B.Sc.-Econ., University College London; M.A., Ph.D. (1983), University of Minnesota

"I have three main research projects. The first is investigating Vancouver's new economy and its effects on the city. I am undertaking this project in collaboration with Tom Hutton, School of Planning UBC. We have examined the video game industry, as well as architecture, and plan also to investigate the film and TV, and fashion industries. The second is a history of American geography from the Second World War through the Cold War. The project stems from an earlier one concerned with geography's quantitative revolution. It became clear that the roots of that revolution lay in Cold War, and earlier, Second World War, social scientific methods, aims, and above all money. The research is primarily archival. The last is a continuing interest in forest economies, primarily BC's, but also those in the Antipodes."

 

Website: www.geog.ubc.ca/~tbarnes

Email Contact: trevor.barnes@geog.ubc.ca

Office Phone: 604-822-5804

Room Number: GEOG 140C

Diploma in Geography, University of Basel; Ph.D. in Meteorology, University of Basel

"My research focuses on land-atmosphere interactions, carbon cycling, and atmospheric turbulence. I use experimental methods to investigate and measure physical and chemical processes relevant in land-atmosphere exchange in forest and urban ecosystems. Current research projects include basic turbulence and dispersion studies (exchange processes in forest canopies, urban dispersion processes) and applied approaches that link greenhouse gas exchange to ecosystem management practices. Our lab is equipped with several eddy covariance systems, a tunable diode laser absorption spectrometer for carbon and oxygen isotopes, a sonic array, autonomous meteorological stations, radiation instruments, and towers."

 

Website: www.geog.ubc.ca/~achristn

Email Contact: andreas.christen@ubc.ca

Office Phone: 604-822-6620

Lab Phone: 604-827-4520

Room Number: GEOG 132

Lab Number: GEOG 249, MCML 136

B.Sc., London; M.Sc., University of Edinburgh; M. Urban Planning, University of Melbourne; Ph.D. (1986), Monash University

"My current research focuses on aspects of economic geography in the Pacific Rim, including Japanese trade and investment patterns in East Asia, urban and regional change in Japan, Japanese tourism in Canada, and multicultural planning in cities of Pacific Rim countries. One major project has been examining the rebuilding of Kobe after the 1995 Hanshin Earthquake. This has been carried out with a Japan Foundation Grant and in the context of changing urban governance systems in Japan. Another study looks at Japanese electronics firms and their production networks in the Greater China Circle. This is funded by the SSHRC and is being carried out in conjunction with Dr. Roger Hayter (SFU) and graduate students. Through my PhD student, Tom Woodsworth I am becoming interested in environmental challenges in China and the problems surrounding e-waste. In Vancouver, I have a project studying how local governments in the Vancouver region have taken responsibility for including non-mainstream populations in the preparation and amendment of local plans as well as local social services."

 

Website: blogs.ubc.ca/dedgington

Email Contact: david.edgington@ubc.ca

Office Phone: 604-822-5612

Room Number: GEOG 215C

B.A., Ben Gurion University of the Negev; M.Sc., The Hebrew University of Jerusalem; Ph.D. (1989), The Hebrew University of Jerusalem

"My research covers a wide range of topics in geomorphology and hydrology such as the interaction between hill-slopes and channels, channel stability and morphology, river sediment transport and sediment yield, stream ecology, in-channel wood dynamics, and modeling fine sediments and their interactions with stream physical and biological characteristics. I have worked on fundamental processes involving flow and sediment transport and contributed to the advancement of river science at various scales, from sediment grains to watersheds, and in fields outside fluvial geomorphology such as urban hydrology, water quality, and water resources management. Model development has been a very important component of my research, with considerable experimental flume work used to complement field data. My current research concerns small, forested streams such as the routing of water and sediment, associated channel characteristics, and ecological processes. My field and laboratory experimental work has been published in leading international journals."

 

Dr. Hassan is currently the Department Head (2012-2015).

 

Website: www.geog.ubc.ca/~mhassan

Email Contact: marwan.hassan@geog.ubc.ca

Office Phone: 604-822-5894

Room Number: GEOG 253, GEOG 221

B.A. Honours, University of Winnipeg; M.A., Ph.D. (1987), University of Toronto

"I conduct research on migration as a form of contemporary globalization. At the broadest scale, this includes an interest on how migration is controlled by nation states through policy and regulatory systems, and also how people become mobile, with or without the consent of states. I try to understand Canadian immigration policy within this wider context, and consider it in relation to the policies of other countries, especially in Europe and Australasia. At the local scale I study the consequences of immigration in Canadian cities, highlighting Vancouvers situation (over 830,000 foreign-born in a population of 2.1 million people). More specifically, I look at the integration of newcomers in the labour and housing markets of cities, and how this changes their residential structure and social relations."

 

Website: blogs.ubc.ca/dhiebert/

Email Contact: dan.hiebert@ubc.ca

Office Phone: 604-822-4500

Room Number: GEOG 140E

B.Sc., University of Toronto; M.Sc., Ph.D. (1988), University of Western Ontario

"My work focuses on advanced spatial analysis in the physical, health and social sciences, and in the intersection of these areas (e.g., medical biogeography and Geographic Information Science). This includes a focus on both theoretical investigations and innovative applications of GIScience in subject areas where space and place are considered important explanatory elements (e.g. wildlife use of landscape in the Serengeti). My students and I explore such areas as neighbourhood theory and error and accuracy in GIS, modeling, and visualization. This includes the use of spatial analysis in landscape classification, biogeography, medical biogeography, environmental geography, human-ecosystem interactions and conservation biology. Biodiversity informatics is a current interest, as is exploring the social aspects of GIScience and Geospatial technologies, the reflexivities between technology and society. The thread that links this research is the understanding and insight that advanced spatial analysis brings to research and theoretical problems--often unveiling subtleties that would otherwise be overlooked."

 

Dr. Klinkenberg is currently the editor and project coordinator of E-Flora BC / E-Fauna BC.

 

Website: www.geog.ubc.ca/~brian

Website: www.geog.ubc.ca/biodiversity/eflora/

Website: www.geog.ubc.ca/biodiversity/efauna/

Email Contact: brian.klinkenberg@geog.ubc.ca

Office Phone: 604-822-3534

Room Number: GEOG 209

Lab Number: GEOG 210J

BA, University of Tartu; MSc, Western Washington University; Ph.D. (1999), Syracuse University

"My research focuses on political geography and geopolitics -- particularly on security and state power, borders and surveillance, and policy-making processes in complex bureaucratic structures. In broad terms, I investigate how political practices are underpinned by spatially defined categories like center and margin, inside and outside, Self and Other. These categories, I contend, are central to the processes by which complex political issues come to be defined and managed in a particular manner. Within that problematic, my interests converge on the question of how specifically spatial categories function in daily politics at various sites -- for example, within foreign policy bureaucracies. I have also worked on, and continue to be interested in, political identity and subjectivity, nationalism and transnationalism, and citizenship and belonging, especially in contemporary Europe. By virtue of my regional expertise, I am keenly interested in the ways in which places and regions are written onto our mental maps on a daily basis."

 

Website: www.geog.ubc.ca/~kuus

Email Contact: merje.kuus@geog.ubc.ca

Office Phone: 604-822-3443

Room Number: GEOG 235

B.A. Honours, Oxford (1968); M.S., Ph.D. (1972), Pennsylvania State University

"I have undertaken a number of (sometimes comparative) projects on immigration to Canadian cities. Topics have included: immigration and housing and labour markets; offsetting immigration and domestic migration in world cities; immigration and poverty; immigrant churches as service hubs; multiculturalism and the governance of diversity. An abiding focus has been the experience of wealthy business migrants. This work is drawn together in a forthcoming book: Millionaire Migrants: Trans-Pacific Life Lines. I have always been concerned with processes of social and spatial change in older inner city neighbourhoods. A principle focus has been gentrification, processes of urban reinvestment leading to housing renovation or redevelopment and the replacement and displacement of poorer households by the middle-class. Currently, I am begining a project that extends the field site from Canadian Cities to the different economic and political contexts of Hong Kong."

 

Dr. Ley was Department Head (2009-2012). He was the UBC Director of the Metropolis Project, examining issues of immigration and integration in Greater Vancouver and beyond, from 1996-2003, and was appointed a Trudeau Fellow from 2003-2006. He holds a Canada Research Chair in Geography.

 

Honours: Fellow of The Royal Society of Canada

Website: www.geog.ubc.ca/~dley

Website: riim.metropolis.net/

Email Contact: david.ley@geog.ubc.ca

Office Phone: 604-822-3268

Room Number: GEOG 208

B.Sc. Honours, Ph.D. (1985), University of Canterbury

"Long-term research goals have been primarily directed at understanding meteorological phenomena that develop in regions of complex, urbanized terrain. An important applied focus of this work has been the investigation of the role such phenomena (e.g. land sea breezes, slope winds and urban effects) have on the transport and dispersion of pollutants. Although much of this research has been site-specific (e.g. the Lower Fraser Valley, British Columbia) the findings are of general interest. Considerable progress has been made in understanding the processes contributing to, and the three-dimensional distribution of, air pollution in regions of complex terrain. This observational program has provided important information for development, initialization and validation of numerical models designed to forecast air quality and test pollutant abatement strategies. Recently, this research thrust has broadened to consider the impact of long-range transport of burgeoning pollutant emissions and crustal dust from Eurasia to North America. A central part of this work has been the installation of a state-of-the-art lidar facility at UBC in collaboration with Environment Canada."

 

Website: www.geog.ubc.ca/~ian

Email Contact: ian.mckendry@geog.ubc.ca

Office Phone: 604-822-4929

Room Number: GEOG 250

B.Sc. Honours, University of Bristol; M.A., Ph.D. (1967), McMaster University

"Research interests focus on urban climate and the energy and water balances of cities."

 

Former Head of the Department (1991-1996).

 

Honours: Order of Canada; Fellow of The Royal Society of Canada

Website: www.geog.ubc.ca/~toke

Email Contact: tim.oke@geog.ubc.ca

Office Phone: 604-822-2900

Room Number: GEOG 234

B.A. Honours, University of Manchester; Ph.D. (1988), University of Manchester

"I work, in the style of institutional political economy, on a range of issues relating to economic geography, urban restructuring, and state transformation. Much of my research is concerned with the ways in which ostensibly global processesfor example, forms of market-oriented governance (a.k.a. neoliberalization)are (re)remade through local sites and grounded practices. Ongoing projects include: (a) outsourcing expertise, a study of offshoring practices as a managerial technology; (b) policies without borders, tracing vectors of fast policy in globalizing urban governance and social welfare; and (c) remaking the Vancouver model, a critical analysis of the city's evolving development agenda."

 

Dr. Peck holds the Canada Research Chair in Urban and Regional Political Economy.

 

Honours: Academician in the Social Sciences; Guggenheim Fellow; Harkness Fellow

Website: www.geog.ubc.ca/~peck

Email Contact: jamie.peck@geog.ubc.ca

Office Phone: 604-822-0894

Room Number: GEOG 134

B.Sc. Honours, University of Toronto; M.A., Ph.D. (1984), UBC

"I am completing a 15 year research collaboration with the Philippine Women Centre of BC that has moved from looking at the circumstances of Filipino women working in Canada as domestic workers on temporary work visas, to the issue of family separation and the long term marginalization of families sponsored by domestic workers after they gain permanent resident status in Canada. This feeds into a larger debate about the growing number of temporary work visa and bridging immigration programs. We are experimenting with novel ways of bringing our research to a wider public, most notably through testimonial theatre. Our play, Nanay was performed in Vancouver in February 2009 and at the Hebbel Theatre in Berlin in June 2009. I have been preoccupied with how to put stories of family separation into circulation, with the politics of testimony and witnessing, and the obligations of witnessing beyond national boundaries."

 

Associate Dean - Faculty, Faculty of Arts July 2010 - June 2011

 

Website: www.geog.ubc.ca/~gpratt

Email Contact: gerry.pratt@geog.ubc.ca

Office Phone: 604-822-5875

Room Number: GEOG 140D

B.A., University of Toronto; M.E.S., York University; Ph.D. (1981), University of Toronto

"My research is centred around developing the research program for the CIRS project (www.cirs.ubc.ca); sustainable energy systems; sustainable building systems; the interaction among climate change mitigation, adaptation and sustainability; gaming and simulation tools; futures studies; the intersection of lay and expert knowledge; participatory integrated assessment; business and sustainability issues; and generally the points of interaction among sustainability, climate change, socio-technical change, behaviour change, modeling and simulation, and community engagement processes. All my research has been on industrialized country applications."

 

Website: www.johnrobinson.ires.ubc.ca

Email Contact: john.robinson@ubc.ca

Office Phone: 604-822-9188

Room Number: 2260 West Mall, room 2351

B.Sc., The Pennsylvania State University; M.A., Ph.D. (1995), University of Minnesota, Minneapolis

"I study the relations between market processes and state policy in producing and reinforcing urban social inequalities. My approach blends elements of critical social theory, conventional legal and policy analysis, and multivariate quantitative methods designed to engage state and corporate institutions on their own terrain, with their own data. Current projects focus on class, racial, and gender discrimination in mortgage lending and foreclosures in the U.S. urban system; housing affordability in Canadian and U.S. cities; the transformation of public housing; new spatialities of class inequality in London; and the reconfiguration of segregation, displacement, and gentrification."

 

Website: www.geog.ubc.ca/~ewyly

Email Contact: elvin.wyly@geog.ubc.ca

Office Phone: 604-822-4653

Room Number: GEOG 252

B.A. Honours, University of Sheffield; M.A., Ph.D. (1974), University of Toronto

Former Head of the Department (1996-2002; 2005-2009). Former Associate Dean, Faculty of Arts, UBC (1990-1996).

 

Honours: Fellow of The Royal Society of Canada

Email Contact: graeme.wynn@geog.ubc.ca

Office Phone: 604-822-6226

Room Number: GEOG 236