The Human Geography Department was established in 1995. Before the department’s founding, its faculty members built up research and educational expertise with notable findings emerging from the study of old maps and historical geography. The faculty is currently staffed by Professor Kenji Tsutsumi and Professor Ren’ya Sato. Professor Tsutsumi’s research focuses on the analysis of social and economic trends in areas of population outflow, and he often engages in exchanges with Western researchers. As part of his research on indigenous knowledge systems and subsistence activities that require use of the environment (such as swidden agriculture, hunting and gathering), Professor Sato primarily carries out fieldwork in Africa and Asia. The course provides students with a substantial education in the field’s theories and methodologies and hopes to expand their interests to a critique and assimilation of methodologies from related fields. During a moment when the scope of human geography is rapidly expanding, the course is designed to help students understand the field’s research frontiers and to encourage their participation in interdisciplinary research, which is increasingly popular.

Professors

TSUTSUMI, Kenji (Ph.D.)

Social and Economic Geography; Research on Depopulated Regions, Regional Transformation and Modernization

SATO, Ren’ya (Ph.D.)

Cultural ecology, resource use, indigenous knowledge and technology, and socio-cultural change of Sub-Saharan Africa and East/Southeast Asia.

Website: http://www.let.osaka-u.ac.jp/geography/sato/satoengmain.html

Associate Professor

IMOTO, Yasuko (MA)

Cultural Anthropology; Ethnographic Studies of Italy and Mediterranean Europe Rethinking of Structural Anthropology; Structural approach to popular culture, Revisiting Space and Place from the Perspective of Dual Societies.