Situating myself in Geography

Thinking about my position in geography

Thinking about the four subfields in geography (human, physical, human and environment, and GIScience) as theorised by Zimmerer (2007, 2010), I've tried to conceptualise my position and academic interests using charts, graphs, and visual depictions.  Included below is a proportional Venn diagram, an interactive pie chart, a circle packing diagram, and an alluvial chart and these illustrate my general interests across geography.

Figure 1 is a Venn diagram with the circles weighted towards my preferred subfield and coloured using a heat ramp to show my preference towards that subfield of geography.  The diagram was made using the Eulerr application which is based on a R Package with the same functioning.

Figure 1. A proportional Venn diagram of my position in the four subfields.

Below in Figure 2, I’ve included a simple pie chart, which was made using the online Datawrapper tool, and it includes some interactive features which highlight a specific selection of data.  The Datawrapper portal is great for making simple graphs, tables, and charts in more interactive and visually appealing formats.

 

Figure 2. An interactive pie chart of my previously studied classes and modules.

The final two charts were made using the online RAWGraphs tool.  Figure 2 includes a circle packing diagram of my previously studied classes and modules which are weighted based on the credits of each class and colour coded to reflect the level of study.  Following this is Figure 4, which is an alluvial diagram with a flow-chart style design to link my broader interests in human geography with subtopics in the discipline and my preferred scale of study.  Rawgraphs is a little more limited than Datawrapper’s functionality, but it offers a greater number of charts.  

Figure 3. A circle packing of my previously studied classes and modules.

Figure 4. An alluvial diagram of my interests in human geography and my preferred scale of research.

References

Larsson. J. (2020). eulerr: Area-Proportional Euler and Venn Diagrams with Ellipses. R package version 6.1.0, https://cran.r-project.org/package=eulerr.

Lorenz, M., Aisch, G., & Kokkelink, D. (2012). Datawrapper: Create Charts and Maps [Software]. Available from https://www.datawrapper.de/

Mauri, M., Elli, T., Caviglia, G., Uboldi, G., & Azzi, M. (2017). RAWGraphs: A Visualisation Platform to Create Open Outputs. InProceedings of the 12th Biannual Conference on Italian SIGCHI Chapter (p. 28:1–28:5). New York, NY, USA: ACM. https://doi.org/10.1145/3125571.3125585

Zimmerer, K. S. (2007). Cultural ecology (and political ecology) in the ‘environmental borderlands’: Exploring the expanded connectivities within geography. Progress in Human Geography, 31(2), 227–244. https://doi.org/10.1177/0309132507075372

Zimmerer, K. S. (2010). Retrospective on Nature–Society Geography: Tracing Trajectories (1911–2010) and Reflecting on Translations. Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 100(5), 1076–1094. https://doi.org/10.1080/00045608.2010.523343