Researching the City (P02319)

? Credit Points : 20 ? SCQF Level : 11 ? Acronym : GEO-P-RESE

This subject is designed to provide specialist postgraduate research training in qualitative methods used for understanding and analysing cities. The subject assumes that advanced level students require two types of knowledge in terms of researching the city: (1) an historicised and appropriately contextualised understanding of the different knowledge frames by which cities have been recorded, comprehended and studied (including a sense of the situated production of these distinct knowledge frames); and (2) an introduction into the techniques of data collection, representation and analysis that flow from these quite distinctive knowledge lenses, including a sense of how they might serve distinctive research approaches and goals. Specifically the course delivers advanced understandings of the role of qualitative methods in urban research. It allows students to develop an understanding of a range of relevant methodological approaches by way of the following themes: urban semiotics, urban ethnography, cinematic cities, sensory cities, city voices, urban morphologies, and the city as text. The course content considers specifically the relationship between these methodological themes and, on the one hand, the ways we 'know' the city (epistemology) and, on the other, the way we research the city (techniques). The course delivers this content through a structure in which an actual city space is investigated using these differing qualitative lenses.

Entry Requirements

none

Subject Areas

Home subject area

Postgraduate Research Courses (School of GeoSciences), (School of GeoSciences, Schedule N)

Delivery Information

? Normal year taken : Postgraduate

? Delivery Period : Semester 1 (Blocks 1-2)

? Contact Teaching Time : 2 hour(s) per week for 11 weeks

First Class Information

Date	Start	End	Room	Area	Additional Information
22/09/2008	10:00	12:00	Room 3.18, Old Infirmary (Geography)	Central

Summary of Intended Learning Outcomes

At the end of the course students will:
- Appreciate the skills required for postgraduate research on the city
- Understand what methods and techniques are relevant to what kinds of studies and projects;
- Be equipped to discern the appropriate methodologies for the research projects they wish to pursue
- Know the relationship between theory and methodology and techniques;
- Be able to analysis critically different urban knowledge frames and associated methodologies
- To ascertain and apply specific data collection and analysis frameworks
- Be able to present in written, visual, verbal and other forms, analyses of specific components of the city.