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.

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 →

Charting cultural events on Eventbrite

Here's a new paper led by our PhD student Yue Wang, to be presented at GISRUK 2025 in Bristol! 🌎 🎹🎭 Abstract: This study explores the spatial and temporal heterogeneity of cultural life by investigating the dynamics of cultural events in Greater London. We leverage over 50,000 data points retrieved from Eventbrite to analyse the … Continue reading Charting cultural events on Eventbrite →

An attempt at exhausting a place in Barcelona

My abstract for the AMPS Cultural Pasts conference (July 2024, Barcelona) 🇪🇸 An attempt at exhausting a place in Barcelona: Digital augmentations as intangible heritage? Andrea Ballatore (King's College London) Sitting in a café in Paris in 1974, French writer George Perec started to record the seemingly mundane minutiae of what could be observed in … Continue reading An attempt at exhausting a place in Barcelona →

Computing urban form with graph neural networks

This nice paper led by Stef De Sabbata was presented at the GeoAI workshop in Leeds 🌍📈🤖🌆. 📜 Stefano De Sabbata, Andrea Ballatore, Pengyuan Liu and Nicholas J. Tate (2023) Learning urban form through unsupervised graph-convolutional neural networks. 2nd International Workshop on Geospatial Knowledge Graphs and GeoAI: Methods, Models, and Resources (GIScience 2023, September 12th, … Continue reading Computing urban form with graph neural networks →

Why Is Greenwich so Common? A way of measuring uniqueness

Pleased to finally see this short paper written with Ordnance Survey's Stefano Cavazzi out. It is part of open-access LIPIcs proceedings, to be presented at GIScience 23 in Leeds 📄🌍🚶‍♀️. 📜 Ballatore, A. and Cavazzi, S. (2023) Why Is Greenwich so Common? Quantifying the Uniqueness of Multivariate Observations, 12th International Conference on Geographic Information Science … Continue reading Why Is Greenwich so Common? A way of measuring uniqueness →

Platial narratives from leisure walking

A short paper by our student James Williams, co-supervised at Nottingham and at the Ordnance Survey, to be presented at PLATIAL 23 in Dortmund 🇩🇪📄🌍🚶‍♀️. 📜 Williams, J, Pinchin, J, Hazzard, A, Priestnall, G, Cavazzi, S, & Ballatore, A. (2023). Emerging Platial Narratives and Themes from a Leisure Walking Study. Fourth International Symposium on Platial … Continue reading Platial narratives from leisure walking →

Of museums, Covid, and social media

New open-access article from the Museums in the pandemic project 🏛️🌎💻 🦠 Abstract. This paper examines social media activity by UK museums during the COVID-19 pandemic. There is a general perception that as museums closed their doors for extended periods, their digital presence increased to maintain connections with their audiences. However, much of the research conducted … Continue reading Of museums, Covid, and social media →

Museums and their geodemographic context

Here's our new short paper to be presented at GISRUK 2023 in Glasgow! 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿🏛️🌎 [PDF] "The geography of the cultural sector concerns the location of producers, consumers, and venues of the Cultural and Creative Industries (CCIs) to answer questions about their development and dynamics. Considering the case of the UK museums, we use national data … Continue reading Museums and their geodemographic context →