In the academic year 1997/98, a master's degree in physical education and geography was opened at the Faculty of Education of the TUL and at the same time the Geography Worksite started its activity. After one year, this worksite was transformed into a department.
The construction of the Geographical Information Systems Laboratory, used mainly for teaching students, was a great boost to the department’s development.
Apart from teaching, the department has publishing activities, is involved in projects, forms professional contacts with both local government and the private sector in the Liberec region and cooperates with other departments at the faculty. It has built valuable contacts abroad, especially in neighbouring Germany and Poland.
The department has renewed its membership in professional organisations such as the Czech Geographical Society and the Czech Cartographic Society and is now seen as a fully-fledged scientific workplace by the geographical community.
Among the events that contributed significantly to promoting geography in Liberec was the Annual International Conference of the Czech Geographical Society - Geodny Liberec 2008, where prominent Czech and foreign experts in the field of geography met and talked. Furthermore, there were Workshops on Geography Education (January 2009, 2010), the Transdiciplinary International Colloquium: Place-Space-Landscape (February 2010) and annual involvement in GIS Days (http://gisday.tul.cz/). The Department helped organize the 22nd Cartographic Conference in 2017. Along with regional collaborators, it organized the "Map and Applied Geography" workshop. Other major events undoubtedly include organizing the 2019 IBA Global Conference (http://18iba.tul.cz/), a meeting of over 80 experts from nearly 50 countries. The department also organizes regular lecture afternoons with presentations on various geographical topics, from travel experiences to professional presentations of geographical projects, such as the search for the sources of the Amazon.
Projects are an integral part of the department's activities. For instance, the department was the principal researcher in the European Social Fund's Human Resources Development project “Professional Training for Territorial Analytical Bases”, implemented in 2006-2008, in cross-border cooperation projects, such as GECON (https://www. gecon.online/ and https://www.geogecon.com/), or in TACR application projects “Proactive Solutions to the Negative Effects of Over-tourism” and international projects, for example “Water Retention in a Critical Zone from a Biological and Geological Point of View” (COST Action WATSON).
