Geography

This course examines contemporary geospatial technologies such as web-mapping, GPS and tracking devices (such as your phone), Remote Sensing and GIS. It covers key concepts and principles behind these tools and their use, along with practical experiences through laboratories. Critical and theoretical perspectives on the tools, their use, and their social impacts will be discussed.

This course focuses on the substantive role that China plays in the Global South where its preponderance of material power and putative developing country status confers upon it a dominant position in bilateral and regional political economies.  China's economic position, coupled to an astute use of finances flowing from its mercantilist policies, has enabled it to become the leading trading partner and a significant investor in the developing world.  Moreover, the Global South is increasingly figuring in Beijing's expanding security interests and soft power provisions.  Interpretations embedded in prevailing academic discourses like socialisation, threat and peaceful rise take on new meaning when studied through the lens of ties with developing countries.  Understanding how dynamics in this relationship are impacting upon a host of global and contemporary issues (BRICs, multilateralism, peacekeeping, the environment) is crucial to the shape of the 21st century.

In this course, students gain in-depth knowledge and understanding of contemporary change in the UK. Key themes to be addressed in seminar discussion include neo-liberalism, the North-South divide, culture-led urban regeneration, urban heritage and identity, migration, and urban health. 

This course examines environmental change from a historical geography perspective. Approaches to investigating and understanding the transformation of environments are explored, and processes driving creation of different types of landscapes including heritage places are considered. 

This course offers a study of urban planning and land use planning. It discusses instruments of intervention in land use policy and land management, as well as the main lines of land use planning and urban development in Catalonia and Spain.
 

This course examines the historical evolution of Singapore as a global city-state against the contexts of global changes and developments from the 14th to the 21st century. The course is open to all students interested in Singapore studies.

This political geography course covers the following five themes: space and power; the hegemonic political space of modernity-- state and nation; the space of interstate disorder-- geopolitics; the space of legitimacy-- electoral geography; place and social movements.

This course examines historical biogeography of plants; plant adaptations and vegetation dynamics; world biome types; plants and society; and human impacts on vegetation.

This course develops theoretical and empirical understanding of spatial economic processes in order to study and evaluate a wide range of issues and policies. Particular emphasis is put on regional economies, business and worker location decisions, focusing in particular on models of the location of economic and innovation activity with a particular emphasis on regional economies. The course analyzes the New Economic Geography theories and the agglomeration of economic activity, with a particular focus on EU integration as a testing ground. Students also look at the global and local knowledge economy, focusing on core aspects of a society based on knowledge and technical progress and how this proceeds hand in hand with the enlargement of markets and the intensification of exchange. Students explore the seeming contradiction that geographically localized knowledge may be increasingly significant just as so much of our world becomes more globalized.

This course focus on advanced spatial analysis using GIS/Geoinformatics and Remote Sensing. It provides an understanding of the relevant theories and methodologies necessary to select appropriate strategies within the broad context of urban and regional geography. The course discusses the theoretical background and tries out the practical implementation in a number of practical exercises. Topics include GIS and Geoinformatics for urban applications, high resolution remote sensing, spatial analysis, spatial optimization, spatial statistics, and general knowledge of Geodata.