Geography

How do different actors shape, relate to, sustain or contest the shifting orthodoxies of development? This course is organized as a genealogy of development policy thinking from post-war decolonization onwards. It gives students an essential introduction to the evolution of international development as a global project from its post-World War II origins to the present day. It maps out the key moments (of innovation, crisis, and reinvention) in that evolution and the shifts in thinking that underpin changes in global development agendas/policy.

This course provides an overview of natural hazards such as floods, severe storms, droughts, multi-hazard interrelationships, the perception of natural hazards, and the complex relationship that exists between natural hazards and society. Lectures on specific hazards are addressing the basic theory for the creation and/or existence of each hazards, along with an understanding of some of the primary and secondary effectives (both negative and positive) of each hazard, including case study examples. 

Cities are very important spaces within which complex economic, political, cultural, and environmental processes are produced and experienced. This course introduces students to urbanization from a global perspective. The objective is to understand contemporary processes of urban change in historical perspective from both the global north and the global south. The course draws on case studies and examples from South America, North America, Europe, South Africa, and Asia to exemplify key themes in urban studies including industrialization, suburbanization, global cities, inequality, and sustainability.

This course introduces students to the field of social geography, its theoretical perspectives and substantive concerns, centered upon an understanding of societies as products of uneven and always negotiated relationships of power. Drawing on a social constructionist approach, and using mainly UK examples, students consider intersecting constructions of social class, gender, race, and sexuality, and how these constructions both shape, and are shaped by space at a variety of scales. The course includes a field walk assignment designed to develop skills of critical observation and interpretation.

Spatial thinking sits at the core of Geographical scholarship, and space and human societies are always mutually constitutive. This course explores how geographers have theorized space and place as central to understanding historical processes, social relations, and cultural practices. Focusing particularly on Africa and other regions of the global South, the course covers foundational Human Geography concepts including modernity, landscape, memory, heritage, identity, and inclusion. Through theoretical work and field-based experiential learning, the course examines how space and place both shape and are shaped by a range of power dynamics.

This course examines a geographical perspective on cities and the urban process in the context of contemporary globalization. It examines how differentiated livelihood possibilities and practices in cities across the globe have been shaped by global processes, local policies and initiatives, as well as the transformative possibilities of citizen agency. In other words, it will examine the interplay between the structuring forces of (primarily) capitalist globalization, on the one hand, and the agency and every-day actions of urban residents, on the other, in order to understand and explain cities and their transformations.

This course offers a work and labor-based perspective on the contemporary global economy, which is still predominantly studied from the viewpoint of firms and states in the social sciences. It profiles the vast range of work types and conditions that constitute the economy, and their wider societal implications. Moreover, it develops an explicitly geographical perspective, using the lenses of place, space and scale to reveal the inherent spatialities of worlds of work.

This course examines theoretical and practical aspects of Geographic Information Systems, including cartographic modelling, digital terrain models, management issues, and spatial interpolation.

This course examines how GIS is used to address and analyze pressing health problems from the geographical perspective. It covers such topics as theoretical and practical issues, simple disease mapping, disease pattern analysis, and environmental association through spatia modeling techniques.