For my teaching, I have been curating this survey of digital mapping projects in the humanities over several years, spanning Historical GIS, Literary GIS, heritage mapping, and countermapping. These projects showcase how geospatial methods can open up new ways of understanding historical change, cultural networks, and social inequalities. I use these projects in my teaching to get students interested and (hopefully) excited.
Contact me for suggestions and errors.
(Image source: GPT5)
| Project name (year) | Topic | URL |
|---|---|---|
| Age of buildings in Los Angeles (2015) | Urban development and building history | http://cityhubla.github.io/LA_Building_Age |
| Anti-Eviction Mapping Project (2013) | Housing justice, displacement, activism | https://antievictionmap.com/ |
| Artists in Paris (2017) | Historical geography of artists | https://www.artistsinparis.org/ |
| The Atlas of Early Printing (2019) | History of printing and dissemination | https://atlas.lib.uiowa.edu |
| Authorial London (2016) | Literary geography of London | https://authorial.stanford.edu/ |
| Braceros Across the United States–Mexico Border (2023) | Labour migration history | https://storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/4a2e09dcc5474a12a34993ec8eb06620 |
| CDRC Mapmaker (2020) | UK population and deprivation indicators | https://mapmaker.cdrc.ac.uk/#/index-of-multiple-deprivation |
| Chunyun map (2013) | Spring Festival travel patterns in China | http://qianxi.baidu.com |
| Cleveland Historical (live) | Public history and local storytelling | https://clevelandhistorical.org/ |
| Colouring Britain (live) | Architectural heritage, crowdmapping | https://colouringbritain.org/ |
| Counter Cartographies Collective (2008) | Critical mapping and political geography | https://www.countercartographies.org/ |
| Countermapping Queen Mary Collective (2016) | Critical mapping of higher education | https://csalateral.org/section/universities-in-question/countermapping-the-university/ |
| Digital Harlem (2008) | Social history of early twentieth-century Harlem | https://digitalharlem.org/ |
| Hestia (2014) | Ancient geography | https://hestia.open.ac.uk/ |
| Humap (live) | Platform for spatial humanities | https://humap.me/ |
| Geographies of the Holocaust (2014) | Concentration camps and deportations | https://holocaustgeographies.org/datasets |
| Kollektiv Orangotango (2012) | Radical geography and counter-mapping | https://notanatlas.org/about/ |
| Mapping Ancient Athens (2020) | Points of interest in Athens | https://map.mappingancientathens.org/ |
| Mapping Museums (2025) | Locations of museums in the UK | https://mapping-museums.bbk.ac.uk/about-mapping-museums-database/ |
| Mapping the Republic of Letters (2008) | Intellectual networks and correspondence | https://republicofletters.stanford.edu/ |
| Million Dollar Blocks (2016) | Incarceration and urban inequality | https://chicagosmilliondollarblocks.com/ |
| OpenHistoricalMap (live) | Collaborative historical mapping | https://www.openhistoricalmap.org/ |
| Orbis (2013) | Movement, transport and cost in the Roman world | https://orbis.stanford.edu/ |
| Pelagios Project (live) | Linked data for historical places | http://pelagios.org/ |
| The Refugee Project (live) | Refugee flows and global migration | http://www.therefugeeproject.org/#/2020 |
| Reimagining the Battle of Gettysburg (2013) | Historical reconstruction and visualisation | https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/A-Cutting-Edge-Second-Look-at-the-Battle-of-Gettysburg-1-180947921 |
| Slave Trade Voyages (2025) | Transatlantic slave trade data | https://www.slavevoyages.org/ |
| StoryMaps (live) | Narrative mapping platform | https://storymaps.arcgis.com/ |
| U.S. Immigration Explorer (2009) | Patterns of immigration to the United States | https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/interactive/2009/03/10/us/20090310-immigration-explorer.html?hp |
| Virtual Mappa (2017) | Medieval maps and manuscripts | https://sims2.digitalmappa.org/36 |
| Who owns England? (2016) | Land ownership and transparency in England | https://map.whoownsengland.org/ |
| Zamani Project (2022) | Heritage sites in Africa | https://zamaniproject.org/ |
Last update: Dec 2025
Cultural Geo-Analytics Lab 