1. Handbook
  2. Graduate Diploma in Science
  3. Informal Specialisation
  4. Human Geography

Human Geography

Graduate Diploma in ScienceInformal specialisationYear: 2024

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Overview

A specialisation in Human Geography will allow students to investigate and understand the dynamic relationships between societies and environments. Human Geography will study human actions and activities from the local scale to the global scale and it will encompass different ways of knowing - those of science and those of the humanities and social sciences - in its approach to the world’s urgent problems and injustices. As such, it is a globally-minded discipline that seeks to understand the complex connections between people and place in order to work towards a more equitable world.

Geography is a field-based discipline, enabling students to gain hands-on research experience via practical laboratory classes, field trips, and group project work, whilst also being provided opportunities to develop critical intellectual skills, transferable professional skills, a sense of public responsibility and higher research degree capacities.

Completion of the Graduate Diploma with a specialisation in Human Geography will allow students to enter careers in the following areas: research institutions, teaching, environmental sciences, resource management and planning, environmental consultancies, industry and all levels of government. The Graduate Diploma (Human Geography specialisation) also provides a pathway into the Master of Geography.

Intended learning outcomes

Upon completion of this specialisation, students should be able to:

  • Demonstrate a broad knowledge of geography's major concepts, theoretical perspectives and key debates, past and present;
  • Explain the dynamic and complex connections between people, place and environments, across a variety of scales;
  • Apply problem solving and research skills to enable the investigation of social and environmental processes and problems;
  • Distinguish different ways of knowing, and different ways of doing research;
  • Formulate and answer questions about the dynamic and complex connections between people, place and environments in order to work towards a more equitable world;
  • Act as informed and critically discerning participants in providing interpretations of, and solutions to, social and environmental problems;
  • Describe the relationship between diverse forms of geographical knowledge and the social, historical and cultural contexts that produced them;
  • Employ knowledge and skills acquired in field classes to their future life and work;
  • Display professional values and work effectively with people from diverse cultures and backgrounds;
  • Communicate geographical theories and concepts effectively to professional and lay audiences and in oral and written formats;
  • Demonstrate the capacity for critical thought, self and peer assessment, and learning and organisational skills in both independent and group work; and
  • Assess ethical problems and possible solutions in geographical research and professional geographical practice.

Last updated: 2 May 2024