Author: Andrea Ballatore

I'm a geographic data scientist at King's College London

PhD opportunity: Mapping theatre in Nigeria 🇳🇬

King's College London's African Creativity Beyond Borders initiative seeks PhD candidates to explore African creativity's role in academia and policy. One proposed project studies Nigerian theatre's development and audience engagement using online data, addressing both urban and rural landscapes. The project aims to analyze and map Nigeria's vibrant theatre ecosystem.

Closed museums and what happened to their collections (2000-25)

After two years of research, the Museum Closure project report highlights significant trends in UK museum closures from 2000 to 2025. It reveals stark regional differences, with London gaining museums but losing council-run ones, while Scotland faced the most closures. Independent museums are replacing traditional institutions, though not fully compensating for losses.

Urban cinemas and rural museums

At the Italian Geographic Congress, two papers were presented by Andrea Ballatore and colleagues. One explores cinema consumption's socio-spatial dynamics in London and Beijing, highlighting accessibility disparities. The other examines the distribution of UK museums, revealing an urban-rural paradox and advocating for a broader understanding of museum geographies linking urban and rural contexts.

[Panel] Identity: new and historical migrations in comparison

Today I will have the pleasure of joining remotely the 3:00 pm session (2:00 pm UK time) of the Radici festival at the Circolo dei Lettori in Turin, focused on the theme Identity: new and historical migrations in comparison [in Italian]. “The session Piemontesi nel Mondo features Maddalena Tirabassi, Director of the Centro Altreitalie sulle … Continue reading [Panel] Identity: new and historical migrations in comparison →

Family resemblances: Towards a typology of UK cinemas

Qi Gong's doctoral research at King's College London focuses on the geography of cinemas in London, exploring their social and cultural significance. By categorizing cinemas into distinct types and mapping their locations, Gong aims to reveal patterns of accessibility and highlight cultural inequalities, thereby informing policymakers and industry stakeholders about distribution and community needs.

Mapping Meaning in Latin with Large Language Models

Our PhD student Andrea Farina will present his latest research at CLiC-it 2025: Eleventh Italian Conference on Computational Linguistics. The paper "Mapping Meaning in Latin with Large Language Models", co-authored with me and Barbara McGillivray, focuses on preverbed motion verbs (like exeo “exit” or ineo “enter”) and spatial relations, important linguistic features that encode movement, … Continue reading Mapping Meaning in Latin with Large Language Models →

From notes to models: Leveraging LLMs for museum closure data

Our postdoc George A. Wright will present our latest research at the International Conference on Theory and Practice of Digital Libraries (TPDL 2025). In the paper “From Notes to Models: Leveraging LLMs for Museum Closure Data”, we explore how large language models (LLMs) can support researchers in transforming unstructured notes into usable data models. This … Continue reading From notes to models: Leveraging LLMs for museum closure data →