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GEG131
Cities
There has never been a more exciting time to study cities. Since antiquity cities have been the site of disproportionate amounts of human production and consumption of all kinds, and within the last generation, they have become the places where most people on Earth live. They are also the places of the most pressing social struggles of our time. Cities afford boundless opportunities, but are also the sites of the most stark inequality on the planet. Partly as a result, cities are sites of social, political, and economic struggle, innovation, creativity and deprivation. For at least the last two hundred years, cities, modernity, globalisation, colonisation, and capitalism have been highly dependent upon each other, and as a result, making sense of cities cannot be separated from questions of cultural transformation, global capital, political upheaval, and technological change. This module will introduce you to these and related issues.
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GEG140H
Project and Methods (Human Geography)
This module aims to provide diverse skills in undertaking research. Students will gain experience in methods of data collection in the field for a geographical research question, analysing and interpreting the data obtained, and understanding the limitations of the work.
In part 1 of this module, students follow a physical or human geography project option, depending on their geography degree specialism:
Part 1: Physical Geography
Students following a physical geography-based degree will look at sea-level change and its impacts on communities and ecosystems. During classroom sessions we will consider the causes of sea-level change and how it is measured. We will undertake local visits to explore the potential impacts of sea level on our locality and on our coastal university. We will consider built-up and rural environments and different mitigation policies that may be used. You will apply a technique of Stakeholder Analysis to consider economic and social impacts of sea-level change.
Part 1: Human Geography
The human geography project focusses on Cities and Photography. Students will investigate the use of photography through three Visual Methodologies: Photo-Documentation, Photo-Elicitation, and Photo-Essays. Students will take part in a photo documentation workshop and group photography fieldwork in Swansea City Centre. They will also complete a photo essay aided by group discussion, to select concept, theme, whether analytical or evocative photographs (or both), and discussion of the links between practice and visual methodologies in literature.
Part 2: Field data collection and critical analysis skills.
Part 2 of this module is common to all geography degree specialisms. Using data collected by yourselves and other undergraduate students for the field sites, you will learn and apply analysis techniques to interpret the datasets, and become aware of sources of uncertainty and limitations of the data, equipment or field techniques. In doing so, we use the field data and build on skills that students developed earlier in the module, collect new datasets and apply statistical analysis techniques that were learnt in the previous semester to your own data.
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GEG140P
Project and Methods (Physical Geography)
This module aims to provide diverse skills in undertaking research. Students will gain experience in methods of data collection in the field for a geographical research question, analysing and interpreting the data obtained, and understanding the limitations of the work.
In part 1 of this module, students follow a physical or human geography project option, depending on their geography degree specialism:
Part 1: Physical Geography
Students following a physical geography-based degree will look at sea-level change and its impacts on communities and ecosystems. During classroom sessions we will consider the causes of sea-level change and how it is measured. We will undertake local visits to explore the potential impacts of sea level on our locality and on our coastal university. We will consider built-up and rural environments and different mitigation policies that may be used. You will apply a technique of Stakeholder Analysis to consider economic and social impacts of sea-level change.
Part 1: Human Geography
The human geography project focusses on Cities and Photography. Students will investigate the use of photography through three Visual Methodologies: Photo-Documentation, Photo-Elicitation, and Photo-Essays. Students will take part in a photo documentation workshop and group photography fieldwork in Swansea City Centre. They will also complete a photo essay aided by group discussion, to select concept, theme, whether analytical or evocative photographs (or both), and discussion of the links between practice and visual methodologies in literature.
Part 2: Field data collection and critical analysis skills.
Part 2 of this module is common to all geography degree specialisms. Using data collected by yourselves and other undergraduate students for the field sites, you will learn and apply analysis techniques to interpret the datasets, and become aware of sources of uncertainty and limitations of the data, equipment or field techniques. In doing so, we use the field data and build on skills that students developed earlier in the module, collect new datasets and apply statistical analysis techniques that were learnt in the previous semester to your own data.
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GEG252V
Geographical Fieldwork skills: Vancouver
The module is concerned with identifying and defining geographical questions within the Vancouver and southern British Columbia context and applying relevant geographical skills, knowledge and techniques to these questions. The general aims are to observe, analyse and achieve an understanding of the varied geographical landscape and inherent features of Vancouver and southern British Columbia. Students taking this module will gain experience in research design, methodologies, data analysis and presentation methods, including seminars, posters and reports. Students taking this field course focus on either the physical or human geography on the region and conduct project work appropriate to their specialism. The module comprises preparatory lectures in Swansea during teaching block 2 and a two-week field course, which typically runs in the last week of teaching block 2 into the first week of the Easter vacation.
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GEG331
Dissertation Report: Geography
The dissertation is an original, substantive and independent research project in an aspect of Geography. The dissertation research project is based on 20 - 25 days of primary research (e.g fieldwork, lab work, archive work) and several months of analysis and write-up. The end result must be less than 10,000 words of text. The dissertation offers you the chance to follow your personal interests and to demonstrate your capabilities as a Geographer. During the course of your dissertation, you will be supported by a peer-led discussion group and a staff supervisor. Lectures and guidance are delivered via this module and peer and staff led Dissertation Support Groups are delivered via GEG332. Participating in Dissertation Support Groups is vital, and is assessed and, in these groups, students will provide constructive criticism to fellow students undertaking related research projects, learning from their research problems and subsequent solutions. This support and supervision is delivered through GEG332, which is a co- requisite.
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GEG332
Dissertation Support: Geography
This module provides structured, student-led peer-group support and academic staff group supervision for students undertaking the 30-credit 'Dissertation Report: Geography' module.
This support and supervision is assessed through the submission of the Dissertation Outline and the Dissertation Support Group Reflection and Attendance Log.
Working within a supervised Student Peer Group, students have the opportunity to provide constructive criticism to fellow students undertaking related research projects, learning from their research problems and subsequent solutions. Group sessions are the main support provision as student¿s work through their Dissertation.
This module complements the 'Dissertation Report: Geography' module, which is a co-requisite.
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GEG352
World Cities
The world's cities are networked together through globalization and consequently demonstrate similar economic, social, cultural, and political characteristics. The module introduces students to a neo-Marxist literature on world and global cities which has attempted to explain that phenomenon by envisioning the global economy as controlled and/or commanded through a few major cities. The step-by-step construction, from 1966 to date, of the neo-Marxist world and global city concepts is detailed, before subsequently introducing students to the world city network, the interlocking world city network model, social network analysis, and a broader quantitative turn in the research field. Finally, the validity of a postcolonial ordinary cities critique of world and global cities is explained and questioned before students are introduced to an alternative poststructuralist inspired approach to understanding cities as networks which not only recasts the conceptual apparatus ¿ boundaries, centrality, network, place, power, scale, space, territory, time ¿ and empirical approach of urban studies, but also effectively critiques and overturns the neo-Marxist world city, global city, interlocking and SNA world city network concepts, to understand cities not only as connected, but as always striving to prohibit and disguise their unbinding and destabilization as networked assemblages.
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GEGM15
Qualitative Research Methods
This is a ¿hands on¿ module concerned specifically with how to effectively and reflectively ¿do¿ qualitative methods in the social sciences. It complements and builds on similar modules in quantitative approaches and epistemological and ontological frameworks such as CRM02, CRM03, POM32 and EDM18.
After two initial lectures situating the contested and shifting notion of ¿the field¿ and relationships between theory and practice, students will engage in a series of hands-on, practical workshops in specific methods.
Workshops will be of 3 hours duration each and will include a theoretical element, a practice element and a reflection element. Following each workshop students will be asked to complete a short, 800-word reflection on the applicability of the research method to their discipline and set of research questions. Students will be encouraged in their reflections to consider both the practical and academic aspects of ¿doing¿ each method. The completed reflective portfolio will be handed in at the end of the course for marking. The methods will vary depending on the staff complement teaching the module from year to year, but are very likely to include:
¿ Ethnographic methods and observation
¿ Archival research, oral history and biographical methods.
¿ Organisational research and interviewing elite actors
¿ Questionnaires, interviews and focus groups
¿ Mobile methods
¿ Participatory action research
¿ Textual and online methods.
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GEGM29
Crisis and Global Change
'Crisis and Global Change' is a compulsory module for the MSc in Society, Environment and Global Change.
One part of this module is designed to provide an advanced introduction to key geographical concepts and frameworks for addressing global crises. This includes asking how we approach and understand 'crisis'? How in particular do we develop critical approaches for understanding and evaluating different crises? And at what scale are different crises addressed, by governments as well as various institutions and organisations? We will address how crises impact people and place unevenly, how crises for some are opportunities for others, what moments of crisis reveal about broader dynamics of power, identity, inequality and violence, and finally how crises also present moments for thinking about change in the world around us.
The second part of the module is designed to allow students to explore particular urgent issues and debates in more depth. These will change in any given year, and will draw on staff's research expertise. It will include a focus on topics such as: The Pathologies of Global Cities; Financial and Economic Crises and Resilience; the Global Politics of Nationalism; Migration, Race, Memory and Culture; Imagining Climate Change; and Sustainability and the Politics of Place. These topical lectures will give students an opportunity to develop a deeper understanding of some global crises, and to consider how crises interconnect.
The module will conclude by considering questions about how we respond to crises, looking at the role of cities, communities, artists, civil society and social movements in engaging social change.
Overall the module is designed so that students develop advanced frameworks for approaching and understanding the geographies of global crises, and for considering how crises interconnect and impact people and place differently. By the end of the module, students will be able to connect theoretical frameworks with discussion of urgent global issues, and feel confident that they have a wide-ranging understanding of how to address debates around crisis and global change.
