During his sabbatical leave in academic year 2006/07, Assoc Prof Matthias Roth held the following visiting appointments: Visiting Professor, Institute for Atmospheric and Climate Science, ETH Zürich, Switzerland (September 2006 – February 2007); Faculty Research Associate, Department of Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering, ASU, USA (March – April 2007) Visiting Scholar, School of Geographical Sciences, ASU, USA (May – July 2007).

In September 2006, Prof Lily Kong delivered the keynote address on "Towards a publicly relevant geography of religion” at the Emerging Geographies of Belief conference held at the University of Exeter, UK. In December 2006, she was also a keynote speaker at the International Conference of Teaching and Learning in Higher Education held at NUS from 6-8 December 2006 where she spoke on the "Cultures of quality assurance". In April 2007, she spent a week as Visiting Professor at the Department of Geography, National Taiwan University, funded by its Institute of Advanced Studies for Humanities and Social Sciences. She delivered two talks on creative industries, creative clusters, and creative cities, one at the National Taiwan University, and another at the National Taipei University, and spent time workshopping with graduate students. She then delivered a keynote address at the Global Chinese Geographers’ Conference from 27-28 April 2007 at the Kaohsiung Normal University, where she spoke further about cultural capital and global city-making, comparing the cases of Hong Kong, Shanghai and Singapore. In May 2007, she delivered a keynote address to a conference on “Negotiating Religious Identities” at Lancaster University via videoconference from Singapore.

Associate Professor T.C. Chang has been invited by CDTL (Centre for Development of Teaching and Learning) to be involved in various capacities as part of his role as an Outstanding Educator Award winner (2006). He was invited to give a plenary address to teaching assistants from the Faculties of Arts/Social Sciences and Dentistry on “Student Motivation” (CDTL’s Teaching Course for Teaching Assistants), as well as serve an invited facilitator for a Microteaching Workshop in the Professional Development Programme 2007.

Dr WANG Yi-Chen has been granted the NUS Young Investigator Award 2006 by the Office of Deputy President, Research and Technology. The award offers research-funding to highly-promising young faculty members whose research projects cross disciplinary boundaries, contributing significantly to the development of research at NUS.

Between December 2005 and July 2006, the GIS and Map Resource Unit of the Department worked with the Singapore Red Cross, Tomorrow’s Hope, and the Nias BRR (Nias Reconstruction and Rehabilitation Agency) on a Nias GIS Project that used geospatial technology to facilitate the reconstruction process in Nias, Indonesia, which suffered severe tsunami and earthquake loss in 2005. Dr Wang Yi-Chen, Dr Feng Chen-Chieh and Assoc Prof David Higgitt supervised a total of six Geography undergraduates to process remote sensing imageries, construct, compile and update spatial data, and develop GIS and GPS training manuals for the local government. In July, Dr Wang Yi-Chen and Dr. Feng Chen-Chieh also presented a seminar and conducted a GIS and GPS training workshop in Gunungsitoli, Nias for local government officials and the NGO community. The workshop was very well-received and highly appreciated by the Nias BRR. At the end of the project, the Nias BRR and the local government showed great enthusiasm for the continuous support of utilizing GIS in disaster relief and reconstruction.

Dr C.C. Feng, invited along with Dr. Wang, Yi-Chen, to the round table discussion on GIS at the Conference for the Asian IT Standaradization (CAIST) in Singapore on 2nd and 3rd November 2006. The CAIST conference was jointly organized by the Center of the International Cooperation for Computerization and the Japan Standard Association, and supported by the IT Standards Committee, Singapore. The conference invited Asian experts of technologies, such as GIS and Information Security, to discuss specific standardization issues that merit further attention

Dr C.C. Feng served as the Judge for the map competition of the International Map Trade Association (IMTA) Global Conference and Trade Fair with Assoc Prof Victor R. Savage and Dr Wang Yi-Chen in November 2006 to evaluate a total of 75 entries from all over the world for the competition.

Assoc Prof David Higgitt was a Visiting Fellow at the School of Geography Planning and Architecture, University of Queensland from July to November 2006.

Assoc Prof David Higgitt was a judge for a digital art competition on the environment organised by the British Council Singapore and the Scholastic Environment Fund. The theme of climate change attracted over 400 entries from school and JC students. The exhibition of the winning entries was from 1 April to 30 June 2007 at the Singapore Science Centre, Singapore.