3rd Year | School of Geosciences | The University of Aberdeen

3rd Year

3rd year Geography courses

In the Honours Years 3 and 4, those who wish to are able to specialise particularly on Human or Physical Geography.

Choosing Your Courses: Some tips for third year Geography students

In the Third Year of your Geography degree, you will receive core skills training in two core courses:

Approaches to Geography

This course introduces you to different and sometimes competing schools of thought so you get to appreciate the diversity of approaches to geography and their development. Topics include post-war physical and environmental geography, the quantitative revolution, the cultural turn in human geography, and radical geographies.

Research Design

This course equips you with the skills necessary to design, implement and write up your own research, whether in the social or natural sciences. This course is essential preparation for your undergraduate dissertation and also includes careers/employability workshops to provide training on how to best develop your career.

Options for courses

You also have numerous options to receive training in the geographical skills that will best suit your anticipated Fourth Year courses and employment beyond university. Options on offer include:

Physical Geography fieldcourse

The fieldtrip explores the physical geography of the Italian Alps. The course is based around an eight day residential field-course located In the shadow of the Mont Blanc Massif supported by taught and student-led sessions on campus. Students have the opportunity to study glacier dynamics and geomorphology, alpine hazards such as avalanches, mountain ecology and the dynamics of alpine rivers. Students complete independent research projects, conducted in small groups, on topics they select themselves and which are developed with support from an academic supervisor.

Human Geography fieldcourse

Past field-trips have been to Boston, Massachusetts, a compact city with much of historical and contemporary interest to Human geographers. The course is based around an eight day residential field-course supported by taught and student-led sessions on campus. Students complete independent research projects, conducted in small groups, on topics they select themselves and which are developed with support from an academic supervisor. In previous years project topics have included transport, tourism, immigration, housing and urban regeneration.

Globalisation

This course examines key economic, social, political, and environmental aspects of globalisation. Specific topics include different theoretical perspectives on globalisation, global economic governance (including international economic organisations and transnational corporations), global food production and consumption, transnational mobility and the global debate on climate change.

Concepts in Human Geography

In this course we explore key concepts in Human Geography and how these can be applied to understand key debates and contemporary societal challenges. The choice of concepts depends on the composition of the teaching team - most recently the concepts were: transnational mobility and migration, networks, place, and gender.

Land and Marine Conservation

This course examines aspects of the social and environmental science, ethics, aesthetics, economics, law and politics of land and marine conservation. Example topics include: national parks, 'wild' land and rewilding, as well as marine protected areas and marine spatial planning. Topics are illustrated using case studies from Scotland, the rest of the UK and further afield.

Techniques in Physical Geography

This course provides training in multiple techniques which are used in Physical Geography. These are directly related to our research strengths in glaciology, hydrology and palaeoecology. You will develop and apply skills on techniques such as pollen analysis, or stream discharge measurements.

Remote Sensing & GIS

This course is entirely hands-on and equips you with skills in remote sensing and Geographic Information Systems (GIS). You learn though a series of exercises that coveranalysing areas prone to flood risk, monitoring change in the Arctic or investigating the impacts of sea level rise. You then apply your newly acquired skills on a project of your choice, selecting from a wide range of options that include mapping environmental change to analysing social deprivation.

Data analysis

In this course you will familiarise yourself with a range of key statistical techniques used in the analysis of environmental and social science data. You will apply your skills in practical exercises using examples from human or physical geography, such as analysing male life expectancy in Scottish cities or invertebrate species richness in sediment samples.

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