User:Chopperxs/Geography

The Department of Geography is located on the University of Canterbury campus in Christchurch, New Zealand. It is the oldest geography department in New Zealand, having been founded in 1937. It is one of the few remaining stand alone departments of geography in Australasia.

History
The first Stage 1 class in geography at Canterbury was in 1934, run by George Jobberns. The department was set up three years later with Jobberns in charge. In 1938, he was joined by, a young Kenneth Cumberland direct from London. This is described in the extract from Cumberland's memoir published in the NZ Geographer in April 2007. It was while at Canterbury that Cumberland wrote Soil Erosion in New Zealand: A Geographic Reconnaissance, published in 1944, which did much to galvanize the country to meet the dangers of accelerated soil loss which had reached crisis proportions in the 1930s. In the early 1940s, Cumberland went on to found the new Geography department at the University of Auckland in 1946.

Other notable geographers to have been at Canterbury include many who were part of the ‘quantitative revolution’ in geography in the 1950s and sixties, including Les King (1960-62), Reg Golledge (1961-63), W.A.V. (Bill) Clark, 1964-66, and RJ Johnston (1967-74). The Quaternary geomorphologist Jane Soons joined the staff in 1960. She became the first woman Professor at Canterbury and President of INQUA, the International Union for Quaternary Research.

Location
Today the Department of Geography is housed in extensive purpose-built accommodation, modernised over the last decade, but dating from the mid 1970s when the remaining departments of the university moved from the old city centre site to the post-war Ilam suburban campus. The main, 6 level, block houses graduate students, a full time academic staff of fourteen, short and long term visitors, as well as GIS and computing labs on the top floor. An allied university research and teaching centre, Gateway Antarctica, occupies the ground floor.

There is also an adjacent three level lab block, which has teaching rooms, physical laboratories, a well equipped departmental Geography Library, and other services such as cartography, graphics and workshops. The departments GeoHealth Laboratory and an allied university facility, the National Centre for Research on Europe, are also located in this block.

The undergraduate curriculum is structured around four 'pathways' in physical geography; human geography; Geographic Information Systems and Environmental Remote Sensing, and Resource and Environmental Management.

Research
The department has a postgraduate school of Honours students (about 25 each year), Masters and PhD thesis students (about 30 each year). Many work in the South Island’s ideal laboratory conditions for physical geography, such as climate, coastal and alpine studies. The landscape of human geography attracts those interested in New Zealand’s  recent history of experimentation in economic and environmental management, social relations and indigenous land rights. Since its foundation the department has attracted a stream of overseas visitors who stay for periods of a month to a year, including Erskine Fellows supported by the Fund of that name. Eminent academics such as Professor's Peter Haggett, Richard Peet, Audrey Kobayashi, Tim O'Riordan, Jan Monk, Colin Ballantyne, and Robin Flowerdew have all spent time teaching and researching in the department in recent years. Particular areas of research specialisation include atmospheric processes (regional and local scale climatology), wind energy applications, air pollution studies, glaciology and avalanche hazards, coastal geomorphology and management, a range of geo-health themes, environmental history and indigenous land issues, including  kaitiakitanga.

The GeoHealth Laboratory
The Department of Geography has the only significant programme in health geographies in NZ, with a Geo-Health lab that focuses on a range of GIS-supported research areas, in partnership with the Public Health Intelligence Unit of the Ministry of Health.

The GeoHealth Laboratory undertakes applied research in the areas of health geography, spatial epidemiology and  Geographical Information Systems. In particular, work in the GeoHealth Laboratory focuses upon how the local and national contexts shape health outcomes and health inequalities. Research has focused on how both micro and macro level process help to shape the health of New Zealanders. Its current work has considered how various characteristics of local neighbourhoods influence health outcomes and health-related behaviours. These projects include the effect of community resource access (such as access to parks, food stores and health care provision) on health inequalities; the role of deprivation and rurality in influencing suicide rates; environmental justice and air pollution; and the importance of income inequality and macro-level process on inequalities in life expectancy.

The GeoHealth Laboratory was launched by the Minister of Health, Hon Annette King, in Novemeber 2004 at the GeoHealth 2004 Conference in Wellington (full text of opening speech). The GeoHealth Laboratory is a joint venture between the Department of Geography, [University of Canterbury] (specifically its ‘Health and Environment’ research group) and the Public Health Intelligence group of the Ministry of Health. The aim of the collaboration is to build a strategic partnership between the parties around health geography, spatial epidemiology and GIS; and to increase research capacity and research outputs in the health and GIS academic sectors. Funded for three years in the first instance, the collaboration seeks to advance the University of Canterbury’s research agenda in the Health Sciences and the strategic aims of the Ministry of Health. The collaboration provides a resource that is unique in the Southern hemisphere.

There are a number of staff employed by and associated with the collaboration who work on a range of research projects that are concerned with the social and environmental determinants of health and healthcare. In addition, the GeoHealth Lab provides resources for postgraduate students who work in the lab. Each year a number of postgraduate scholarships are available to suitably qualified students.

The GeoHealth Laboratory is located on the second floor of the Department of Geography (room 242), next to the National Centre for Research on Europe.