Human Geography

Human geography is concerned with people, places, and the forces that connect and divide them. As the current course description indicates, this programme at Leeds Beckett addresses important contemporary topics including migration, identity, sustainability, social injustice, cities, and globalisation, which together represent some of the most pressing challenges facing societies today. Human geography provides the spatial and social analytical tools to understand how these phenomena unfold across different scales, from the neighbourhood to the global.

This part-time programme at Leeds Beckett University includes a year abroad, giving you the opportunity to study human geography at an international partner institution and to encounter the spatial and social questions you are studying from a different national vantage point. The part-time structure makes the programme accessible to students who cannot commit to full-time study, whether because of work, caring responsibilities, or other commitments. Leeds is a city undergoing rapid change, with a complex human geography of regeneration, inequality, migration, and cultural transformation that provides an excellent real-world context for the subject.

You will study urban geography, migration and diaspora, the politics of identity and place, environmental justice, globalisation and development, and the qualitative and quantitative research methods geographers use to investigate these questions. The year abroad adds a comparative international perspective that enriches your understanding of how human geography plays out differently in different parts of the world.

Graduates from human geography programmes move into careers in planning, local and national government, international development, environmental consultancy, social research, education, journalism, and the third sector. The research skills and analytical breadth that geography develops make graduates adaptable across many professional contexts. Postgraduate study in geography, planning, urban studies, or development is a common next step.