Geography

This course examines the distribution of land and people across Latin America in the context of the continent's natural geography. It explores the impact of the location of major cities, industrialization, urbanization, rural development, social inequality, and globalization. The course pays special attention to the possibility of the diplomatic and economic integration of the Latin American world. Methodologies are interdisciplinary, with concepts and techniques drawn from sociology, geography, anthropology, and history.

This course develops and encourages inclusive, cross-disciplinary debate surrounding the physical and human dimensions that characterize the relationship between people and resources. Students develop (1) an understanding of the human and physical characteristics that shape the relationships between people and resources; (2) analytical skills to assess these relationships; and (3) an awareness of the importance of a geographical approach to the study of the relationship between people and their resources.

This course takes the ubiquity and diversity of football as an entry point for critical examination of issues of geography and human culture at a range of scales from the most intensely local and embodied, to globe-spanning networks. 

This course focuses on the development of ‘modern’ London (c.1800 to the present day) to explore a set of wider intellectual issues about the nature of cities and urban ways of life. It takes an interdisciplinary perspective drawing upon a range of and scholarship –including social and cultural history, art history, geography, and sociology –central to the broad field of urban studies. Three sets of interrelated themes provide a theoretical focus: modernity and the city; landscapes of power and inequality; and culture, identity and urban space. The three main sections of the course deal with key periods of in the history of modern London. The first part of the course, London: Capital of Modernity, examines the ways in which London became a ‘modern’ city in the 19th Century. The second part of the course, The Challenge of Modernity: London in the Twentieth Century, considers London in the turbulent decades of the early 20th Century and the efforts to repair bomb damaged London and the comprehensive reconstruction of some parts of the city after World War Two, The third part of the course, Global London: Transforming Society and Space,  studies in depth some of the major features of the city in the later 20th and early 21st Centuries, focusing on London’s global city characteristics and considers intellectual debates about contemporary society and culture in an urban context.

This course offers an introduction to the study of urban geography. The course discusses the identification of socio-spatial developments in urban areas, in particular those that are related to ongoing economic restructuring, as well as the concept of “urban landscape” which reflects the historical evolution and current developments of a wide range of social-cultural phenomena. The course examines topics including socio-spatial developments in urban areas; the interpretation of these developments by placing them in a relevant economic, political, and socio-cultural context; potential explanations for varying spatial developments; spatial behavior of individuals and households; and the identification and analysis of characteristics of areas and the effects of these characteristics on the behavior of the residents and other users. The course consists of lectures, student presentations, and discussions. Students participate in two field trips, group research, and the creation of a walking tour in Utrecht. The course requires the completion of the equivalent of an Introduction to Human Geography course as a prerequisite.

This course examines empire-building, colonialism, and settler militarism across the Pacific world. It covers how the everyday work of imperialism and colonialism across the region has always been grounded in the geographical management of racialized and gendered bodies, transnational circulations, andintimate encounters, paying special attention to the linkages between the various US, British, and Japanese imperial projects that shaped and transformed the geographies of everyday life across the Pacific. It also consider how the story of imperialism in the Pacific is not only a story of power and violence, but also one of revolution, liberation, and collective struggle.

The course examines the global history of migration and experiences of migration in the past. The first part of the course explores the reasons for individual and group migration, exploring the demographic context and impact of geographical mobility across different periods, and identifying different types of migration. Taking a long view of the history of migration, the course highlights the way shifting push and pull factors have shaped patterns of mobility in the past. With this demographic context in mind, the second part of the course examines migrant experiences since 1800 in more detail, considering how migration has been differentiated by class, race, gender, and age. By critically examining the sources, students recover migrant experience and consider both the subjective experience of migration and the ways in which migrant experiences have influenced national identities.

Urban geoscience encompasses the geological aspects of the built environment in the context of construction materials and the underlying bedrock that affects the stability of built structures. In London, the relevance of these aspects are evident. This course introduces students to critical aspects of urban geoscience related to suitability of building materials and construction sites, underground water resource, its contamination and fluctuation and, scope of urban mining using London as an example. The concepts learnt must then be applied to any other expanding city in the world in the same contexts of construction and water resources, maximizing resource recovery, and recycling from urban wastes.