Greetings from the Department Head

Graduate study is a serious adventure. It will change you and shape your future. It is a time of hard work, diverse challenges and, more often than not, some anxiety. Measured against a normal lifetime, it is also a brief, intense moment of freedom, learning, and creative opportunity. Programmes, departments, and universities differ enormously, and it is important that you choose wisely and make the utmost of the rare and precious privilege of being a graduate student.

The Department of Geography at UBC is a remarkable place. Widely acknowledged as one of the leading departments in the world, it is distinguished, at a day-to-day level, by its commitment to collegial interaction among undergraduate, graduate, faculty, and staff members. A robust undergraduate programme, with which many of our graduate students are engaged as Teaching Assistants, is complemented by a stimulating, vigorous environment for advanced study and research. The scholarly interests of faculty members and graduate students encompass a marvellous range of subject areas, philosophical approaches, methods of analysis, and locations. Rather than insisting on a comprehensive knowledge of Geography as a pre-requisite for graduate study, we expect and encourage integrity and creativity in scholarship, and seek to foster work of broad significance to geographers and others.

Graduate work in Physical Geography at UBC has a strong natural science emphasis with a strong tradition of field-based studies. It investigates physical-ecological systems at or close to the earth’s surface, and the interaction of these systems with people. Climatology, geomorphology, hydrology, biogeography, and spatial information sciences are the substantive specialisation.

Graduate work in Human Geography is more pluralistic in its exploration of the connections between theory and circumstance in the interpretation of past and present geographies. Major areas of specialisation include cultural, historical /environmental, economic, social, and feminist geography. Other inquiries focus on political and policy questions. Work in all of these fields often intersects with a more general interest in urban geography, or has links with the department's programme in environmental geography. UBC graduate students pursue work, variously, on parts of North America, on East and Southeast Asia, on Russia, and on Eastern Europe.

Work in the department is unified by the quest for understanding of natural and human environments and the complex interplay between them. Graduates are generally specialists in one or more of the established sub-disciplines of Geography, but the department takes pride in providing a richer interpretation of physical and human environments than most other university programmes and departments.

The department comprises a wondrous collection of intellectual talent in a large and exciting university situated in one of the world's most attractive cities perched on edge of a continent with wilderness to the north, the dynamic presence of the United States to the south, a vast country to the east, and the Pacific Ocean to the west. This is a truly unusual setting, and it imparts a special character to life and work in Geography at UBC. The department is a place to which many are attracted, but it is not, and cannot be, the best place for all. If you are convinced, after considering your own goals and the information in this website, that this is the place for you, be assured that we will consider your application seriously.

David Ley
Head, Department of Geography
University of British Columbia