Event Details

Connecting Matter, Meaning, and Experience: Data Science, Spatial Humanities, and Deep Maps

Abstract: This presentation explores what we have learned from our application of geospatial technologies to problems of interest to humanists. It also suggests an agenda for the future of this work, which increasingly will witness the convergence of technologies within new formats, such as virtual reality. One result is likely to be deep mapping, an innovative form with an emphasis on experiential knowledge that will open scholarship to non-expert audiences. The goal is not to sacrifice the rational, logical, and empirical approach to knowledge that has been the hallmark of the humanities since the Enlightenment, but rather to complement it with different ways of discovery.

Presenter: David J. Bodenhamer Professor of History and Informatics Emeritus Executive Director Emeritus, The Polis Center, Indiana University, Indianapolis, USA Biographical Sketch: David Bodenhamer is (founding) Executive Director Emeritus of The Polis Center and Professor of History and Informatics Emeritus at Indiana University, Indianapolis.

During his tenure (1989- 2022), the Polis Center developed over 1000 projects and a wide array of local, national, and international partnerships, with grant and contract funding of $100 million. He has served as strategic and organizational consultant to universities, government agencies, and not-for-profit organizations across the U.S. and in Europe. An active researcher,

Bodenhamer is author or editor of fifteen books and has published over fifty-five journal articles and chapters in books. He has made over one hundred presentations to audiences on four continents on topics ranging from legal and constitutional history to the use of GIS and advanced information technologies in academic and community-based research.

Books in spatial humanities include The Spatial Humanities: GIS and the Future of Humanities Scholarship (Indiana University Press, 2010), Deep Maps and Spatial Narratives (Indiana University Press, 2015), Making Deep Maps: Foundations, Approaches, and Methods (Routledge, 2021), and The Oxford Handbook of Spatial Humanities (Oxford University Press, forthcoming 2025), all with John Corrigan and Trevor Harris. He serves as co-general editor of the Routledge Series on Spatial Humanities (previously with Indiana University Press, 2008- 2020) and was co-editor of IJHAC: A Journal of the Digital Humanities (formerly The International Journal of Humanities and Arts Computing) for Edinburgh University Press from 2005-2020. Web sites include The Digital Atlas of American Religion (https://religionatlas.org), Encyclopedia of Indianapolis (https://indyencyclopedia.org), and SAVI Community Information System (https://savi.org). Bodenhamer is also co-director of the Virtual Center for Spatial Humanities, an institutional partnership among Florida State University, West Virginia University, and Indiana University, Indianapolis, to advance the field of spatial humanities