Visiting Fellow: urban geography, climate change and Jamaican education
Dr. Kevon Rhiney joins us for Hilary Term from the University of the West Indies, Mona, Jamaica, as a Commonwealth Scholarship Commission Fellow. He will be focusing on the fields of urban geography and sustainable urban planning.
Dr. Rhiney, who is a Lecturer in Human Geography at the UWI, has come to Oxford with the aim of revising and updating the syllabus content for urban geography at the UWI. His areas of expertise are social research and theory, sustainable urban development, climate change impacts, public health and safety and agri-marketing. He will be working here on a three month fellowship. He will consult with a number of colleagues in the UK, all of whom have regional interests in Latin America and the Caribbean, and who possess a wealth of experience researching urban development challenges in developing countries.
In addition he will be using his time here to update his own knowledge and skills in the specific fields of urban geography and sustainable urban planning. In this he will be working very closely with Dr David Howard, University Lecturer in Sustainable Urban Development and Director of the MSc in Sustainable Urban Development.
Dr. Howard's principal research concentrates on the contemporary societies of the Caribbean and Latin America, with a specific focus on urban geography and social sustainability. His interests lie at the interface between social and urban geography, and postcolonial and development studies. Recent research projects have concentrated on the urban environment, development and social change in the Dominican Republic, Jamaica and Barbuda.
One major component of Dr. Rhiney's research in the UK will be to access the wealth of library resources available at the Universities of Oxford and Reading, and colleges in the University of London.
Dr Rhiney will use the knowledge gained during his three month Fellowship to redesign the core urban geography course and urban planning courses at the second and third year undergraduate levels at the UWI and to benchmark them against courses being taught in the UK and other developed countries.
Students at the UWI will be better equipped to comprehend the world around them - in the way people, cultures, economies and societies interact with natural resources and the physical environment, and in understanding important topical issues relating to the environmental and developmental processes.
Dr. Rhiney says, 'I have made a strong personal commitment to make a contribution to the development of my discipline and my department at UWI Mona, and I want to take full advantage of any opportunities to broaden my academic experience. I am particularly keen to develop collaborative research in urban geography and working in partnership with the potential postgraduate students among the Caribbean diaspora in the UK to develop future research projects in the region.'
Published 29 January 2013