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This paper makes a critical assessment of problem-based learning (PBL) in geography.It assesses what PBL is, in terms ofthe range of definitions in use and in light of its origins in specific disciplines such as medicine. It considers experiences of PBL from the standpoint of students, instructors and managers (e.g. deans), and asks how well suited this method of learning is for use in geography curricula, courses and assignments. It identifies some 'best practices in PBL', as well as some useful sources for those seeking to adopt PBL in geography. It concludes that PBL is not a teaching and learning method to be adopted lightly, and that if the chances of successful implementation are to be maximized, careful attention to course preparation and scenario design is essential. More needs to be known about the circumstances in which applications of PBL have not worked well and also about the nature of the inputs needed from students, teachers and others to reap its benefits.

A student-driven eldwork method, focused in a local metropolitan area, is described and assessed. Developed for a second-level course in cultural geography, it was inspired by the 'Geographical Expeditions' originally devised by William Bunge in the 1960s. It is one solution to maintaining eldwork in the syllabus for a large class, at the same time as providing bene ts for participants in terms of challenge and autonomy. Student responses are compared with the merits of eldwork as claimed in the literature. In view of concerns expressed about increasing student 'disengagement' from commitment to university study, active participation in a 'Geographical Expedition' is a strong motivating factor.

The interconnections between trees and memorialisation are explored at three particular sites in the city of Christchurch, New Zealand. Memorial trees have been used as a seemingly blank canvas, to be coloured by the paintbox of memory. The ability of such trees to carry significant memories of past events into the present involves myriad slippages and all kinds of untidiness: the settings in which memorial trees are asked to perform are subject to significant and often transformative cultural change; the trees themselves are active organic components in the changing coconstitution of place and place meanings; and tree places can afford emotional responses and serve as spaces of much more immediate and prereflexive practice and performance. These dynamics suggest rather different connections between trees and memorialisation, which we term treescape memories.

The New Zealand Performance Based Research Fund (PBRF) has come into being in the last decade in the wider context of the neoliberalising and corporatising of the academy. It is far more than its outward form: that is, an innocent accounting of the research‐related activities of academics for the purposes of determining institutional funding levels. But neither is it only a process that seeks (to use Judith Butler's terms) to constrain, subordinate and discipline individual academics. Drawing on her book, Giving an Account of Oneself (2005), we suggest that the PBRF can also be used to enable and sustain through creating spaces to critique neoliberalising managerialism.