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Human Geography
Graduate Certificate in ScienceInformal specialisationYear: 2025
Human Geography
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 Certificate 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 Certificate (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;
- Assess ethical problems and possible solutions in geographical research and professional geographical practice.
Last updated: 7 November 2024
Structure
62.5 credit points
Completion of 62.5 points of study
- 50 points of study at level 3
- 12.5 points of study at level 9
Subject Options
Subject prerequisites: Details of stream specific requirements can be found at the Graduate Certificate in Science entry and participation requirements page.
Level 3
Students must select 50 points of level 3 subjects.
Students must select four of the following:
Code | Name | Study period | Credit Points |
---|---|---|---|
GEOG30001 | Coastal Landforms and Processes | Semester 1 (On Campus - Parkville) |
12.5 |
GEOG30007 | China Field Class | Not available in 2025 | 25 |
GEOG30019 | Sustainable Development | Semester 1 (On Campus - Parkville) |
12.5 |
GEOG30021 | The Disaster Resilient City | Semester 2 (On Campus - Parkville) |
12.5 |
GEOG30022 | Riverine Landscapes: Hydrology & Ecology | No longer available | |
GEOG30023 | Global Climate Change in Context | February (On Campus - Parkville) |
12.5 |
GEOG30024 | Africa: Environment, Development, People | Semester 2 (On Campus - Parkville) |
12.5 |
GEOG30026 | East Timor Field Class | March (Off Campus) |
12.5 |
GEOG30027 | Local Sites, Global Connections | Semester 2 (On Campus - Parkville) |
12.5 |
GEOG30028 | Mobile Worlds | July (On Campus - Parkville) |
12.5 |
GEOG30029 | Geographies of Migration | Semester 1 (On Campus - Parkville) |
12.5 |
GEOG30030 | Spatial Modelling for Nature and People | November (On Campus - Parkville) |
12.5 |
GEOG30031 | Law Space: Geographies of Justice | Not available in 2025 | 12.5 |
GEOG30032 | Risk Management and Citizen Science | No longer available | |
GEOG30033 | Arid Australia Field Class | Not available in 2025 | 12.5 |
Level 9
Plus 12.5 points of level 9 subjects selected from listed discipline subjects in the Master of Geography program.
Last updated: 7 November 2024