Place-Based Research (PEH321)

Content

The course explores how nature and landscapes as encountered by people rarely is pure - rather, nature is a hybrid space shaped over time by human activity, thoroughly entangled with culture, economy, technology, and knowledge systems. Through fieldwork and discussion of literature, the course explores how places and environments are made through concrete relationships to their users over time. Students will learn how to create maps to communicate relationships between people and place. Students will encounter different mapping formats and digital and analog tools. The specific geographies explored in the course will vary from year to year.

Learning outcome

A candidate who has completed and passed the course

Knowledge

• has thorough knowledge of the key theoretical concepts in place-based research such as place-making, deep maps, fieldwork, community

• has specialized insight into environmental history, including the histories of specific places
• has advanced knowledge of the contributions of place-based research to environmental humanities and its constituent subfields

Skills

• can analyze and deal critically with various sources of information and use them to structure and formulate scholarly arguments about the mutual shaping of space, place, and society
• can analyze existing theories, methods and interpretations in place-based research
• can use relevant methods for research in an independent manner to develop a map-based project
• can plan and participate in excursion-based fieldwork

General Competence

• can analyze and manage ethical problems connected to place-based research and local communities
• can independently construct arguments based on scholarly foundations, using sources, theories, and methods in a precise and transparent manner
• can communicate about academic issues, analyses and conclusions in the field with the general public through map-based projects
• can orally participate in and contribute to seminar-based discussions

Required prerequisite knowledge

None

Exam

Coursework requirements

75 % attendance, 3 mandatory assignments

Course teacher(s)

Course coordinator:

Finn Arne Jørgensen

Method of work

This is a seminar-based course that requires active student participation. Students will work together and individually. The seminars will be complemented by some lectures and excursions.

Literature