflicts in urban housing and labor markets; inequalities in the spatial distribution of urban infrastructures such as roads, transport, education and health services; racial segregation and conflict; the displacement and marginalization of Aboriginal communities in Australian cities, and their activism. 

This course offers interpretations of current (and past) development processes and patterns, specifically in relation to Asia, Africa, and Latin America. Taking into account a range of overlapping dimensions (from social, economic, cultural, and political to institutional), the course explores the multifaceted and layered nature of development and its variegated impacts on the ground. Thus, the course adopts a geographical lens to unpack various economic and societal shifts taking place in developing and emerging countries. Questions addressed in the course include what are the main dimensions of development in the so-called global South? What are the primary drivers of change? What opportunities and barriers exist? What are the main strategies to induce development? What coping strategies are employed? Central to this course is the critical reflection on, and recognition of the multiple meanings of, development and its manifold local expressions within an interconnected world. Entry Requirements: Introduction to Human Geography.

The course aims to introduce students to the different areas of study of Human Geography, emphasizing the knowledge and assessment of the elements and factors that explain the activity of man as a modifying agent of the Earth's surface, in its economic, political, social, and cultural dimensions.

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.