Human Geography
Society's geography is, on the one hand, woven into global processes of war and peace, power and money and on the other it is part of daily life and an individual's organising of their own life.
Thus, within human geography we study social processes from a space and place perspective. We study how economic, political and cultural processes physically manifest themselves in a city or a region. We are also concerned with how the properties of places influence broader social processes.
People have always reflected over their place in the world. This discipline long had a tradition of writing about towns and regions and seeking out what it is that makes each one unique. In modern human geography researchers are much more influenced by central research topics from the other social sciences and applying this research in the study of geographically limited areas. Human geographers at our department work within the discipline's central sub-disciplines;
- urban geography
- economic geography
- political geography
- development geography
- studies of environment and society
What these sub-groups have in common is that one studies relations between actual contexts and a central social process, such as economic globalisation, for example. At the Department human geography is organised into two thematic core areas:
- Development, politics and environment
- Urban and regional research
In human geography we have a tradition of studying nature, the environment and environmental problems. Human geographers at our department study environmental problems from a human geography point of view where the fragility of society and its ability to tackle environmental and climate change that face us are central.
Human Geography at the University of Oslo is part of the Department of Sociology and Human Geography at the Faculty of Social Sciences. Natural Geography is pursued at the Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences.
