The Faculty of Environmental and Urban Change is home to two graduate programs, Environmental Studies and Geography, both of which offer Master's degrees and the PhD, as well as two graduate diplomas.
Our graduate degree programs are designed to train and empower diverse thinkers through multi-disciplinary approaches and hands-on learning opportunities to make positive change.
Programs
Environmental Studies (MES, MES-Planning, MES/JD, & PhD)
Our Environmental Studies graduate degree programs build on an interdisciplinary approach to the environment in which the social sciences, humanities, arts, and natural sciences meet and inform each other.
The programs prepare students to be agents of change through research, education, advocacy across the public, private and non-profit sectors.
LEARN MORE ABOUT THE GRADUATE PROGRAM IN ENVIRONMENTAL STUDIES
Geography (MA, MSc, PhD)
Join one of Canada’s leading graduate programs in Geography.
With an international reputation for critical scholarship, York Geography is a leader in migration and settlement, urban geography, political economy and political ecology, feminist geography, and the physical geography of northern and extreme environments.
Graduate Research Spotlights
We are committed to mobilizing knowledge for a just and sustainable future in all our programs. Our graduate students are conducting innovative and impactful research projects. Further information on student projects is available on the program pages for Geography and Environmental Studies, but a sample from each is provided below.
Water, Global Health and Urbanization
Hillary Birch’s PhD project in Environmental Studies conceptualizes water quality as more than just a straightforward biophysical measurement. Instead it is something contested by a range of actors who are drawn into water’s flows in urban space, either in their daily life, or through projects implemented to change the flows of water and waste in a city.
Exploring Queer Woman Body in the Aging Process
Vanessa Dunn’s MES project and installation, “Pastures”, is inspired by their own experience as an aging queer woman and the environments that have cultivated and nurtured their body. Inspired by queer feminist art, queer ecology and environments, and women and aging, “Pastures” is an installation that incorporates photography, textile, and printing, mixed with queer DIY punk motifs.
Flood disasters in Coastal Cities in the Philippines
Ria Jhoanna Ducusin’s PhD research in Geography is informed by a political economy of local urbanization and feminist political ecology scholarship. She is examining how urban flooding in the Philippines results from political decisions, economic interests, power relations, and the ways in which intersectional axes of gender and class shape the differential impacts of flood disasters.
Tracking Permafrost Thaw in the Western Canadian Artic
MSc Geography student Rachel Pellegrino utilized biological indicators within a lake sediment core to examine recent changes and the consequences of permafrost thaw and drainage on a small lake in the Mackenzie Delta region of Canada’s western Arctic.
