As Elri Liebenberg 2007-2015 tenure as Chair of the Commission on the History of Cartography terminated in Rio de Janeiro, she informs that the General Assembly elected Dr Imre Josef Demhardt as the new Chair of the Commission.
Dr Demhardt has acted as Vice-Chair of the Commission from 2007 to 2015; is a Director of Imago Mundi Ltd.; Co-Editor for Volume 5 of the History of Cartography Project, and was until recently President of the Society of the History of Discoveries He has written widely on the history of cartography and is an acclaimed expert on nineteenth century exploration and German colonial cartography.
As Vice-Chair of the Commission for the period 2015-2019 Dr Demhardt has solicited the assistance of Dr Mirela Slukan Altić.
Dr Mirela Slukan Altić specializes in historical geography, historical cartography, and urban and local history. She holds the rank of Full Professor in the Department of History of the University of Zagreb; is the author of twelve books, numerous scholarly papers, and is a contributor to the History of Cartography Project of the Chicago University Press. For the academic year 2013–2014 she was awarded the David Woodward Memorial Fellowship at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, and was recently awarded a Research Fellowship at the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee.
To ease the task of the Chair and Vice-Chair the Commission will in future be assisted by a Secretary / Web Content Manager in the person of Soetkin Vervust.
Soetkin Vervust is a PhD student in her final year in the Geography Department of Ghent University and is part of the Department’s CartoGIS research cluster since 2010. She holds a Master's degree in Archaeology and Geography (Ghent University). Her PhD research is funded by the Flemish Fund for Scientific Research (FWO) and focuses on various aspects of the Carte de Cabinet of Ferraris and other 18th century maps. She has participated in various History of Cartography conferences and acted as secretary for the 2014 Joint Symposium of the ICA Commission on the History of Cartography, the ICA Commission on Map Production and Geo-Business, and the Brussels Map Circle which took place in Ghent in 2015.
The Commission has since its inception held the following successful international symposia:
- 2006 Utrecht University, Netherlands
- 2008 University of Portsmouth, U.K.
- 2010 University of Arlington, Texas, U.S.A.
- 2012 Eotvos Lorand University, Budapest, Hungary
- 2014 Ghent University, Ghent, Belgium
The Commission’s 2016 international symposium wild be held in Dubrovnik, Croatia.
From Elri Liebenberg (Chair 2007-2015), 19 September 2015.