About Human Geography research

Human geography research has been conducted at Karlstad University for the past 40 years, initially focusing on issues of local and regional development, tourism and landscape studies. As the subject and its research have grown, new research directions and themes have emerged alongside the already established ones. Another characteristic of contemporary human geography research at Karlstad University is the interest in analyzing the ambiguous interactions between the social and the spatial at different geographical scales from a critical perspective.

Two broad themes can be discerned in this human geography research. The first theme concerns planning and development issues in a broad sense, both in rural and urban environments. Issues of democracy and planning conflicts, demographic change, migration and everyday mobility fall within this theme. The second theme is tourism geography research, often with a sustainability focus. In addition to the above research themes, there is also research in areas like didactics, spatial theory and geographical concept development, geopolitics, digitization, identity and postcolonial theory, and racism.

For more than two decades, the Department of Human Geography in Karlstad has offered and organized postgraduate courses for Swedish and Nordic PhD students in Human Geography, within the framework of the National Program for Postgraduate Courses in the subject.