Integrative Geography as Experiential Learning: Resilient Landscapes of Munster, Ireland

In April 2023, the Department of Geography & GIS at the University of Cincinnati inaugurated the first of four realizations of integrative geographic experiential learning in Ireland with the launch of its short-term study abroad program Ireland: Munster’s Resilient Landscapes. This interdisciplinary program explores how intersections of physical and human geography have produced resilient cultural landscapes throughout Ireland’s historic province of Munster. Students examine and interact with human modification of the landscape from Ireland’s Neolithic Age (ca. 4000 BC—2500 BC), Bronze Age (2500 BC—500 BC), Iron Age and the arrival of the Celts (500 BC), and the origin of Christianity in Ireland (400 AD). Through this international program, students visit a variety of physical geographic landscapes with megalithic monuments and religious structures in order to identify and explain human impacts upon these physical spaces. Students then assess how these impacts generate cultural landscapes, how historical and current intersections among human geography, physical geography, archaeology, and religions/ belief systems contribute to their resiliency, and how these landscapes impact and shape present-day Munster society. Our goal is for students to meet the program’s learning objectives within the broader framework of a shared immersive learning environment of integrative geography that contains both structured and extracurricular activities. Operating with the philosophy that experience is socially and culturally constructed and that a natural setting provides the optimal learning place for experiential education, we intend for this program to be a holistic educational experience that reinforces connections between students’ past lived experiences and future learning opportunities. Future plans are to further broaden this integrative geography series to include similarly structured programs of Connaught’s Pristine Landscapes, Ulster’s Religious Landscapes, and Leinster’s Ancient Landscapes.