Call for paper for the workshop: Global Histories of Cold War Cartography
Edinburgh, Scotland
- Analyzing the relationship between new kinds of geographic knowledge, technologies, and the generation of new ideas of territory and sovereignty
- Assessing the use of cartographic technologies in counter-insurgency, political violence, armed conflicts
- Investigating the relationship between cartographic practices and natural resource exploration and exploitation, particularly in the context of infrastructure and megaprojects
- Analyzing the role of international bodies, such as the United Nations or the Pan-American Geography and History Association, in promoting new mapping technologies
- Exploring how medical geography and disease mapping reinforced Cold War divisions between 'developed' and 'developing' nations
- Analyzing the environmental impacts of development cartography in “frontier regions”
- Investigating how cartographic practices contributed to the fragmentation or reorganization of labor structures in Cold War contexts
- Examining the use of maps or visual imagery as part of global Cold War ideological debates
- Examining alternative map projections -such as the Peters projection- as sites of ideological contestation
- Comparing how similar cartographic practices and technologies produced different social, environmental, and political outcomes across regions
- Exploring the legacy of Cold War cartographic practices on contemporary spatial representation and digital mapping technologies We particularly welcome comparative studies that examine how cartographic practices produced different social, environmental, and political outcomes across regions such as Latin America, Southeast Asia, Africa, and other parts of the Global South. Accepted papers will be invited to participate in workshop held at the University of Edinburgh in May 2026.
E-mail: julie.gibbings@ed.ac.uk