Abigail Bennett is an undergraduate student at the College of William and Mary, currently pursuing a bachelor’s degree in urban studies (self-designed, ‘27). At the Davis Center, she is a GIS research assistant for the Imperiia Project, aiding with spatial analysis of urban land use according to maps from Baedeker’s Russia: A Handbook for Travelers (1914). By aggregating data within town maps using a novel grid system derived from the maps themselves, she is contributing to historical knowledge of urban form in Imperial Russia and designing an analysis method to dissect spatial distribution in historical maps.
More broadly, her research centers around the intersections of urban morphology, spatial analysis, and digital humanities: she currently serves as a research assistant for the Walking Sites of Memory pilgrimage project within the William & Mary Sociology Department and as a student researcher supporting W&M Professor Bill Fisher’s anthropology research through the Center for Geospatial Analysis at William & Mary. Her previous work explored the changing housing market and potential policy interventions in her hometown of Raleigh, North Carolina.
Abigail has interned with the Metropolitan Area Planning Council and the James City County Planning Division and is working on her second solo mural. She is passionate about the spatial manifestations of the public and carving out space for both people and art in settlements of all sizes.