Applied Human Geography

Program Overview

The Human Geography program at this university focuses on the intersection of human activities and the environment, addressing challenges such as inequality and climate change. Students develop critical, technical, and communication skills through coursework, data analysis, and real-world experiences. The program offers diverse career opportunities in policy, data analytics, and community development sectors.

Program Outline

Degree Overview:

Creating sustainable and vibrant communities and economies are key challenges facing our world, particularly in the context of rising inequality and significant global environmental change. Human Geography - the study of how historical, economic, political, demographic, social and environmental processes intersect to shape life in different places – is uniquely positioned to address these major challenges. In this course, you will gain a comprehensive understanding of the complex, interwoven processes shaping human activity in cities and regions at a range of spatial scales from the global to the local. You’ll also develop critical, technical, and communicative skills to address major human and environmental policy challenges. Analysis of processes of multi-scalar urbanisation, economic transition in regional areas, population change, and adaptation to climate change will be supported by extensive experience in data collection, analysis and interpretation, including the use of Geographic Information Systems and remotely sensed data. The unique focus on intersecting processes within Human Geography as a discipline, along with a focus on applied, field-based learning, technical and critical skill development (for example in spatial data analysis), and addressing real-world policy problems provides a diverse range of career opportunities for course graduates.

Popular Combinations:

• Political Science and International Relations
• Geographical Sciences
• Public Health
• Landscape Architecture
It is strongly recommended that students take their units in the sequence outlined below. In particular, GEOG2202 should be taken in second year.

Level 1

• Core:
• GEOG1104 Disasters!
(6 points)
• GEOG1107 Human Inequality in the Anthropocene (6 points)

Level 2

• Core:
• GEOG2202 Reading Landscapes: People and Processes (6 points)
• GEOG2203 Regions in Transition (6 points)
• GEOG2206 Population Change: Debates and Controversies (6 points)

Level 3

• Core:
• GEOG3303 Environmental Policy and Planning (6 points)
• GEOG3308 Climate Change: Policy and Practice (6 points)
• GEOG3311 Geographies of Economic Development (6 points)
• Option:
• GEOG3305 Urban Planning and Design (6 points)
• PARL3399 WA Parliamentary Research Program (6 points)

Careers:

• identify the complex interplay of economic, demographic, environmental, social and political processes that influence the spatial organisation of human activities
• deploy core geographical concepts, including spatial and temporal thinking, to creatively address real-world challenges and tasks: from rising inequality, to climate change, to population planning
• apply geographic methods and analytical tools to investigate and interpret urban and regional phenomena
• communicate geographic knowledge to specialist and non-specialist audiences through multiple media
• adopt ethical, self-aware and efficient approaches to autonomous and collaborative work
• Why study this course?

• Teaching excellence –you'll learn from award-winning teachers and world class researchers.
• Skills-focus – you'll graduate with in-demand technical skills in the use of Geographic Information System (GIS) and socio-spatial, economic, and demographic data analytics.
No other geography program in WA offers this kind of in-demand and comprehensive skills training. Students also have the option of undertaking an internship with the McCusker Centre for Citizenship.
• Your degree options:
• This major is offered as a degree-specific, or first, major for these degrees.
It is also offered as a second major in our other bachelor's degrees.
• Bachelor of Arts
• Bachelor of Philosophy