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GG2001: Geographical Research & Field Training

Field Trip to New York City

New York City has long been one of the world's great cities. This field course is designed to give you some experience of field research in a remarkable and challenging urban environment. The course will introduce you to social, cultural, economic, and political geographies of the city, past and present. We will be constructing research projects around a number of themes, including: (i) the changing nature of public space in New York City both in the past and the present day; (ii) processes of gentrification and popular protest in the Lower East Side; (iii) the representation of migration and culture at Ellis Island and the Lower East Side Tenement Museum and (iv)  the role of nature in the city in Central Park and in community gardens.

The immediate objective of this course is to provide first-hand experience of geographical research in a particular context; the larger aim is to address the practical, theoretical and ethical dilemmas raised by research in human geography more generally, linking to a variety of your other courses, including the work you will be doing for your dissertations. For much of the field course, you will be divided into small groups in order to maximise opportunities for discussion. A central feature of the course is the 'parallel project' structure.