Our Goals

Piloting a model for the crowd-sourced creation of an authoritative and accessible repository of historical layers for GIS at George Mason and Virginia Tech Universities in 2024-2025, with the support of a Virginia 4-VA Grant.

Orientating

Meaningful early modern visualization and spatial research is currently hampered by the lack of accessible, authoritative layers representing historical data such as settlements, road networks, political boundaries, and altered coastlines and waterways.

Transforming

We will bring Virginia researchers and students together for historical GIS training at two Mapathon events hosted during the Spring Semester 2025 at GMU and Virginia Tech.

Sharing

The results will be published on ArcGIS Online under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 and support project PIs in their NEH-funded research projects on historical travel infrastructure, violence and mortality, and unfree labor.

Project organizers and affiliates

Dr. Rachel Midura

Virginia Tech

Assistant Professor of Digital and Early Modern European history. Her research areas include the history of travel, diplomacy, espionage, and information/communication in early modern Italy and the Habsburg Empire.

Dr. Amanda Madden

George Mason University

Assistant Professor of History and Affiliate Faculty at the Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media (RRCHNM). Her resarch areas include digital spatial history, digital humanities, early modern Italy, the history of crime and violence, the history of women and gender, and the scholarship of teaching and learning

Dr. Jessica Taylor

Virginia Tech

Associate Professor of Oral and Public History. Her research interests include early American history, historic preservation, and native American history.

Dr. Jessica Otis

George Mason University

Assistant Professor of History and the Director of Public Projects at the Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media. Her research interests include mathematics, plague, and cryptography in early modern England.

Updates

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