GIS is bigger than Big Data: The battle of the buzzwords

Have you heard of hyperlocal, cloud computing, and the gig economy? Arguably, these are buzzwords used to describe things that have existed for a long time in a new, exciting way (e.g. services aimed at local markets, outsourcing computational tasks to data centres, and poorly paid, insecure jobs). Wikipedia has a nice, up-to-date list of … Continue reading GIS is bigger than Big Data: The battle of the buzzwords →

GIScience PhD scholarship at Uni. Leicester on “Data Census”

Come work with us! New GIScience/geographic data science fully-funded PhD scholarship at the University of Leicester, co-supervised by Dr Stefano De Sabbata, Prof Nick Tate (Uni. of Leicester), and Dr Andrea Ballatore (Birkbeck, University of London). All outstanding students of GIScience, quantitative geography, and related disciplines are encouraged to apply. [Full call here] Deadline: 21st January … Continue reading GIScience PhD scholarship at Uni. Leicester on “Data Census” →

[R tool] Google Trends comparator for 5+ terms

As part of our research on the geography of search engines, we coded a new R tool, including ideas from my colleague Simon Scheider (Universiteit Utrecht). Google Trends is a great source of "big data" about search behaviour at a large scale, but it limits the number of query terms to 5. Because of the … Continue reading [R tool] Google Trends comparator for 5+ terms →

Bullshit (academic) jobs

Some good quotes from Bullshit Jobs: A Theory (David Graeber, 2018): Most universities in the United Kingdom now have public relations offices with staffs several times larger than would be typical for, say, a bank or an auto manufacturer of roughly the same size. Does Oxford really need to employ a dozen-plus PR specialists to … Continue reading Bullshit (academic) jobs →

The geography of video games

Le Monde recently published a fascinating cultural analysis of Red Dead Redemption 2, a massive AAA video game production set in the US in the late 19th century. This piece reminded me that some (artistically mature) video games enable the exploration of places and their social relations, combining the powers of cinema, role-playing games, and … Continue reading The geography of video games →

Digital Earth as a myth

This article was originally published as The myth of the Digital Earth between fragmentation and wholeness in Wi: Journal of Mobile Culture, 2014, 8(2). 1–20. I feel that an updated version is needed to keep track of how the relentless digitisation of the surface of the planet is talked about and imagined by different groups. #media … Continue reading Digital Earth as a myth →

How big is that museum?

Blog post co-authored with Fiona Candlin for the Mapping Museums project. What is a small museum? Or for that matter a medium or large museum? In the museum sector, size is generally measured in relation to visitor numbers, and in cases where several criteria are used, such as income or staff numbers, they are still … Continue reading How big is that museum? →

Computing the spirit of place

This is a talk that I gave at University of California, Santa Barbara in 2014. The core idea was (and still is) to harness spatial user-generated content, big data, et similia to characterise places at a large scale. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HZw5Bmu23QY

PhD opportunities at Birkbeck / University College London in GIScience/Spatial Data Science

Applications for PhD Studentships at Birkbeck and University College London are now open via UBEL (+3 &1+3) – with a January deadline. We support applications in the Geospatial Analysis / Geographic Information Science streams (under Human Geography, see https://ubel-dtp.ac.uk/eligibility/pathways/human-geography), and we can co-supervise PhD programmes with colleagues at UCL. If you are interested in applying … Continue reading PhD opportunities at Birkbeck / University College London in GIScience/Spatial Data Science →

Wikimapia: An overlooked source of Volunteered Geographic Information

New paper: A. Ballatore & J. Jokar Arsanjani (2018) Placing Wikimapia: An exploratory analysis, in the International Journal of Geographical Information Science. [PDF] Abstract: Wikimapia is a major privately owned volunteered geographic information (VGI) project to collect information about places. Over the past 10 years, Wikimapia has attracted hundreds of thousands of contributors and collected millions … Continue reading Wikimapia: An overlooked source of Volunteered Geographic Information →