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

Integrated Geography

Graduate Diploma in ScienceInformal specialisationYear: 2026

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Overview

A specialisation in Integrated Geography will provide students with skills and conceptual frameworks about the processes that shape the world around us. Students will investigate and seek to understand the dynamic relationships between societies and environments, why these relationships are the way they are, how and why they are changing, and how and why their characteristics vary over time and space. Integrated Geography combines elements of physical and human geography and 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 Integrated 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 (Integrated 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, discipline areas, theoretical perspectives and key debates, both past and present;
  • Distinguish different ways of knowing, and of doing research, to develop skills to critically investigate and understand the dynamic and complex connections between people, place and/or environments, across a variety of scales;
  • Act as informed and critically discerning participants in providing interpretations of, and solutions to, social and/or environmental problems in order to work towards a more equitable world;
  • Describe the relationship between diverse forms of geographical knowledge and the social, historical and cultural contexts that produced them;
  • 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;
  • Employ knowledge and discipline-specific skills acquired in field classes to their future life and work;
  • Discern that implementing solutions to physical environmental problems requires an understanding of science within the context of current politics, planning and societal diversity.

Last updated: 6 November 2025