formerly M-GGR/01 Geography

This field, also addressing didactic-educational objectives, focuses on the relationships between environment, individuals, and society at different scales. It encompasses facts, representations, materiality, and meanings. Using key concepts such as space, territory, environment, place, landscape, and region, it critically analyzes the world and the discourses and constructions of meaning that human groups negotiate over time in relation to their environment.

Research in this field produces analyses of spatial processes, population evolution and settlement patterns, landscape and territorial heritage, sustainability, and the interactions between humans, non-human agents, and the abiotic environment. It also investigates socio-spatial conflicts, cultural, perceptual, and humanistic understandings of spatiotemporal and territorial dimensions, as well as diachronic analyses of territory, its knowledge, and related narratives and representations.
The field employs both quantitative and qualitative methods, including field surveys, analysis of secondary data and archival documents, interviews and questionnaires, visual and action research, and cartographic and paracartographic representations, integrated with geographic information systems (GIS) and remote sensing technologies.

Specifically, the main areas of research include:

• history of geography;
• geography teaching;
• geography of the sea;
• marine environmental education, focusing on ocean literacy and ocean citizenship;
• island geography;
• the responses of local communities to environmental, social, and cultural changes.