Geography - U6UGEOGS

By using the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) as a starting point, the module sets out to demonstrate how geographers are engaging with and tackling real world issues. The module will draw on research from both human and physical geographers to consider the various challenges the discipline seeks to tackle and will investigate the different methods that geographers are using to understand these challenges in depth.

This module introduces you to cultural and historical geography, helping you reflect on the legacies of colonialism, travel and exploration, and the cultural turn in the subdisciplines. Recurring interests include the:

• development of cultural and historical geography as sub-disciplines
• key thematic areas of contemporary cultural and historical geography, including landscape, identity, culture, power and knowledge
• need to decolonise geography, in terms of lived places and the discipline.
• theoretical underpinnings of cultural and historical geography
• links between cultural and historical geography and other fields of enquiry in the humanities and social sciences
• methods and sources used in cultural and historical geographical research, including archives, texts and images, and field study
• work of key figures from the sub-disciplines past and present

This module provides a general introduction to the subject of earth observation. This involves analysing remotely sensed images, typically acquired from instruments on board satellites or aircraft, to investigate spatial phenomena on the Earth's surface.

Example topics include the use of global image data sets to investigate climate change, analysis of satellite sensor imagery to identify wildlife habitats and conservation concerns, and urban land use mapping from detailed aerial photography. Theoretical lectures cover the concepts underpinning remote sensing, including the physical principles determining image creation, fundamental image characteristics, methods of image analysis and uses or applications of earth observation.

There is also a strong practical component to the module, with regular practical exercises on various forms of digital image analysis.

This module will cover the following topics:

• Changing economic geographies of the world economy during the 20th and 21st centuries 
• Global cities, financial geographies and advanced producer services 
• Alternative economies and labour resistance 
• Economic geographies of the Global South
• Economic geographies of forced labour and migration
• Feminist economic geography

 This module considers the nature, causes and impacts of a wide range of geohazards - volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, tsunamis, extreme weather, wildfires and floods - and their consequences on both natural environments and human societies.

The course focuses on patterns in the distribution of organisms in space and time, and theories proposed to explain those patterns. The main themes are listed below. Teaching is via a mixture of lectures and small-group discussions, centred on discussion of current research.  Exemplar topics include:

• Biodiversity patterns
• Island biogeography
• Biodiversity dynamics
• Speciation and extinction
• Evolution

The module offers a comprehensive overview of the sub-field of political geography, including its history, key concepts and recent developments. It also investigates how geographical approaches can help explain the complexities of political life, more broadly defined. To do so, the module draws from self-titled political geography literature, whilst also exploring how political questions have come to animate the wider field of human geography.

This module considers how rivers behave in the landscape and the controls on their morphology and dynamics. Students will gain an understanding of how rivers work, providing fundamental information necessary for environmental management. A combination of lectures, fieldwork and laboratory practicals will allow students to explore how channels are formed and maintained by hydrological, geomorphological and ecological processes at scales from millimetres to kilometres, and seconds to millennia.

This module draws on rural geographical approaches to examine a range of environmental issues affecting rural areas of the Global North. It evaluates different types of human-environment relations and claims to rural space, including those related to food, recreation and ‘nature’, and considers how the impacts of these vary over time and space.

Key topics examined include:

• The development of rural geography as a sub-discipline and its engagement with environmental issues
• Productivist, environmentalist and conservationist thinking, including sustainability and rewilding
• Relations between people, plants and non-human animals in rural areas.
• The rise of agri-environmentalism

This module introduces you to urban geography, including the:

• historical development of urban geography as a sub-discipline
• key thematic areas of contemporary urban geography, including research in the social, economic and cultural and historical geographies of cities
• theoretical underpinnings of approaches to urban geography
• importance of cities in understanding social difference, cultural landscapes and economic development in the Global North and South
• work of key figures from the sub-disciplines past and present

This module introduces basic physical principles of remote sensing, key remote sensing platforms/sensors and their applications within geography and the environment. It covers the theory behind remote sensing, provides hands-on practical experience of remote sensing data processing and insights into recent and cutting-edge uses of remote sensing for responding to socio-environmental challenges facing the globe. Students will gain knowledge of cutting-edge developments in remote sensing via exposure to recent advances from the research community.

 In this module students will examine the complex and shifting relationships between humans and animals, nature, and culture. The module will explore the history of animal geographies and explore the ethical, moral, and cultural issues embedded in human-animal relationships. Working through both historical and contemporary examples the module explores how animals shape and are shaped by our ideas about place and identity.

This module introduces students to a range of approaches and current research themes within critical human geography. Each section of the module emphasises the distinctive contribution made by critical human geography in thinking spatially in relationship to the social sciences, natural sciences, and humanities, and explores how geographers have sought the application and production of their research beyond academia.

This module investigates key linkages between development, livelihood and environmental issues in the global South, with particular reference to competition and conflict over environmental resources. Attention is placed on exploring these from the perspectives of different income, gender and community groups and contrasting their everyday realities with key development concepts and aggregate statistics.

Major themes include:

• linkages between poverty, environmental quality and livelihoods 
• integration of environmental issues into development thinking and practice 
• debates about overpopulation versus overconsumption 
• urban environmental issues, slums and informality
• water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) and livelihoods 
• industry-related environment, development and livelihood issues
• competition and conflict in agrarian environments 
• forest-based development and livelihood issues

The module introduces current practices, technologies and ideas at the forefront of environmental modelling. It covers several major research areas from an environmental modelling perspective and provides hands-on experience of using the types of models that are applied by scientists around the world to aid decision- and policy-making on important issues that affect society and the natural environment.

Food systems and fashion are both influenced by – and go on to influence – social, cultural, political, economic, and environmental contexts. This module will use geographical approaches to help us better understand these contexts in light of ongoing social inequality and environmental exploitation.

Successful and sustainable management of freshwaters is fundamental to human survival; the development of human civilisation is inextricably linked to our changing management of freshwater resources. This module considers human attempts to manage and restore freshwater environments. It considers changes in the fluvial system that occur in response to river management and engineering and examines approaches to restoring the natural functions of rivers that have been heavily degraded by human impacts. The module examines some of the main stressors on freshwaters, and approaches for their management.  

This module explores the economic geographies of money and of contemporary processes of financialisation. Competing theories of money, and the changing landscapes of finance and the financial services industry are explored at a variety of spatial scales.

Spaces examined include the global financial system, the UK retail financial market, the City of London and the emergence of local currency systems. More specifically, the following core topics are covered:

• Financial crisis
• The history and theory of money
• Financial services and financial intermediation
• Globalisation and the international financial system
• The City of London as international financial centre
• Landscapes of retail financial services
• Alternative and imagined landscapes of money

The module covers the following:

• A review of modern climate systems and forcings
• Climate modelling, projections of future climate change and their uncertainty
• Controversies around climate change, the argument between believers and sceptics and the ways in which climate change is communicated to and perceived by the public 
• The impact of climate change on the world's physical and built environments, water and food resources, and human health
• Mitigation and adaptation to future climate change including the role played by policy markers and NGOs

Grounded in the sub-discipline of health geography, and drawing on relevant interdisciplinary perspectives and critical social theories, this module explores the relationships between health and place. A range of historical and contemporary examples are used to consider how health is constructed at various scales and how health inequities are produced. Material emphasizes critical conceptual and empirical work that advances understandings of health as socially and contextually situated, in counterpoint to approaches that see health as largely individually determined by lifestyle ‘choices.'

The module brings together cultural and political geography to examine the connections of politics, culture and landscape. The focus is on England, where landscape has long been central to questions of power and identity, whether at local, regional, national, international or imperial scales. Relations of power shape landscapes, and the identities of those who inhabit them and move through them. From the agricultural and industrial ‘revolutions’ and the empire of trade in the 18th century, down to the political and cultural upheavals of the 21st century, landscape has played a key role in shaping national identity, in England as elsewhere.

The module traces the history of landscape, culture and politics in England, and shows how legacies of the past shape debates today. From political disputes over the UK’s relationship to Europe, to anxieties over our relationship to land and environment, to the ways in which legacies of empire and slavery inform landscape and recast English identity, the module shows how cultural, historical and political geography helps to make sense of a transforming world.

You will choose from one field course to experience geographical fieldwork in a research environment. Field courses include:

• European Urban Geographies (Germany): providing an understanding of the evolution, and socio-economic, political, and cultural dynamics of the city of Berlin
• European Landscapes (Italy): examining the principles of landscape history and historical ecology in Liguria
• Living with climate change in the Yucatan (Mexico): using the lowlands of the Yucatan peninsula to explore the relationship between climate, environment and society exploiting the region's archaeological record of the Maya culture
• River Management and Restoration (USA): examining the river processes and dynamics within the context of the post-1980 eruption landscape of Mt St Helens

Please be aware that to take some field courses, you will be required to have taken previous modules. Requisites are explained when you choose your modules.

Tropical environments are some of the most important ecosystems on the planet. Holding over 75% of global biodiversity, their forests contribute to climate change mitigation and they provide resources that both directly and indirectly support millions of people. As a result of increasing human exploration and activity, these ecosystems are increasingly being lost or degraded, polluted, overexploited, and invaded by non-native species, which permanently alters their biodiversity and their ecosystem functioning and processes often with global consequences. This module will explore the importance of tropical terrestrial and aquatic environments in the earth’s system as well as the threats and debates that may determine their future.