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Department of Geography, University of Canterbury,
Christchurch, New Zealand
The Department of
Geography is located on the
University of Canterbury campus in
Christchurch, New Zealand. Geography encourages students to take a
holistic view of the world and their place in it: it's about
putting knowledge together, rather than taking it apart. It focuses
on the relationships between people, their places and their
environments, and the ways in which these can be made more
sustainable for
the future.
The
Department of Geography at the University of Canterbury is the
oldest Geography department in [New Zealand], founded in 1937. It
was set up by [George Jobberns], who was responsible for attracting
a young Kenneth Coumberland to NZ in 1938. This is described in the
extract from Cumberland's memoir published in the NZ Geographer in
April 2007. It was while at Canterbury that Cumberland wrote his
famous book drawing attention to New Zealand's soil erosion
problem, published in 1944. Cumberland went on to found the
Auckland Geography department in 1946. Other notable geographers at
Canterbury include RJ Johnston (1967-74), Jane Soons (1961-1993
first women geomorphologist of note in Australiasia and a mentor to
women still in the ANZGG) and PJ Perry (1966-91).
The Department
of Geography is housed in extensive purpose-built accommodation,
dating from the mid 1970s. The main, 6 level, block houses graduate
students, a full time academic staff of fourteen, short and long
term visitors, as well as
GIS
and computing labs on the top floor. An allied university research
and teaching centre,
Gateway
Antarctica, occupies the ground floor.
There is also an
adjacent three level lab block, which has teaching rooms, physical
laboratories, a well equipped departmental Geography Library, and
other services such as
cartography, graphics and workshops. Another two
allied university facilities, the
National Centre for
Research on Europe, and the
GeoHealth Laboratory,
are also located in this block.
The
undergraduate curriculum is structured
around four 'pathways', after introductory integrated courses at
100 level each taught by teams of physical and human
geographers.The pathways are:
physical geography;
human geography;
Geographic Information
Systems and Environmental
Remote Sensing, and Resource and
Environmental Management.
Graduate coursework students are spread across a
range of courses in physical and human geography,
GIS,
remote sensing, and in resource assessment
and management. Usually there are between 25 and 30 coursework
students in Geography, with half as many again coming in to take
particular papers from other departments.
Thesis students are either engaged in
Masters
degrees or
PhDs. Currently
there are between 30 and 40 thesis students working in the
department. The
South Island is an ideal laboratory for many
fields of
physical geography, such as
climate, coastal and
alpine studies.
New Zealand, with its history
of experimentation in economic and environmental management, social
relations and land rights, also has some specific human geographies
that repay close research.
Geography has a number of adjunct
fellows, postdoctoral fellows, and a steady stream of visitors, all
of whom add to the intellectual life of the department and work
closely with graduates. The university’s Erskine Fund pays for
three prestige visitors to spend periods of up to a semester with
us each year, and the department also pays for its own visiting
lecturer from overseas for each academic year. In the past several
years such eminent academics as Professor's Peter Haggett, Richard
Peet, Audrey Kobayashi, Tim O'Riordan, Jan Monk, Colin Ballantyne,
and Robin Flowerdew have all spent time teaching and researching in
the department over the past years.
The Department of Geography
at the University of Canterbury is one of the only true Geography
Departments left in the world - it is the only Department of
Geography in Australasia. Most others have been split (with
physical geographers going into Geosciences or Earth Science, and
human geographers going into planning or sociology type schools) or
the geographers have been merged into bigger schools (with
planning, architecture, geology, environmental science etc)
The
Department of Geography has the only significant programme in
health geographies in NZ, with a
Geo-Health lab that
focuses on a range of GIS-supported research areas, in partnership
with the Public Health Intelligence Unit of the Ministry of Health.
References
http://www.geog.canterbury.ac.nz New
Zealand Geographer Volume 63, Issue 1, April 2007
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