I have been working on digital mapping projects across a number of disciplines and for external partners over the past decade., as well as teaching it to students, academics and other research professionals in the GLAM sector. Digital Mapping is a methodology with exciting potential for humanities researchers (and a long history in some disciplines) that is now easier than ever to integrate into your research practice due to the rapid increase in online tools. Some examples of my work in this area are:
Digital Cartographies of the Roman Campagna
The primary aim of this project is to examine the relationship between artistic depictions and imagery of the Roman Campagna (the flat plains of the countryside around Rome more or less coinciding with the modern region of Lazio today) and the place itself, in the context of ecology, climate change, disease and social history from 1600 to 1900. The focus of the project are two historic maps: Giacomo Filippo Ameti’s Il Lazio con le sue conspicue strade antiche (made in 1693) and Battista Cingolani della Pergola’s Topografia Geometria dell’Agro Romano (made in 1704), specifically the editions in the British School at Rome library. Together they cover the full geographic extent of the Campagna. We have georectified the two digital versions to create map layers and to begin to visualise the data they contact (or really re-visualise paper based data into digital data!)
You can read more about the project here: Digital cartographies of the roman campagna
We developed a prototype map with the collaboration of Prof Mitchell Whitelaw which you can view here: https://dev.mtchl.net/dcrc/
Slides from a 2022 presentation here
Project Team: Dr Lisa Beaven and Dr Katrina Grant
Mapping Government Data
In 2018 I worked on a project with the ACT government to develop a way of visualising the areas in the ACT that had been supported by Environment Grants. The goal of this was to see which regions had attracted more or less funding, and to create a resource for future applicants to more easily see what work had already been done in the areas they wanted to ask for funding for. The result needed to be delivered via a simple interface (in the end Google Maps) that was intuitive and informative.
You can view the final map here: https://www.google.com/maps/d/u/0/edit?mid=1Ac9CW7znVDGHXEmlvhaetUoua49XUmZh&ll=-35.38989788062061%2C149.05318949999997&z=10
And see the data sets on the ACT Mapping Platform: https://actgov.maps.arcgis.com/apps/dashboards/f56e492b0da448da8d4617f59d9d9b45
Other work and resources on Digital Mapping:
Introduction to Digital Mapping for the humanities on MethoDHology https://metodhology.anu.edu.au/index.php/content/introduction-to-digital-mapping/
Digital Mapping Workshop Slides from 2019
Digital Mapping for Humanities Bibliography and Project List: https://docs.google.com/document/d/e/2PACX-1vS8e2iWC0SRGx-jzP2P2vUWizeQCcpIr83REwuqlRSv5URy5V3bOX_BLV9aupgLq_t3IkiNwcXcAjpk/pub