Geography Research Areas

Geography is the study of earth as the home of people. As the need to find solutions to issues of environmental sustainability, population change and globalisation have become more challenging, the skills and knowledge of geographers have come to the forefront. Geographers are interested in their world; they think critically about the relationships between people, environments and places. With a tradition that dates to 1920 with the appointment of Thomas Griffith-Taylor as Australia's first Professor of Geography, researchers in the field of geography at the University of Sydney are engaged with the issues facing society and the planet.

Major research areas

• Asia-Pacific geographies: research on natural resource management in the Mekong region, agri-food geographies, agricultural liberalization in India, the Angkor World Heritage Site, development and migration in South Pacific island-states.
• Social, economic and environmental sustainability in regional Australia: research on the economic restructuring of Australia's regions, the farm sector, the Upper Hunter equine landscapes project.
• Landscape evolution and processes: Fluvial and terrestrial geomorphology, river catchments and environmental policy issues relating to land and water.
• Sustainability, citizenship and cultural spaces in cities: research on ecological footprints of cities, transport planning in Sydney, urban public spaces, cultural geographies of music and daily life.
• Geocoastal Research: research encompasses river, coastal and estuarine morphodynamics and focuses on coupling between flow dynamics and morphological change involving sediment transport on a multiscale continuum from daily beach changes to Holocene and Quaternary coastal evolution.