Course overview

As a human geography student you will be engaging with some of the major challenges that face human society in the twenty-first century. You will be studying the environmental, economic, political, social and cultural processes that impact on all our lives. You will learn about other cultures, understanding how we live through the interconnectedness of the global and the local, how we attempt to manage, support and conserve our environment and how our everyday lives serve to construct, maintain and develop global systems of wealth and disadvantage. Ultimately, you will begin to understand your own place in this world and develop the kind of skills and abilities that employers increasingly demand.

Human geography is about understanding how space and place shape the economic, social, cultural and political processes that influence our lives. These processes, whether they occur at a very local level or on a global scale affect the lives and life chances of every one of us alive today and in the future. They affect who has what, where, and why; they are responsible for the major inequalities that present an urgent challenge to human societies, wherever they might be located. These are the issues and the central subject matter of the BA (Hons) Human Geography degree at Portsmouth.

Course content

Year one

In the first year of your studies, you will be introduced to the breadth of human geography and we will help you acquire the necessary academic expertise such as communication, reading and bibliographic skills. In our Geographical Information Systems (GIS) units, you will also receive exposure to the application of information technology to geographical study and data presentation.

Fieldwork units will enable you to engage in the ‘real world’ that you are learning about in your class-based units. You will study some of the most pressing environmental issues that human societies face today. Your other core courses in the Foundations of Human Geography and Population, Resources and Environment provide the basis for your later option choices.

Year two

In your second year, you will be able to choose subjects where you have developed an interest. You may continue your interests in environmental issues and management, urban geography, social geography, geographies of development and the developing world, historical geography and GIS. Option choices include:

• Social and Cultural Geography: Changing Cities
• Geographies of Development
• Spatial Data Acquisition
• Introduction to Historical Geography
• Creating Regions and Managing Change
• North American City
• Social Geography: Geographies of Well-Being
• Geographical Data Modelling

You will also take an overseas field class, providing you with the opportunity to develop your knowledge and understanding of other places and environments. Recent venues have included Barcelona, Malta, Berlin and Zanzibar. Each trip has a distinct flavour and your location will depend upon your disciplinary interests.

Year three

In your final year, we offer a number of options that are more specialised. You may for example study the following units:

• Geographies of Health
• Rural Geographies
• Cultural Geography
• Workplace Geographies
• Europe in Transition
• The Historical and Regional Economic Development of the USA
• Geographical Information Science
• Environmental Management

You will also complete a dissertation during this year that reflects your particular interests and draws upon your skills and abilities gained throughout your studies.

Teaching and assessment

Throughout your time with us, we will provide you with the support, enthusiasm and encouragement that you will need to reach your goals. You will engage in a number of class-based teaching formats, from the large lecture to student-centred seminars, workshops, group tutorials and one-toone tuition where needed. All students are assigned a personal tutor, who holds regular small group tutorial sessions so that you can discuss topics with other students. Our tutorial programme runs through all three years of the degree and in your final year you will also have a dissertation supervisor.

You will be expected to acquire 120 credits each year and by the end of your degree you should have obtained a total of 360 credits. Although these are most often acquired by studying consecutively for three years, the credit structure is flexible and allows you to take a break from your studies at any point.

To obtain your degree class classification, you will be assessed in a range of ways, some traditional (such as exams and coursework essays), many more innovative (such as portfolios, contributions to electronic discussion forums, web page design, posters, projects and verbal presentations). Mostly, you will be assessed on your individual work, but sometimes you will also be assessed on group work. The breakdown of examination assessment versus coursework assessment will depend upon your choice of units, but it will typically be something in the region of a 40:60 split (exam: coursework).

Career prospects

This course has an excellent reputation, with a wide range of public and private sector employers, for providing graduates with specific geographical skills and knowledge, as well as more general personal and transferable skills. As a result, our graduates are successful in finding good, permanent and rewarding employment in a wide range of vocational situations, including business management, public service, teaching and environmental management. They have gone on to work for environmental consultants, GIS specialists, the Environment Agency, Ordnance Survey, local authorities and a host of employers throughout the world of business and commerce.

An increasing number of our students also choose to go on to further academic study or professional training, both within the University and elsewhere.

Facilities and features

The department maintains a number of specialist laboratories containing state-ofthe- art equipment to support specialist learning and teaching activities in all aspects of human geography, providing some of the best resources anywhere in the UK. These include specialist GIS and photogrammetry laboratories, funded by the University and research and consultancy income. You will be encouraged to use all these advanced facilities in your studies.

In addition, you will have access to high specification computing facilities and to our newly extended University Library. Open from 8am to midnight every day during term-time, it supplies a variety of information to help with study and research. The University has also invested substantially in electronic resources. There are in excess of ten thousand electronic journals available, together with thousands of ebooks, which can be accessed across the University campus, at home or wherever there is an internet connection.

Studying abroad

We have exchange links with a number of universities in Europe and beyond, so you can take up the opportunity to study abroad for a few months. Current links include the Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona (Barcelona, Spain), Universite du Havre, (Le Havre, France) and Adam Mickiewicz University (Poznan, Poland).

Entry requirements

View all the entry requirements for BA (Hons) Human Geography for the academic year 2013/14 (opens in new window).