Geography

This course is part of the Laurea Magistrale program. The course is intended for advanced level students only. Enrollment is by consent of the instructor. This course provides knowledge on process and Quaternary geomorphology, with a focus on mountain environments. The course examines aspects of sediment supply and sediment transfer, including hillslope-channel interactions, the role of hydro-meteorogical forcing on the intensity and typology geomorphic transport processes. It also deals with sediment management in the Anthropocene, including the impacts of in-channel engineering infrastructures and landcover changes. Sediment yield and sediment storage in natural and regulated systems are also discussed, as well as the role of Pleistocene glaciations on the present spatial organization of geomorphic processes and sediment fluxes. In this context, the course further examines dating landforms and constraining denudation rates at millennial time scales. The lab-based component introduces students to expert-based mapping of sediment sources and channel changes, as well as glacial and periglacial landforms on remotely-sensed images to build georeferenced databases for geo-hazard assessment. The field-based component illustrates techniques for field-based mapping, characterizing channel bed texture, as well as monitoring water and sediment fluxes. The discussion is fostered by a literature review on selected topics that vary from year to year. Finally, analysis of data collected in the field is performed by groups of students, in preparation of a short technical report.

This course explores the fundamental environmental units: ecosystems. Students use biological and physical science perspectives to examine the geographical distribution of ecosystems and to understand the principles and processes governing their structure and function. Students study the exchange of materials and energy between biotic and abiotic ecosystem components, focusing on water and carbon cycles. Students apply biogeoscience perspectives when interpreting how ecosystems change in response to internal system processes, environmental change, natural disturbance events and human activities.

This course introduces students to the Earth, to its environmental systems, and to the ways in which these systems operate and change both spatially and temporally, producing distinctive physical geographies. Topics include: the history of physical geography; the theory of plate tectonics and the rock cycle; and the atmosphere, the hydrological cycle, glacial, fluvial, and coastal systems.
 

 In this course, students examine the contributions of geographers to the theorizing and study of migration. Taking a main focus on Britain and our former colonies to understand migration patterns and processes, there are options to investigate other examples of global migration across the course and assessment. To critically engage with the geographies of migration students draw on theories of post-colonialism and anti-racism strategies, with reflection on ethnicity and religion, and reflect on the important contributions of feminist and intersectional approaches. For instance the course considers the interconnections between areas of Pakistan and Manchester in the textile and garment industry, that continue today. In the second half of the course students deepen their knowledge of key concepts of transnationalism, mobilities, encounter, integration, assimilation, statelessness, citizenship and belonging.  

This course complicates our understanding of North American cities.  It takes us through the histories and geographies of the emergence of the first North American cities.  Both Canada and the US are examples of settler colonialism – where European settlers evicted through violence those on whose land the two nation’s cities were built.  And the labor of slaves from inside and outside of Canada and the US was used to build these cities. The  course builds upon critical understandings of the two nations and their cities. It examines the changing ways in which North American cities have been governed and their changing position in American and Canadian societies, particularly with the emergence of suburbanization from the late 1940s and the gentrification-driven-renaissance of some of their downtown from the late 1980s. 

This course is part of the Laurea Magistrale program. The course is intended for advanced level students only. Enrollment is by consent of the instructor. This course examines the development and distribution of the diversity of life on Earth, with a special emphasis on plants. The course explores the spatial scaling of biodiversity, the role of biogeography, and the different levels of assembly organization, from the local to the global scales. Students shall become acquainted with methods for the measurement of biodiversity and its partitioning across scales, as well as the role of biodiversity for ecosystem functioning and stability and relations between biodiversity and climate. The course studies the use of biogeographical and macroecological theories and methods to understand the present strategies for biodiversity conservation. Students gain the capacity to investigate natural systems by means of data collection and analyses and preparation of a written report. The course discusses topics including: an introduction and historical overview; patterns of species distribution and range size; historical biogeography; ecological biogeography; spatial patterns of biodiversity in relation to latitude, climate, and area; relation between energy, productivity, and biodiversity; taxonomic and functional measures of biodiversity; data sources in biogeography and macroecology; partitioning of biodiversity in space and time; island biogeography; and human impacts on biomes and ecosystems; conservation biogeography.

This course explores urban policy issues through a focus on the intersections between population, housing, and neighborhood dynamics across the Global North. The course considers a number of intriguing policy relevant questions about residential geographies. These include but are not limited to: Why do people live where they do? How does the housing system shape how people move through, experience, and use urban space? What makes urban populations change over time, how can we measure and perhaps influence these dynamics, and how useful are terms such as segregation or gentrification for describing processes of neighborhood change? How is housing provided and regulated in different contexts, and what does this mean for cities and for people's lives?

This is an interdisciplinary course tackling questions of interest to political science, geography, environment, engineering, and anthropology. Infrastructure spans time and space, fills our daily lives but is said to be mostly invisible, especially when it works well. The course starts with a look at theories of infrastructure and its relation to power before turning to in-depth case study-driven work on roads, shipping and logistics, water and sanitation, failed infrastructures, and even the notion of "evil" infrastructure. Each of the thematic units develops skills and knowledge related to project management, public procurement and tendering, infrastructural financing in the developing world, decarbonization, debates on surveillance, as well as the geopolitical aspect of infrastructure seen in policies such as China’s Belt and Road Initiative.

Geography increasingly relies on empirical data to understand social and environmental phenomena. This course builds a foundation for applied data analysis, emphasizing the fundamental data science tasks of wrangling, visualization, and analysis. Each of these tasks requires an understanding of quantitative approaches to generate and evaluate hypotheses. The course also covers essential concepts in statistics including expectation, hypothesis testing, and regression. By the end of the course, students will have a strong foundation to analyze multivariate data and communicate findings using open-source programming tools.

This course is part of the Laurea Magistrale program. The course is intended for advanced level students only. Enrollment is by consent of the instructor. The course examines the history and the contemporary use of Geopolitics in order to critically examine the political geographies of European imperialism, cold war, and post-cold war geopolitics, and the contemporary geopolitical landscapes. In particular, questions of borders, migrations, and biopolitics are discussed in relation to the making of the European Self and its associated geographies. The postcolonial and the decolonial are also presented by taking into consideration a geographical perspective.