Graduate Program
Graduate Program Application
Information
Welcome to the Graduate Program in Geography at UNC. Read the information here, explore the links, and feel free to contact the Director of Graduate Studies (Dr. Wolford) if you wish more information or have questions. Several Graduate students have also volunteered to be contacted by prospective graduate students to provide a student's perspective on UNC, Chapel Hill, and the Department.
Our department has broad interests but is well known for faculty strength and interests in five overlapping areas of concentration. These represent areas of active faculty research and coherent foci - not mutually exclusive territories. Indeed, many students and faculty work on projects that span more than one. So, while we offer intensive training in a number of diverse areas, our program is noted for its integrative and cross-cutting approach.
(1) Biophysical geography and earth systems science
This group studies the biophysical environment as an integrated system emphasizing the linkages and feedbacks between terrestrial and atmospheric form and function. They focus on the interactions between the structure and composition of the earth’s surface, its soils and vegetation, and the atmosphere with those processes that actively cycle energy and material through them. Teaching and research in the Department focuses on the roles of vegetation/climate interactions, the distribution and dynamics of water in the earth system, ecosystem cycling, and the interactions of human society in modifying the earth’s surface, including land use/land cover change. This group offers key courses in the undergraduate major and the graduate program, and provides students opportunities to work on externally funded research projects, on field research, and in conjunction with the Carolina Environmental Program, the Carolina Population Center, and other research centers on campus. Active faculty in this group include: Band, Doyle, Konrad, Moody, Robinson, and Walsh.
(2) Geographic Information and Analysis
Geographic Information Sciences (GISc) are an integrated set of spatial digital technologies including tools, techniques, concepts, and data sets associated with geographic information systems, remote sensing, data visualization, global positioning systems, spatial analysis, and quantitative methods. GIScience provides a suite of tools used to support many kinds of decision-making and analyses including environmental policy, marketing, planning, demographic analysis, as well as studies using integrated data within a GIS for resource management, ecological analyses, health care delivery, nutrition and diet, epidemiology, information technology, and more. This cluster is a core element in the undergraduate and graduate curriculum and contributes significantly to the department's international reputation. The department is actively pursuing a GIScience Graduate Certificate. Active faculty in this group include: Band, Emch, Song, Meade, Moody, and Walsh.
(3) Nature-society studies and human-environment interactions
Drawing on analytical and theoretical perspectives from ecology, socio-cultural processes and values, political ecology, science studies, and cultural ecology, UNC geographers focus on geographies of environmental change, the political-economic and social contexts of environmental change, human uses of the environment, and the consequences of such uses. The department's research and teaching interests in this broad and diverse sub-field fall in five distinct ?but interacting and overlapping ?facets: bio-physical and GISc analyses; cultural geographies of the humanly modified and “built?landscape; critical assessments of the human environment; and cultural ecological analyses. Active faculty in this group include: Band, Birdsall,
Emch,
Florin,
Fraser, Kirsch, Meade, Pickles, Walsh, and Wolford.
(4) Culture, Society and Space
Faculty members in the Department have on-going research projects in Cultural Geographies of people, places, regions, landscape and resources, space, identity, and representation. Faculty and students research topics in the Social Geographies of race, space, gender; urban geographies and community dynamics; rural landscapes and regional change; health, migration, inequality; and social movements. Economic Geographies of agrarian and industrial change; science, technology, and regional change; post-socialism; political economy; and globalization and international development are represented as well as Political Geography, geopolitics, and political ecology. In addition, the study of social spaces introduces students to various aspects of the history and philosophy of geography, spatial analysis and public policy, social theory and cultural studies, gender studies and feminism, and science and technology studies. Active faculty in this group include: Birdsall, Cravey, Florin, Fraser, Gokariksel, Kirsch, Meade, Pickles, and Wolford.
(5) Globalization and International Development.
In recent years, geographers and other social and environmental scientists have been studying the consequences of processes of globalization (and the anti-globalization and global justice movements they have stimulated) that are re-shaping the geographies of international and local capital, labor, technology, information, goods and services, and they are re-working the post-War Fordist geographies of economic, social, and political life in the United States and globally. Many of the department's faculty have research and teaching interests related to aspects of international and global studies. These include an expertise in Latin America, Africa, Western and Eastern Europe, and Southeast Asia. economic restructuring and global outsourcing in Eastern Europe, trans-national migrant communities in the Americas and in Europe, development geographies and social movements in Latin America, work and migration in the Americas, global justice movements, international political economy, global health, and geo-politics and environmental politics. Faculty members and students are members of, and contribute to, UNC Research Centers and Curricula in American Studies, International, African, Latin American, European, East European and Eurasian, and Asian Studies. Active faculty in this group include: Cravey, Fraser, Gokariksel, Kirsch, Meade, Pickles, Walsh, and Wolford.
General Information
Graduate students have access to extensive research and computing facilities within the department and across campus and many of our students are involved in specialized departmental research groups. Students and faculty have strong ties to other departments and research centers at UNC, including the Carolina Population Center [link], the Odum Institute for Research in Social Science , the Institute of Latin American Studies (UNC & Duke University), the Sheps Center for Health Services Research, the Ecology Curriculum, the Center for Urban and Regional Studies, the Carolina Environmental Program, UNC's schools of Public Health and Medicine, Carolina Asia
Center, Center for
European Studies, Center for East European,
Eurasian, and Russian Studies, Center for Middle East
and Muslim Civilizations, Center
for Global Initiatives, University Program in Cultural
Studies, and Institute for
Arts and Humanities.
Our diverse graduate students are pursuing a wide variety of research at UNC. Follow the link to the Graduate Student page for more information. Graduate students in the department participate in most departmental governance activities and maintain their own organization, GAGS. UNC professional and graduate
students also have an active organization. Our diverse graduate
students are pursuing a wide variety of research at UNC. Follow
the link to the Graduate Student page for more information.
Graduate students in the department participate in most
departmental governance activities and maintain their own
organization, GAGS. UNC professional and graduate students also have an active organization.
We offer both the MA and PhD degrees, but the major emphasis of our program is the PhD, even for those not yet possessing an MA. Incoming students are roughly evenly mixed between those with and without a Masters degrees. Details about how to apply are available here .
For more information about the University of North Carolina follow this link to the University's home page. For more information about graduate student life at UNC the Graduate School's Graduate Student guide is a good resource. For more information about town and region follow this link.
Dr. Wolford is happy to answer any other questions and discuss our program with you. Her contact information and the Departmental mail address are noted below.
Wendy Wolford
Phone: (919) 843-4762 E-mail: wwolford@email.unc.edu
Department of Geography
CB # 3220
University of North Carolina
Chapel Hill, NC
27599
