| Unit name | Study and Field Skills in Cultural and Historical Geography |
|---|---|
| Unit code | GEOG20026 |
| Credit points | 20 |
| Level of study | I/5 |
| Teaching block(s) |
Teaching Block 2 (weeks 13 - 24) |
| Unit director | Dr. Joe Gerlach |
| Open unit status | Not open |
| Units you must take before you take this one (pre-requisite units) |
All core units in Y1 BSc Geography |
| Units you must take alongside this one (co-requisite units) |
GEOG20012 Qualitative Research Methods in Human Geography and GEOG25110 Philosophy, Social Theory and Geography |
| Units you may not take alongside this one |
None |
| School/department | School of Geographical Sciences |
| Faculty | Faculty of Science |
Why Is this Unit Important?
This fieldwork-led unit is focused on developing and advancing critical research skills in cultural, social, and political geography. Centered on a multi-sited trip to the Netherlands, the unit is designed to build confidence and accuracy in developing conceptually informed and experimental research methodologies. In so doing, students will examine the complex relations between theory and fieldwork, while at the same time reflecting on the ethics and responsibilities entailed in the design and practice of geographical research. The unit is therefore essential in building student aptitude and capacity in theoretically rigorous research design in advance of pursuing dissertation research in their final year.
How does this unit fit into your programme of study?
Thematically, the fieldtrip is centered on the notion of ‘post-humanism’; a set of innovative conceptual materials and debates studied across a number of cognate units in Year 2 and Year 3. Pivoting on post-humanist philosophies and concepts (in part influenced by the Dutch philosopher, Benedict Spinoza, studied in GEOG25110 Philosophy, Social Theory and Geography), the trip will encourage and enable students to consider the contemporary place and role of ‘the human’ in a range of different contexts: philosophical, ecological, social, geopolitical.
Empirically, the fieldwork will be nomadic; multi-sited across the Netherlands, and will enable students to learn and develop skills in methods and techniques that are central to qualitative human geography. In turn, this unit will equip students with the knowledge and research-design skills required to plan and compose effective dissertations in their final year. To that end, this unit advances the training and aptitudes developed in GEOG20012 Qualitative Research Methods in Human Geography, whilst harnessing and developing conceptual material from the foundational Y1 unit, GEOG10002 Geographical History, Thought and Practices. In addition to preparing students to undertake cultural and social geographical research at dissertation level (GEOG30001), this unit is also provides a conceptual precursor to a number of final year units, namely, GEOG30027 Geographies of Fashion and Style, GEOG30029 Critical Political Ecologies of Extraction and Conservation, GEOG30030 Geographies of the Bioeconomy and GEOG30032 Multispecies Geographies: Travels with Donna Haraway.
An overview of content
The 5/6 day fieldtrip will be preceded by 2 x 2hr briefing sessions convened in the preceding term.
Briefing 1: Introduction – Anticipating the Field | practicalities, logistics, assessment preview (Unit Convenor).
Briefing 2: Focus on Activities | snapshot seminars on each of the scheduled fieldwork activities (Unit Convenor and Activity Leaders).
Fieldtrip: 5-6 days, Duration and Dates TBC but normally in after the Easter vacation period
Exemplar activities:
Ethical Dispositions | ‘Looking for Spinoza’
0.5 - 1-day research visit to The Hague. Geohistorical walking tour of Spinoza’s Hague, including a student-led seminar convened in Spinozahuis museum (Spinoza’s final place of residence). Thematic leads: how to trace the genealogy of ideas, how to mobilise ideas in research, what role does affect play in fieldwork, how to think of and work with ethics in geographical research, to what extent does Spinoza’s thinking open the possibility of ‘the post-human?’.
Fashioning the Future |
Research trip to Fashion for Good Museum, Amsterdam, https://fashionforgood.com/museum/
Imagining the City
Research trip to Rotterdam, focused on the city’s ‘cultural strategy’ and appeal to ‘creativity’. Proposed activity: psychogeography?
Urban Ecologies | A ‘moss-eye’ perspective on Amsterdam
1 day research trip and activity based in Amsterdam. Facilitated visit to the Amsterdam Institute for Advanced Metropolitan Solutions to hear from researchers experimenting with moss-covered walls as a means of helping the city to adapt to climate change and tackle air pollution. Students to embark on a subsequent ‘moss walk’ activity to reflect on the potentials of collective, embodied methods for rethinking urban ecologies from a more-than-human perspective.
Geopolitical Spaces
Researching geographies of peace, geopolitics of international law and international relations: group trip to the International Criminal Court, The Hague.
Intercalated Exchange
Guest lecture/seminar in Leiden or Utrecht (c.f. Braidotti-linked scholars in Utrecht/Groningen).
How will students, personally, be different as a result of the unit
The unit will disabuse student preconceptions about the ostensible relations between ‘theory’ and ‘practice’. Moreover, in assaying the complex entanglements between theory and practice in the context of ‘doing fieldwork’, students will become sensitised differently and otherwise to the matter and mattering of ethics. This unit will advance a nuanced and expanded concept of ethics and its role in the course of research design. The unit will also encourage students to re-consider their own disposition (individual and collective) to ‘the field’ and will prompt them to examine and critique some of the neo-colonial impulses that continue to underscore fieldwork in disciplinary geography. Notwithstanding these critiques, the unit will nonetheless re-affirm fieldwork as crucial to a contemporary geography that is speculative, relational, processual, and transformational.
Learning outcomes
Upon successful completion of this unit, students will be able to:
Students will be exposed to and engaged in a range of different learning-based activities and experiments. Crucially, students will be encouraged to develop their own research design and methodologies. To that end, whilst the activities are underscored by conceptual commitments in cultural geography and social theory (with attendant reading to be undertaken pre-trip), the majority of the learning will take place via experimental field methods and classic methods drawn from the canon of the social sciences. Exemplar activities will include conceptual mapping, psychogeographical drifts, participant observation, conceptual dialoguing, and student-led field seminars. Student-centred, interactive, and conceptually-based modes of learning are deployed in this instance precisely to build student capacity and confidence in cultivating conceptually-informed empirical work ahead of embarking on their final year dissertations.
Tasks which help you learn and prepare you for summative tasks (formative):
The individual fieldwork component activities are assessed only by summative means (see below).
Tasks which count towards your unit mark (summative):
This unit is assessed entirely through coursework, specifically, via the design and composition of a fieldwork report, rated at 100% assessment weighting. The Fieldwork report is written during the course of the fieldwork period and submitted at the conclusion of the trip. Whilst fieldwork activities are undertaken in a group context, the design and composition of the fieldwork report is undertaken on an individual basis.
When assessment does not go to plan
If submission of fieldwork report is not feasible or possible, the alternative form of assessment will be one of two options, dependent on student attendance and participation in fieldtrip.
a) Attended fieldtrip but did not submit summative work: assignment will be composition of extended fieldwork reflection, responding to set question on research skills and ethics.
b) Did not attend fieldtrip: assignment will consist of extended essay responding to one of three set questions relating to research skills, concepts, and ethics.
If this unit has a Resource List, you will normally find a link to it in the Blackboard area for the unit. Sometimes there will be a separate link for each weekly topic.
If you are unable to access a list through Blackboard, you can also find it via the Resource Lists homepage. Search for the list by the unit name or code (e.g. GEOG20026).
How much time the unit requires
Each credit equates to 10 hours of total student input. For example a 20 credit unit will take you 200 hours
of study to complete. Your total learning time is made up of contact time, directed learning tasks,
independent learning and assessment activity.
See the Faculty workload statement relating to this unit for more information.
Assessment
The Board of Examiners will consider all cases where students have failed or not completed the assessments required for credit.
The Board considers each student's outcomes across all the units which contribute to each year's programme of study. If you have self-certificated your absence from an
assessment, you will normally be required to complete it the next time it runs (this is usually in the next assessment period).
The Board of Examiners will take into account any extenuating circumstances and operates
within the Regulations and Code of Practice for Taught Programmes.
