GEOGRAPHY IN THE ORGANIZATIONAL STRUCTURE OF ACADEMIC INSTITUTIONS – SELECTED ISSUES

Abstract

The goal of this article is to indicate the position that geography occupies within the
organization structure of universities in given countries and to provide an overview of the
research of research that predominated in the institutions and departments connected to
geography in these universities. Separately, I draw attention to the structure of geographical
institutions in Poland and identify the most serious institutional and organizational issues that
hamper their effectiveness and development. The results seem to point to a process of gradual
disintegration of the field. Research teams in the area of physical geography are clearly
drifting towards the “hard sciences”, and within them, particularly the natural sciences, while
research agendas that deal with socio-economic geography are strongly leaning towards the
humanities. The link between physical geography and its related fields of study (geology,
ecology, geophysics), however, seems to be the prevalent one, which explains the
increasingly interdisciplinary nature of research teams handling modern-day environmental
problems. Finally, an overview of institutes of geography has established that these typically
fall under departments of natural sciences rather than social sciences or the humanities.