ERIN TORKELSON

  • About
  • Research
  • Teaching
    • Teaching Context
    • Teaching Praxis
    • Assessment and Evaluation
  • Impact
    • Net1's Payment System
    • The Postal Payment System & Debt
    • Universal Basic Income & Covid-19
    • Digital Welfare Profiteers
    • Global Financial Inclusion
    • Land & Housing Redistribution
  • Leadership
  • Awards
  • Talks
  • Contact
  • About
  • Research
  • Teaching
    • Teaching Context
    • Teaching Praxis
    • Assessment and Evaluation
  • Impact
    • Net1's Payment System
    • The Postal Payment System & Debt
    • Universal Basic Income & Covid-19
    • Digital Welfare Profiteers
    • Global Financial Inclusion
    • Land & Housing Redistribution
  • Leadership
  • Awards
  • Talks
  • Contact
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#RESIST. Geography Building, Berkeley, CA. Photo: SocImage

Teaching experience

In teaching Geography courses, I want students to understand themselves – their histories, their knowledges, their practices – in relation to their communities and the world. I show how histories of expropriation, slavery and colonialism have produced and continue to produce our contemporary geographies of power and difference. I believe students learn best when they are analyzing social theory and grounding such theory in practice. I encourage students to draw on their experiences to transform the material we read. In so doing, I equip them with the tools for responding to urgent global challenges. 

I have honed my teaching skills by working with diverse students at diverse institutions on three continents over ten years. I have taught large lectures (~400) and small seminars (~20) at all levels - lower division, upper division, and graduate - in person and online. My courses draw on scholarship from critical human geography, political economy, critical race theory, and 
postcolonial/feminist science and technology studies. I have designed courses on Nature, Culture, Power and Global Environmental Politics at Berkeley; African Urbanisms and Problematising Cities from the South ​at the UWC. I have also taught Introduction to Human Geography; Economic Geographies; and Research Methods at Durham.
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Photo: Leopold Podlashuc

TEACHING AWARDS

In 2015, I won the Outstanding Graduate Student Instructor teaching award at the University of California, Berkeley.

My Teaching

What Students Say

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UNIVERSITY OF THE WESTERN CAPE
African Urbanisms, 2024
Small Honours module

Complete set of Evaluations
"I enjoy being pushed to think more critically. I also learned to read to understand which also allowed me to pinpoint the different authors' main arguments. This made it easy to compare different articles/authors."

"It is a highly valuable [module] that all Honours students could benefit from. Being able find good sources, read with understanding, and finally write a literature review can be a daunting task and this module alleviated a lot of that stress."
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"I really valued the face-to-face interactions; the opportunity to be able to choose readings that are relevant to my study/ research project, and the opportunity to improve my academic reading writing skills."

"While the readings and having to submit reading journals every week was difficult, it was very helpful at the end and i got to understand their value towards my writing skills and my final project."



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UNIVERSITY OF THE WESTERN CAPE
Space, Place, Mobilities, 2024
200 person, second year module
Complete set of Evaluations
"All I can say is wow, never knew anything about capitalism just always heard the term but never understood it. Dr Erin is a patient and enthusiastic lecturer which made learning to be exciting."

"I valued learning about the effect of capitalism and colonisation on the world and how it lead to the dispossession of people's land through privatising land; making theft "legal". How due to their land being stolen, people had to find work to provide for their families."

"All her work was interesting and I did not expect to like it as much because I didn't previously enjoy the economic geography part in high school. However, she really took the time to break things down for us to a point where it became really interesting and enjoyable. My favourite part was the social reproduction part because I could bring in my ideas from my humanities classes and women's studies classes. She really helped transform my ideas on the term "housewives" and that we should not judge too quickly. The ideas of interviews were brilliant! I learnt so much from talking to people about their work in a sense that not everything is as it seems. Dr Torkelson was ALWAYS available for consultation even when we just waltzed in to speak to her without emailing her first (which we did feel bad for). She gave such amazing feedback on my assignment during my consultation and said that that we shouldn't stress about how different many of our assignments were to each other because she can "mark on a wide range"...and she really did. We were able to bring much of our own ideas into our writing, considering that it was all economically related which was mind blowing because I always saw that part of geo as quite rigid where we could not bring on our own ideas. Truly an amazing and helpful lecturer!"

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DURHAM UNIVERSITY
Introduction to Human Geography, 2022
400 person, introductory module
Complete set of Evaluations

"You could tell that Erin felt very deeply about her lecture content, and this has meant that the lectures have been more memorable. Upon asking people about the human lectures most people say they remember Erin's the most."

"Dr Torkelson in particular was one of my favourite lecturers from the year, always made the lectures fun but also thought–provoking, even when the material was abstract. The "walls, borders, flows" lecture was probably the single lecture I've attended which made me think the most, I was able to form an emotional connection to the material and see the more personal side of the issues discussed through the use of poetry and personal stories linked to the overarching concepts."

"Space and Place encouraged me to look at my own personal experience of the world in a way that I had never considered before. The use of more modern and relevant literature made the idea of reading engaging and made what we were learning feel more relevant to everyday life."

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UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY
​Global Environmental Politics, 2020
40 person, upper division, online course
Complete set of Evaluations
"The best thing about the course was relevancy during the pandemic and Black Lives Matter. It focused on current topics and breaking down how they have come to be established. This was eye opening to say the least. I would definitely recommend this class to other students. Erin was fantastic and I hope to take more of her classes, very precise and articulated, challenged me beyond expression."

"Erin was very engaged with all of her students, but in a gentle way. I really appreciate her teaching style, her commitment, and her ability to make students feel heard. I am a DSP [Disability Student Program] Student and she was very helpful and timely with providing accommodations." 

"The class setup was great. Recorded lectures and readings were interesting and set the stage for very engaging class discussions. Professor Torkelson was also wonderful about letting the discussion go freely between class members and providing thought provoking questions when it died down." 

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UNIVERSITY OF THE WESTERN CAPE
Geographies of Nature and Land, 2020
10 person, graduate seminar, converted from in person to online
“I would like my lecturer to know that she made the learning experience more bearable. She was always in contact with the class. She never left us to our own devices. She loaded resources on Ikamva and would ask us to communicate with her if anything was wrong and if there was she would fix it immediately. She reached out to us on different platforms and mediums. She called us during office hours which was different an important for those of us without data [i.e. access to internet during the first months of Covid-19]. Speaking to your lecturer on the phone brought an element of closeness and that someone is there in terms of a support system. It makes a hard experience less lonely.” 

"The lecturer assisted students in exposing meanings in readings that may not have been apparent immediately, which pushed us to approach texts in different ways in order to uncover the meanings of texts ourselves. This benefited me in my other modules as well when looking at other texts, as I could see myself gradually improving with the way that I approach texts as the weeks went by. The lecturer was also very familiar with the use of online tools which helped when lockdown was implemented."

Teaching Areas & Syllabi

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Photo: Mail and Guardian

Political Economy

Genealogies of Political Economy
Racial Capitalism
Credit and Crisis
Credit and Crisis
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Photo: Reuters / Yuri Gripas

Global Studies

Development in History & Theory
Race, Gender, and Development
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Photo: Johnny Miller

Urban Studies

Problematising the City from Africa
African Urbanisms
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African Urbanisms
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Photo: Polynesian Voyaging Society

Introduction to Geography

Introduction to Geography
​Space, Place and Inequality
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Photo: Watergrabbing.net

Nature & Culture

Global Environmental Justice
​Nature, Culture, Power
Political Ecology
Global Environmental Justice
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Photo: Framer Framed

Research Methods

Ethnographic Field Methods
Research & Writing for Popular Audiences​

Training next generation Academics

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UWC Postgraduate Students

I supervised the following students to completion:
​- 1 Honours student (2024)

​I am currently supervising the following students: 
- 2
 PhD students 
​- 1 MA students
​- 2 Honours students


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Durham Graduate Students

I supervised the following students to completion:
- 1 PhD student (2024)
- 3 MA students (2023)
- 10 BA Honours students (2022)
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Applying for grad school?

If you are interested in studying at UWC, please get in touch. I can supervise dissertations in political economy, critical development studies and postcolonial/feminist geographies.
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