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- 2023 Archives
- Scientists dig deep and find a way to accurately predict snowmelt after droughts
- Cracking the Case of Missing Snowmelt After Drought
- 2023 Esri Canada GIS Scholarship for SFU
- Thesis Defence - Congratulations to Daniel Murphy
- Thesis Defence - Congratulations to Kyle Kusack
- Thesis Defence - Congratulations to Matthew Taylor
- Anke Baker Wins Staff Achievement Award
- Spring 2023 Virtual Geospeaker Event with Ginger Gosnell-Myers
- CAG Paper Presentation Award - Congratulations to Alysha van Duynhoven!
- Informing & Engaging Urban Youth on Public Hearings: GEOG 363 Final Showcase
- Research Talk: Modeling Urban Wetland Complexities
- Highlight Paper: Quantifying land carbon cycle feedbacks under negative CO2 emissions
- Bright Addae winner of the 2023 SFU ECCE GIS Scholarship Award
- Thesis Defence - Congratulations to Jonny Cripps
- Thesis Defence - Congratulations to Diandra Oliver
- 2023 Geospeaker Presentation with Dr. Pauline McGuirk
- Congratulations to Our Graduates - October 2023
- Evaluating the impact of educational goals at SFU
- The Belongings of Precariously Housed People - A Report
- Thesis Defence - Congratulations to Takuma Mihara
- Thesis Defence - Congratulations to Adrienne Arbor
- Thesis Defence - Congratulations to Claire Shapton
- 2023 Distinguished Speaker Presentation with Dr. Deb Cowen
- Cheers to Paul Degrace and his well-earned retirement!
- 2024 Archives
- Professor Nicholas Blomley Honored with the Community-Engaged Research Achievement Award
- Graduate Students Claire Shapton and Marina Chavez Honored with the Community-Engaged Graduate Scholar Award
- Applications now open: 2024 ESRI Canada GIS Scholarship for SFU
- Associate Professor Rosemary Collard achieves 13th place on SFU Altmetric List
- The PEAK feature: GSU hosts inaugural RANGE conference
- Gabrielle Wong wins First Prize in 2023 Student Learning Commons Writing Contest
- Gabrielle Wong receives Warren Gill Memorial Award
- Professor Nick Blomley receives Warren Gill Memorial Award for Community Impact
- Geography Student Union recipient of the FENV 2024 Changemaker Awards
- Senior Lecturer Tara Holland reveals the secret sauce of great teaching
- Senior Lecturer Tara Holland Receives SFU 2023 Excellence in Teaching Award
- Thesis Defence - Congratulations to Bright Addae
- GIS undergraduate students participate in the Canada-wide 2024 AppChallenge competition
- Senior Lecturer Andrew Perkins Receives SFU 2024 Dean's Award of Excellence in Teaching
- Congratulations to Alysha van Duynhoven, Canada's 2024 ESRI Young Scholar
- Thesis Defence - Congratulations to Robert Ehlert
- Thesis Defence - Congratulations to Stephan Nieweler
- Eugene McCann writes on "livable cities" in The Tyee
- Tiana Andjelic wins the 2024 SFU ECCE GIS Scholarship Award
- Thesis Defence - Congratulations to Marina Chavez
- Thesis Defence - Congratulations to Mia Fitzpatrick
- Thesis Defence - Congratulations to Lan Qing Zhao
- Thesis Defence - Congratulations to Tyler Cole
- Thesis Defence - Congratulations to Benjamin Lartey
- Thesis Defence - Congratulations to Olivia Nieves
- Thesis Defence - Congratulations to Max Hurson
- Thesis Defence - Congratulations to John Sykes
- Farewell to Robert "Bob" Horsfall, Associate Professor
- Thesis Defence - Congratulations to André Araújo
- SFU Geography welcomes ethnobotanist, Leigh Joseph, as professor of Indigenous geographies
- Physical Geography September: What is Physical Geography?
- Alysha Van Duynhoven communicates award-winning research at international GIS conference
- How Dr. Tracy Brennand’s visionary leadership shaped the Department of Geography - a heartfelt thank-you
- Dr. Tracy Brennand honoured with the Canadian Association of Geographers (CAG) Award
- Thesis Defence - Congratulations to Jay Matsushiba
- Human Geography October: What is Human Geography?
- MA Student Joy Russell featured on CBC Vancouver
- Human Geography October: What is Urban Worlds?
- Ajay Minhas Receives 2024 Warren Gill Award
- Dr. Nadine Schuurman featured in SFU news article on Runnability
- Hallway Screens Slides
- 2023 Archives
- Alumni
The Department has active research themes in the areas of
AFFILIATED FACULTY
- Kirsten Zickfeld – Climate Research Lab
- Jesse Hahm – Hydrology Research Group
- Lance Lesack – Limnology and Biogeochemistry Research Group
- Margaret Schmidt – Soil Science Lab
- Tracy Brennand – Paleoglaciology Research Group
- Bing Lu – Remote Sensing of Environmental Change (ReSEC) Lab
- Nick Hedley – Spatial Interface Research Lab
- Geoff Mann – Politics and Political Economy of Capitalism
- Tara Holland – Pedagogic Innovation in Climate Change Learning and Teaching
ASSOCIATE FACULTY MEMBERS
- Pascal Haegeli (REM) – SFU Avalanche Research Program (SARP)
Our research centers on structural critiques of capitalism, colonialism, and their relations across scale. With broad interest in the relationships between people- and place-making, we employ critical spatial and social analytics to understand how and why race and indigeneity have been systematically produced throughout history, and how this manifest in power inequities congealed in place. Our work also places emphasis on liberatory struggles for land and livingness, and how minoritized peoples resist unjust systems and create alternate futures in organized and everyday ways.
AFFILIATED FACULTY
- May Farrales – Racial Geographies of Settler Colonialism
- Sharon Luk – Geographies of Racialization
- Magie Ramírez – Social movements, Racial and Cultural Geographies, Inequality, and Urban Space
- Nick Blomley – Legal Geography
We seek to understand the drivers and effects of natural and anthropogenic changes to Earth's systems. Our research includes studies of global climate change, glacier melt, and rising sea levels; landscape water flows; soil degradation; land cover change; land use change, biodiversity loss, extinction, and defaunation; environmental justice; terrestrial ecosystem conservation and disturbance regimes; and process-based modeling of such Earth system changes. Understanding the nature of these environmental changes, in combination with political, social and economic drivers and responses, is critical to inform policy and organizing at multiple scales.
Affiliated Faculty
- Kirsten Zickfeld – Climate Research Lab
- Tracy Brennand – Paleoglaciology Research Group
- Jesse Hahm – Hydrology Research Group
- Lance Lesack – Limnology and Biogeochemistry Research Group
- Margaret Schmidt – Soil Science Lab
- Bing Lu – Remote Sensing of Environmental Change (ReSEC) Lab
- Nick Hedley – Spatial Interface Research Lab
- Suzana Dragicevic – Spatial Analysis & Modeling (SAM) Lab Research Group
- Rosemary-Claire Collard - The Extinction Paradox Research Group
- Geoff Mann – Politics and Political Economy of Capitalism
- Tara Holland – Pedagogic Innovation in Climate Change Learning and Teaching
Associate Faculty Members
- Pascal Haegeli (REM) – SFU Avalanche Research Program (SARP)
- Joseph Taylor (HIST)
(Illustration: Kathleen Fu)
We focus on interlocking productions of space, power, and human difference through the privileged lenses of sex, sexuality, and gender. With particular attention to dynamics of capitalist and colonial domination across scales, our research interrogates contending logics and practices of social reproduction in grounded contexts of struggle. We prioritize queer and feminized knowledge traditions and community development methodologies in our investigations of social and ecological crises and transformation. Lastly, we draw from Black, Indigenous, diasporic and Third World queer and feminist genealogies to bring an attention to the intimate and everyday in our analyses, and how politics are enacted at these scales as well.
AFFILIATED FACULTY
- Rosemary Collard – Political Economy of Environmental Change
- May Farrales – Racial Geograhies of Settler Colonialism
- Sharon Luk – Geographies of Racialization
- Magie Ramírez – Social movements, Racial and Cultural Geographies, Inequality, and Urban Space
We seek to understand social and technological influences on the development of technologies and data structuring techniques. A key aspect of our work is the quest for optimal ways to identify, visualize and communicate spatial relationships on the Earth’s surface. We use visualization, spatial cognition, modeling, and science and technology studies to further Spatial Information Theory.
AFFILIATED FACULTY
- Suzana Dragicevic – Spatial Analysis & Modeling (SAM) Lab Research Group
- Nadine Schuurman – Health Informatics and Critical GIScience
- Nick Hedley – Spatial Interface Research Lab
- Bing Lu – Remote Sensing of Environmental Change (ReSEC) Lab
- Peter Keller – Informed Geographic Decision Making
- Margaret Schmidt – Soil Science Lab
- Tracy Brennand – Paleoglaciology Research Group
- Jesse Hahm - Hydrology Research Group
ASSOCIATE FACULTY MEMBERS
- Martin Andresen (CRIM) – Geography of Crime
We seek to understand the inter-relation of economies and politics. We trace how these processes, practices, and institutions shape and are shaped by local and global transformations and by natural and social environments. Specifically, we research the globalized delivery of health services and systems, tourism and resource communities, labour, the geographies of law and property, capitalism and the state, extraction and extractivism, racial capitalism, and social reproduction.
Affiliated Faculty
- Geoff Mann – Politics and Political Economy of Capitalism
- Rosemary-Claire Collard – The Extinction Paradox Research Group
- Sharon Luk – Geographies of Racialization
- Nick Blomley – Legal Geography
- Valorie Crooks – Health Geography Research Group
- Paul Kingsbury – Psychoanalytic Geographies
- Eugene McCann – Urban Policy Mobilities
ASSOCIATE FACULTY MEMBERS
- Yildiz Atasoy (SA)
- Peter Hall (URB)
- Kendra Strauss (LBST)
- Joseph Taylor (HIST)
We apply a critical and reflective lens to our teaching to advance innovative geography pedagogy. We research and apply teaching strategies that promote deeper student engagement, connections, and learning. Grounded in evidence-based best practices, we develop active learning and teaching with field-based, land-based, and spatial data approaches. We seek to create and foster equitable and accessible learning spaces.
AFFILIATED FACULTY
We seek to understand epidemiology, population health and health services through the lens of geographical thinking and spatial representation. We aim to identify patterns of disease, optimize access to health services, uncover local and global health inequities and detect environmental influences on health status. We integrate human and physical geography and GIScience to enhance existing understandings of health and health care.
AFFILIATED FACULTY
- Valorie Crooks – Health Geography Research Group
- Paul Kingsbury – Psychoanalytic Geographies
- Nadine Schuurman – Health Informatics and Critical GIScience
We seek to understand the ways that cities concentrate human populations, economic production, cultural creation and environmental impact; we study their global economic influence and ecological footprints. Specifically, we conduct research that brings spatial, political, social, cultural, economic, and environmental analyses to bear on urban politics, planning, policy, development, transportation, consumption, health services, property and the law.
AFFILIATED FACULTY
- Eugene McCann – Urban Policy Mobilities
- Magie Ramírez – Social movements, Racial and Cultural Geographies, Inequality, and Urban Space
- Nick Blomley – Legal Geography
- Paul Kingsbury – Psychoanalytic Geographies
- Nick Hedley – Spatial Interface Research Lab
- Suzana Dragicevic – Spatial Analysis & Modeling (SAM) Lab Research Group
ASSOCIATE FACULTY MEMBERS
- Peter Hall (URB)
- Yildiz Atasoy (SA)
- Kirsten McAllister (COMM) – Critical Race Studies
- Martin Andresen (CRIM) – Geography of Crime
We seek to create a holistic understanding of water in the Earth system, an essential step in conserving and protecting water resources. We study the cycling and routing of water through the Earth system, as well as how people use water and the effects this has on both its supply and the functioning of water-dependent ecosystems. Examples of research include the link between global climate and the hydrological cycle, transport of water and nutrients to the Arctic Ocean from the Mackenzie River basin, effect of changes in energy-moisture balance on vegetation-fire dynamics, quantifying spatial distributions of subsurface moisture, glacial melt-water controls on landforms and drainage systems, understanding the impact of drought on water delivery to plants and streams, and the limnology of Arctic delta lakes.
Affiliated Faculty
- Jesse Hahm – Hydrology Research Group
- Lance Lesack – Limnology and Biogeochemistry Research Group
- Kirsten Zickfeld – Climate Research Lab
- Tracy Brennand – Paleoglaciology Research Group
- Margaret Schmidt – Soil Science Lab
- Bing Lu – Remote Sensing of Environmental Change (ReSEC) Lab
- Nick Hedley – Spatial Interface Research Lab
ASSOCIATE FACULTY MEMBERS
- Pascal Haegeli (REM) – SFU Avalanche Research Program (SARP)
- Jeremy Venditti (SES) – River Dynamics Lab