Geography

Students learn about the weather and climate, geology, vegetation, and animal life. (wild and domestic). They attend lectures about the geology of Iceland and go on fieldtrips to see volcanoes, hotsprings, and lava, and study the geography of the country. They go birdwatching, to the seashore and to a woody hill. Field trips (1-6 hours) are an important part of the course. Environmental problems and nature conservation in Iceland are discussed.

The course focuses on the changes which occurred in urban communities in connections with the birth of universities that drew students from a broad geographical territory and employed a plurality of masters. The course discusses topics including: the meaning of urban communities through the transformations that have taken place over time; comparative view between Italian and European cities through specific examples; how to make use of satellite images of urban settlements to identify the phases of their development from Ancient times to the present day; and recognize the reasons for the formation of the cultural identity of Europe and the connective tissue of which cities are an important part.

Volcanic eruptions can influence earth systems on a number of scales, from individual landforms to landscape development and global climatic change. Volcanic hazards can have global-scale social impacts and directly threaten the approximately 800 million people that live within 100 km of an active volcano. This course provides students with knowledge about volcanic environments, the hazards they pose on many scales, and potential benefits to societies.

This course introduces contemporary debates in population from a geographical perspective. It focuses on the ways that geography contributes to, and is reinforced, in the processes and meanings of life and death. Besides examining historical and contemporary population trends and demographic transitions, this course also investigates the discourses and politics of fertility and women's bodies, migration and transnational life, disease and health-care, and ageing, death and dying. The course provides understanding of contemporary population problems and solutions, and analyzes how these influence policies and everyday lives.

This course introduces contemporary geography, involving processes and problems, socio-economic and environmental issues/processes shaping our world, and the geographical perspectives needed to understand them better. Starting with how geographers view the world, the course offers a spatial lens to analyze such issues as climate change, urban flooding, human-environment relations, challenges of migration, economic production and consumption, and so forth. Each lecture discuss contemporary scenarios that students are familiar with alongside geographical analyses of and approaches to the issues. Students are also exposed to field work techniques, mapping skills and strategies of project management in small group discussions and project assignments.

This course takes a geographical approach to some of the world’s most complex moral issues. It gives students the chance to explore a range of moral questions from a geographical perspective. Arguably a geographical perspective, which embraces knowledge from other disciplines and not only its own, is well-placed to "join the dots" and grapple with the complexity of the world as it is, not how we want it to be. It explores these complex issues using a multi-scalar, place-sensitive approach, embracing not only key geographical thinkers, but also philosophers, political scientists, sociologists, psychologists, and economists. 

This course teaches remote sensing which is the use of aerial photographs to collect information about landscapes and the environment, with a focus on how to analyze aerial photographs. By doing so, students detect a wide range of features depending on the film emulsion used, e.g., black and white, normal color, and infrared. The course covers the theoretical aspects of aerial photography and includes several opportunities to interpret and handle different types of non-digital image information from landscapes and environments in different parts of the world.

This course explores the complex relationships between development, poverty, and the environment. It covers a range of important natural resource and environmental issues, and provides students with the necessary tools to critically evaluate how these issues have been addressed by different stakeholders and at different levels of governance. Using concepts and analytical tools grounded in political ecology and critical development studies, the course examines several topics, including the politics of sustainable development, environmental governance and tenure, and critical resource issues.

Practical work with standard software for geographical information systems (e.g. ArcGIS Pro): architecture, components, and functionality, principles of thematic modelling (thematic layers, object classes, etc.), geographical data models and data structures, spatial and topological relations, data acquisition and digitization, methods for geospatial analysis, cartographic theory, elements and principles of cartographic visualization, spatial reference systems and map projections, map design, symbolization, topographic and thematic maps, cartographic information systems, cartographic abstraction and generalization, multimedia cartography, spatial decision support systems, multi-criteria decision analysis.

Environmental questions have been at the heart of Geography's disciplinary identity for the last century or more. The course introduces some of the questions that geographers have sought to tackle, at the same time as drawing out some of the key issues for environmental politics and policy.  How we make sense of nature matters not only for the kind of environment we want to be a part of, but also for our sense of the political possibilities within the world.  Articulating a position within such debates has been the central task of society-environment geographers for much of the discipline's existence and is the focus in this series of lectures.