Geography Lecture: Michael Pretes on conducting and data-gathering for research in geography

Do you want to know more about how to conduct geographic research? While standard practice is far from homogenous and/or universal, here's a chance to know more about gathering and collecting data in geography.

Professor Michael Pretes from the Department of Geosciences of the University of North Alabama will share insights on practiced-based research in geography. Dr Pretes teaches courses about world geography, economic geography, geography of music, geography of islands, and geography of national parks. He has travelled to all seven continents (including Antarctica). 

The onsite talk is going to be on Thursday, 26 February 2026 at 2:30PM in Pavilion 2248. Geography juniors and seniors and graduate students are invited to join the talk.

This Geography talk is sponsored the UP Department of Geography through the Graduate Program and the Undergraduate Program and is in line with the SDG #4 (Quality Education) of the United Nations.

Geography Lecture 2025: Naoki Fujiwara on suburbanisation and relocation in the Philippines

The UP Department of Geography through the Environment and Development Geographies (EDGE) research group, and the Geography 105 (Economic Geography) class present Naoki Fujiwara of Hiroshima University. 

His talk titled Spatial Politics in Suburban Areas, Philippines happens on Thursday, 30 January 2025 at 11:30AM in the Geography Conference Room of Pavilion 2 Building of the University of the Philippines-Diliman. 

The lecture is open to the public.

Abstract

In transforming new spaces suburbanization simultaneously involves an influx of new residents. The growing populations entails not only land conversion and the establishment of new collective housing but also an increase in ‘new voters.’ This paper compares the relocation projects in Metro Manila to develop suburban areas, such as Bulacan province, and how they brought about the transformation of political structure consolidated by feudalistic nature with similar historical change in Japan. In Japan, following the aftermath of the World War Two up to the oil crisis in 1973, the national government had to establish a great deal of collective housing, called ‘Danchi,’ in order to deal with the lack of housing supply in urban areas after the carpet bombing air raids of the war. In Osaka too, large scale collective housing was set up in suburban areas, but it enhanced the political participation of residents to local and national governments due to unhappy with their uncomfortable living conditions in ‘Danchi.’ 

In the Philippines, the number of relocation sites in suburban areas has been increasing in the wake of displacement from the ‘danger zone’ along the river as well as infrastructure projects. It concomitantly enables a critical moment to transforming local politics in accommodating relocatees from Metro Manila. I first examine the differences between the history of development in Japan and that currently taking place in the Philippines. Second, drawing on the case of Pandi, Bulacan, I explicate the context of political change in the wake of relocation projects in the 2010s at local and national levels. In doing so, this paper situates the term spatial politics that is critical to a better understanding of political change in the urban age.

Naoki Fujiwara is a postdoctoral fellow at the Graduate School of Humanities and Social Sciences at Hiroshima University. He received a PhD in Political Science from Kobe University, Japan. His research interests include urban politics, spatial politics, neoliberal urbanization and gentrification in the Global South.

Geography Lecture 2024: Casper Bruun Jensen on thinking geographies beyond the human

The UP Department of Geography through the Environment and Development Geographies (EDGE) research group, and the Geography 301 (Environmental Geography) graduate course present Dr Casper Bruun Jensen of Chulalongkorn University. 

His talk More-than-Human Worlds: Anthropocene Geographies beyond the Human happens on Tuesday, 15 October 2024 at 5:30PM in the Geography Conference Room of Pavilion 2 Building of the University of the Philippines-Diliman. 

The lecture is open to the public. 

Abstract

Over the last decades – and especially in the last decade – many social sciences have become more and more interested in nonhumans. The shift is quite dramatic. Where critical social science used to orient primarily, or exclusively, to social, cultural, economic and political relations (analyzed variably with repertoires from Marxism to postmodernism), the disciplines are now populated with actor-networks, assemblages, material-semiotic relations, new materialism, vibrant matter and object-oriented ontologies. 

In this lecture, I trace two histories of these developments. The first is conceptual, from early science and technology studies, where actor-network theory became (in)famous for its symmetrical treatment of human and nonhuman agency  while cyborg analyses emerged from feminist technoscience studies. The second is empirical, as the acceleration of planetary environmental trajectories have forced social science to reckon with earthly powers beyond the human. Throughout, my own research Cambodian environmental infrastructures and urban transformations in Bangkok provide illustration of what it can mean to think geographies beyond the human, and what the implications—conceptual and political—might be.