Yes And....there are no obstacles only creative solutions 

Innovations in Education

Thanks to the COVID-19 Pandemic of 2020-2023 where the world shutdown, many educational institutes pivoted their education from face-to-face learning to one that is online. This has lead to the need to transform education to one that is more flexible and utilised newer technologies.  Alongside this technological advances have also lead to disruptions in society that requires us to adjust how we learn and teach. 

Global education and training expenditure is set to reach at least $10 trillion by 2030.  

Are higher education institutes ready to transform their education for 2030 and beyond? What does modern education entail? Are educational institutes ready for this transformation? What is needed to bring about transformations that make educational programmes fitter for the future. 

Bringing about reforms in education systems during times of disruptions is one of the most difficult tasks anyone can face for many reasons. Tackling educational reforms in times of uncertainty is a daunting task.  How to start? How to bring about transformations? But also what to offer and how to offer our programmes? 

I have been leading educational transformations. We set about bringing about the innovations into our programme using a 5-phased plan (see Blanford  Verplanke (2023)) and working closely with our education team (see King et al., (2024), Primera et al., (2025)). 

Need help transforming your education? Get in touch.

Making GIS accessible in the health sciences

As a GIS analyst who works in applying GIS and spatial analysis to better understand health inequalities, risks and outcomes, I am interested in how to breakdown barriers and make GIS accessible across disciplines- in particular the health sciences. John Snow's 1854 Cholera map has become a universal example of how maps can be used to understand disease distribution, yet GIS is still often absent from health curriculum.  Over the years we have been examining the barriers to the uptake of GIS, particularly in the health sciences, so that we can enhance the uptake of GIS in this field so as to enhance geospatial literacy in health professionals but also to make other subjects such as statistics more fun!  

Blanford (2024) Geographic information, geospatial technologies and spatial data science for health. Pp376. CRC Taylor & Francis.

Blanford, J.I. (2025) Temperature variations across space and time: making statistics fun with geographic information and spatial analysis. Primus.1-21 https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10511970.2025.2477280 and check out the short videos at https://www.youtube.com/@justineblanford2030 to help get you started.

Teaching and Learning

As the quantity and availability of geospatially enabled data continues to increase dramatically, so do the concomitant challenges and opportunities associated with the appropriate gathering, analyzing and dissemination of the findings from these data. Geographic Information and Analysis of these data clearly plays a central role in understanding the world around us as well as addressing many real-world problems.  Over the years I have been fortunate to have taught in a variety of courses (listed below) in different higher education institutes and worked with students on a variety of projects.

Courses Taught and/or Developed

I teach in the Master's of Geo-Information Science and Earth Observation as well as the Master's in Spatial Engineering.

ITC - University of Twente, Netherlands

• 2021-present Geo-Health (5EC ) and see CRC Press Book

• 2021-2025 Geo-Health (7EC) and see CRC Press Book

• 2021-2025 Global Challenges, Local Actions: Keynote Lecture Geo-Health

• 2022-2025 Spatial Engineering: Resilient Cities: Tutor

• 2024-2025 Spatial Engineering: Climate Transition in the Ijssel Delta

• Spatial Engineering: Food Security: Geo-Health for healthy food environments

Short courses

• 2024 Masterclass Geospatial for Planetary Health. Geoversity short course (< 10 hours).

  • Video: Disasters  and health: responding to health risks associated with disasters. 

  • Video: Mapping vector-borne diseases: malaria as an example.

  • Video: Mapping accessibility to health services.

  • Video: Tackling health and disease with geographic information and geospatial technologies. 

• 2022 ERASMUS+ (3EC) Teaching in multi-modal learning environments. 10 Sessions (online). Apr-Jul

• 2021 Training the Trainer: Digital Earth Africa Training. 10 Sessions (online). June-Aug 2021.

• 2021 “Women are doing it for themselves”: Identifying strengths, activating strengths, applying strengths. 4 Sessions (hybrid). May-Dec 2021

Courses Taught and/or Developed

During my time as a visiting professor in the Europubhealth+ programme Integration Module at the EHESP School of Public Health in Rennes (France)  (2025):

Lecture in

• Climate Health, Disaster Health, One Health? Geodata and geospatial technologies for health 

Workshop in

• GIS for Health introduces students to GIS using the John Snow Cholera data. Adapted from chapter 1 in Blanford, J.I. (2024) Geographic information, geospatial technologies and spatial data science for health. Pp376. CRC Taylor & Francis.

The data can be found on: https://github.com/jb2018/geohealth_snow2025

Video - Intro to QGIS

Video - Explore data in QGIS

Video - Analysis using point pattern methods in QGIS

As part of “Building innovative and sustainable solutions to global health challenges“ developed a case study on:

• Heat and health in Rennes within the context of environmental injustice

Courses Taught and/or Developed

While in the USA at the Pennsylvania State University, I taught in the Master's of Geographic Information Systems  (MGIS). Some of the courses I taught in the program as well as in the undergrad geography program are listed below.

• Geog 586 Geographic Information Analysis (OER) 

• Geog 583 Geospatial System Analysis and Design

• Geog 591 GIS for Analysis of Health  

• Geog 596A Adviser for Individual Studies (Capstone Project I: Proposal Development for MGIS online students)

• Geog 596B Adviser for individual Studies (Capstone Project II: Capstone Project for MGIS online students)

• Geog 596 Individual Studies (Independent Study for Resident Students)

• Geog 364 Spatial Analysis 

• Workshop - Capstone Development Workshop for MGIS Students

• Workshop - Advising in an online environment workshop for Faculty

Lectures in

• 2019 SoDA 502 Social Data Analytics (SoDA)

• 2018-2019 Geog 260 (Geographic Information in a Changing World)

• 2018-2019 Geog 500 (Introduction to Geographic Research)

• 2019 ENT597 Infectious Disease Dynamics

• 2019 Global Health, College of Medicine (Hershey, PA)

• 2017 Geog160: Geography and the role of health dynamics for food security

• 2013 Demography Seminar Course

• 2013 HHD 397: Introductory Global Leadership Seminar, PSU (in Global Leadership Initiative, College of Health and Human Development).

• 2011 Introduction to Global Health 

Workshops and Training

• Geospatial Education Session. What education and training is needed for a new generation of geospatial scientists? AGILE, Glasgow, 2024

• GI Science education in an AI world: educating scientists and practitioners. GIScience, Leeds, September 2023

• Geospatial Education – Geospatial Education 5.0: New Paradigms for Geospatial Training and Education. AGILE, Delft, June 2023

• Geospatial Education – Transitioning from emergency online to a new normal. AGILE, Lithuania, 2022

• Geospatial Education – Teaching through a pandemic and beyond.  AGILE, Greece. 2021

• Global Conversations on GIScience Education: Global. Panel 3: Convergence, 2021

• Global Conversations on GIScience Education: EU Region. Panel 2: Implementation Pedagogies for Resilient GIScience Education, 2020

• Global Conversations on GIScience Education: EU Region.  Panel 1: Pedagogies for Resilient GIScience Education, 2020

• Online Symposium: Advancing geospatial education for working professionals on campus and online. UCGIS, 2020

• Spatial Data Science Symposium: “Setting the Spatial Data Science Agenda”

GeoHealth

• GIS for health Workshop using QGIS or ArcGIS Pro, 2025, Rennes, France 

• Geo-Health for disaster epidemiology: the link between disasters and health and minimizing short and long-term risks. 2024. EUMA - European Master on Disaster Management, Enschede, NL.

• Remote sensing and Spatial data for planetary health (Blanford, Paris, Kioko). WEON Epidemiology & Planetary Health. 28 to 30 May 2024 in Zeist 

• GeoHealth for Health Practitioners, 2023, Hengelo, NL

• GIS and EOS for planetary health - linking geographic information and health, ECTHM, Nov 2023, Utrecht, NL 

• “Women are doing it for themselves”: Identifying strengths, activating strengths, applying strengths (Aug/Sep 2021) 

• TRELIS for Women in the Geospatial Sciences: Building Leaders for tomorrow

Awards

• Gladys Snyder Education Award "Sensing our environment: connecting the digital world with the real world" 

Advising and student projects.

See past student projects 

Education Projects 

See some of the education projects we run and past workshops we have hosted.

• Transforming educational programmes. Creating education programmes that are fit for the future. Launched an updated programme in 2025.🙂

• Transforming educational programmes. Creating a smarter academic year (Netherlands).

• Co-founder of geoversity an online education and resource platform (ITC, University Twente, Netherlands).

• Creating an e!GeoCommunity Education. E!GEO Talk Series to address important aspects of e!education 

• Development of an Online Student Center (2016). Development of an online student center that promotes engaged student scholarship through the development of an interactive community-based environment that enables the exchange of knowledge, enhances collaborations between students, fosters learning through interaction, builds professional social networks, and enriches the “university experience” for online students through opportunities to participate in events on campus. 

Sources

• Blanford, J.I. (2025) Temperature variations across space and time: making statistics fun with geographic information and spatial analysis. Primus.1-21 https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10511970.2025.2477280 

• Frazier, A., Nelson, T., Kedron, P., Shook, E. Dodge, S., Murray, A., Goodchild, M., Battersby, S., Blanford, J., Claramunt, C., Holler, J., Koylu, C., Lee, A., Manson, S., Salap-Ayca, S., Wilson, J., Zhao, B.,  Bennett, L., Cabrera-Arnau, C., Franklin, R., McKenzie, G., Miller, H., Oshan, T., Rey S., Rowe, F., Shook, E.,  Spielman, S., Xu, W., (2025) Evolving Curriculum for GIScience in an Age of Disruptions. Transactions in GIS. 29:e70048. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/tgis.70048

• Primera, R., Blanford, J.I., Lemmens, R., Ronzhin, S. (2025) A Comprehensive Approach to Curriculum Development: Integrating a 5-Phase Redesign, ABC Learning Design, and GeoCourseHub Ontology for Multi-Modal Geospatial Education. SEFI Conference, September 2025

• King, J., Primera, R., Verkroost, M.J., Verheij, L.,Cray, L., Blanford, J.I. (2024) Collaborative course (re)design: adapting learning design to support curriculum transformations. SEFI Conference, Lausanne, September 2024.

• Blanford, J.I. and Verplanke, J. (2023) Transforming curriculums for an age of multi-modal education: a 5-phase approach. SEFI conference, Dublin September 12th 2023

• Blanford, J.I.Bowlick, F., Gidudu, A., Gould, M., Griffin, A.L., Kar, G., Kemp, K., de Róiste, M., de Sabbata, S., Sinton, D., Strobl, J., Tate, N., Toppen, F., Unwin, D. (2021) LOCKDOWN LESSONS: an international conversation on resilient GI science teaching. Journal of Geography in Higher Education. 10.1080/03098265.2021.1986687

• Blanford, J.I.,Kennelly, P., King, B., Miller, D., Bracken, T. (2020) Merits of capstone projects in an online graduate program for working professionals. Journal of Geography in Higher Education. DOI: 10.1080/03098265.2019.1694874

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