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London and Online,
UK and OnlineA series of lectures on the history of maps and mapping worldwide, from earliest times to the twentieth century, with an emphasis on the social and cultural factors of the maps’ context, production, and use.
To attend online, register here .
Programme
31 October 2024 - Jordana Dym (Skidmore College, NY) - Looking Down, Looking Up: Wall and School Maps in Guatemala, 1860-1936
12 December 2024 - Beatrice Blümer (Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz) - Copying or Creating? Notions of Ingenuity in isolarii from the 15th to 18th century'
27 February 2025 - Louise McCarthy and Ladan Niayesh (Université Paris Cité) - Cartographic Science at the Service of Company Propaganda in Early Imperialist Britain (1600–1625). Hakluyt Society Speakers
13 March 2025 - James Cheshire (University College London) - Discoveries from the UCL Map Library
3 April 2025 - Johanna Skurnik (University of Turku) - Maps for Development? Finnish Mapping of the Global South, c.1970–2000
8 May 2025 - Yvonne Lewis (Assistant National Curator (Libraries), The National Trust) - Marking the Miles: Some annotated maps in National Trust Collections
Convenors: Catherine Delano-Smith (Institute of Historical Research) and Philip Jagessar (King’s College London) with Alessandro Scafi (Warburg Institute).
28 Nov 2024, Luz Martin del Campo (City University of New York, Vernacular environmental cartographies – landscapes and navigation unseen in Lacanjá Chansayab, Chiapas, México
30 Jan 2025, Tania Rossetto and Laura Lo Presti (Università degli Studi di Padova) in conversation with Elizabeth Baigent (School of Geography and the Environment, University of Oxford), Map Readings – ‘Routledge Handbook of Cartographic Humanities’
13 Feb 2025, Margriet Hoogvliet and Anouk de Vries (Universiteit van Amsterdam), Discussing decolonising cartographic heritage: theory, maps, and Dutch Brazil
15 May 2025, Carolina Martínez (Universidad Nacional de San Martín-CONICET, Argentina), Trans-Pacific maritime routes and Peruvian agency in three 17th-century nautical atlases
29 May 2025, Petter Hellström (Uppsala Universitet), Unmapping Africa in the Age of the Enlightenment
12 June 2025, Jean-Marc Besse (L’École des hautes études en sciences sociales, Paris), Geography and Catholic censorship in Europe at the end of the sixteenth-century
19 November 2024, 5.30pm UK time - Maurice Whitehead, Venerable English College, Rome - Maps, meridians and missions: Christopher Maire, SJ (1697–1767), an English cartographer in continental Europe
25 February 2025, 5.30pm UK time - Finnian O’Cionnaith, Dublin - ‘A peculiar survey … for our peculiar purpose’: founding the Ordnance Survey of Ireland
6 May 2025, 5.30pm UK time - Onur Engin, University of Cambridge - Echoes on the map: unveiling the auditory history of late Ottoman Istanbul through digital cartography
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Berlin,
GermanyOrganisation: Berlin-Brandenburgische Akademie der Wissenschaften, Max-Planck-Institut für Wissenschaftsgeschichte and Einstein Center ChronoiThis series of lectures invites a critical and fresh view on mapping, its role in the global circulation of knowledge, influence on state sovereignty and royal authority, colonialism, imperialism, national identities throughout history.
6 March 2025 - Zsolt G. Török, Eötvös Loránd University, Sebastian Münster’s Cosmography: Making Maps and Imaging Germany. Discussant: Petra Svatek, Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften, Wien
27 March 2025 - Thematic Mapping in 18th to 19th-century Germany
Nils Güttler, Universität Wien, Mapping the environment: the Humboldtian tradition. Discussant: Marta Hanson, Academy of Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore; Affiliate of MPIWG
Felix de Montety, Université Grenobles-Alpes, Mapping Languages: from Gottfried Hensel’s “Europa Polyglotta” (1741) to Julius Klaproth’s “Asia Polyglotta” (1823). Discussant: Ute Tintemann, BBAW
8 April 2025 - Roundtable: House Models for the Living and the Dead across Ancient Eurasia: Synchronicities and Diachronicities of Cross-Cultural Typologies
Vera Dorofeeva-Lichtmann, CNRS, Paris; Fellow Einstein Center Chronoi, Berlin and Max-Planck-Institute for the History of Science
Goce Naumov, Goce Delćev University and Educator at the Museum of Macedonia., Fellow and Einstein Center Chronoi, Berlin
Cinzia Pappi, Einstein Center Chronoi, Berlin
Discussant: Paul Delnero, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore; Fellow Einstein Center Chronoi, Berlin
Sint-Niklaas,
BelgiumOrganisation: STeMMaps produced by European missionaries in China in the 17th century held an important role in the history of cartography. Jesuits are said to have brought ‘scientific’ cartography into Asia from Europe, making the question of whether or not European cartography had a major flood on East Asian maps during that period central. This lecture seeks to provide a new answer to this question, including by charting the intellectual, social, and material aspects of world map production in seventeenth-century China.Venue: Museumpaviljoen - STeMLanguage: DutchTime schedule: 20.00URL: https://www.museasintniklaas.be/activiteiten/mercatorlezing-[...]
Sint-Niklaas,
BelgiumOrganisation: STeMA lecture by our president.
On 26 February 1885, participants at the Berlin Conference officially recognised the Association Internationale du Congo as a sovereign state. King Leopold II ruled the Congo Free State as sovereign until 1908. Because of fierce international protest against the atrocities committed against the local population, the monarch was then forced to cede his colony to the Belgian state. He died a year later. An inventory of his library was made shortly before his death and published in the Official Gazette. In 2024, the library was transferred to the Royal Library of Belgium.
In his lecture, Wouter Bracke will explore the map material kept in the royal library and archives on which the king and his court could rely in preparation for the Berlin Conference.Venue: Museumpaviljoen - STeMLanguage: DutchTime schedule: 20.00URL: https://www.museasintniklaas.be/activiteiten/mercatorlezing-[...]Brussels Map Circle event
Brussels,
BelgiumOrganisation: BIMCCIn december 2025 the new cartography museum 'MAP-Mercator' will open its doors in Sint-Niklaas.
About 400 maps, atlasses, globes and instruments (with 4 ‘Vlaamse Topstukken’ (Flemish masterpieces)) will be presented on a huge surface of 1.150 square metres. The presentation will be hybrid: a classical display of maps and documents combined with innovative multimedia.
The museum will ask the simple question: “What is a map?” and enquires why and how maps (are and) were made and how they (are and) were used. Curator and historian of the museum Ward Bohé will take along the attendants in the complexe story of ‘the making of’. How did we create the thematic exhibition plan? Which criteria did we develop for the selection of the different historical maps, globes and atlasses? What know how will be embedded in digital presentation technology that will be used? A lot of questions and even more answers! The exhibition plans will be shown. With an overview and explanation of some 100 of a total of 400 maps, atlasses and globes that will be displayed.
Venue: Map Room of KBR (Royal Library of Belgium)Time schedule: 17.00-19.00
Sint-Niklaas,
BelgiumOrganisation: STeMClimate scientists and activists warn us not only with words, but also with maps, showing how in the near future sea levels will rise due to melting ice. In this lecture, we go back in the history of Arctic cartography, and Djoeke van Netten analyses how mapmakers in the early modern era visualised the High North. In a way, the North Pole was invented in the 16th century, when mapmakers like Ruysch, Waldseemüller and Mercator experimented with different projections to get the round globe on a flat sheet of paper. This story is about shape, and especially the consistency of the Arctic according to the maps, was there land or sea there, in frozen or liquid form? And how did that change when Western Europeans started sailing north? They did not find the hoped-for route to China, but what they did ‘discover’ had a great impact on cartography. In the end, it took until the early 20th century for the first human to stand at the North Pole, so all that time before that, maps were made of territory no one had ever seen! The end of the lecture goes to our modern times, what can we learn from early modern mapmakers? Both then and now, cartographers aim to warn and inspire, presenting a world largely born of imagination.Venue: Museumpaviljoen - STeMLanguage: DutchTime schedule: 20.00URL: https://www.museasintniklaas.be/activiteiten/mercatorlezing-[...]
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Bologna,
ItalyOn the occasion of the 400th anniversary of the birth of Giovanni Domenico Cassini, born in Perinaldo (Italy) on 8 June 1625, we would like to remember the most illustrious astronomer of his time: his studies had such an impact beyond national borders that in 1669 the Sun King, Louis XIV, asked him to found the Observatoire de Paris, the first modern astronomical observatory.
More information on this page
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Paris,
FranceOrganisation: ISHMAPThe International Society for the History of the Map (ISHMap) announces its VII Symposium and III Workshop that will take place in Campus Condorcet (Aubervilliers), Paris, France, from 8 to 11 July 2025. Symposium is organized in collaboration with the Interdisciplinary laboratory Géographie-cités (member of French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS)).
More information here
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Portland (Maine),
USAOrganisation: Osher Map Library and Smith Center for Cartographic Education in PortlandThe Osher Map Library and Smith Center for Cartographic Education in Portland, Maine, will host the 2025 conference, showcasing their extensive collections dating back to 1475, and utilizing the facilities of the University of Southern Maine, including the newly built McGoldrick Center for Student and Career Success.URL: https://www.imcos.org/6826-2/
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Rome,
ItalyOrganisation: The Historical Wall Maps Research GrouThe Historical Wall Maps Research Group, an international collective of historians and geographers dedicated to advancing the study of modern historical wall maps, is pleased to announce a call for papers for the workshop "Hang Them Up! New Perspectives on Historical Wall Maps Studies," which will take place on October 8-9, 2025, at the Società Geografica Italiana in Rome.
The main aim of the event is to bring together experts from different fields to explore the historical and comparative dimensions of wall maps, their cultural significance and impact on geographical knowledge across different periods and regions, and finally the possibilities for their preservation and digitization.
More information here.Venue: Società Geografica ItalianaLanguage: English
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Hobart,
TasmaniaOrganisation: Australian and New Zealand Map Society This event will explore how cartography has shaped exploration and knowledge of the Southern Hemisphere, from early speculative maps to modern technologies. Discussions will examine the challenges, innovations, and lasting impacts of mapping some of the world’s most remote and extreme regions across the hemisphere’s vast oceans.URL: https://anzmaps.org/
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Denver, Colorado,
USAOrganisation: Society for the History of DiscoversMountains have long fascinated people of all varieties, acting as sites of exploration, conflict, and discovery. From the famed Mount Olympus of the Greek gods to the Rocky Mountains of the final frontier, and to the fantastical mountains found in cartography, they have mystified and captivated, both halting and encouraging progress.URL: https://discoveryhistory.org/Meetings-&-ConferencesBrussels Map Circle event
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Winston-Salem, NC,
USA and onlineAs a young nation emerged, Americans quickly turned their attention to the West, continuing to expand westward in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries with the Louisiana Purchase, Mexican Cession, and other land deals. As they did so, they utilized maps to chart their course and realize their vision of an expanded America.
More information and registration can be found here.Venue: Museum of Early Southern Decorative ArtsBrussels Map Circle event
