The Imperiia Project

Dedicated to designing new methods for historical research and promoting spatial analysis of the past. (And yes, we make maps.)

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Our offerings

DeCode: A Research Quarterly

The Imperiia team is thrilled to announce the launch of DeCode, a quarterly digital magazine that delivers the cutting-edge research undertaken by the Imperiia Project and its collaborators in a substantive and highly accessible format.
 
Learn about our latest outputs, the individuals who produce them, and the processes through which our scholars and students cultivate expertise in spatial history and regional studies. 
 
Ready to dive in? Come explore with us!

MAP OF THE WEEK

Why not have a map delivered to your inbox every week? Subscribe here.

NEW RESEARCH ON THE INTERSECTION OF LITERATURE AND CARTOGRAPHY

Our freely-accessible Incremental Sea Research Platform  was launched on September 22, 2025. The project is a set of meditations on the Black Sea. It draws on dozens of pieces of mapwork and artwork: poems, stories, maps, memoirs, and novels composed by men and women shaped by the sea. Check it out!

MAPMAKER PODCAST

We will return to the airwaves with new episodes soon. 

A world of data is one click away.

map mosaic of Black Sea with blue and green overlay

Latest release: The Incremental Sea Research Platform

What will you learn from 51 writers and mapmakers?

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Explore our content

The Imperiia Project website is home to our growing collection of interactive maps, datasets, and teaching material.

Related Insights

cover of DeCode magazine, Spring 2026 issue

On the Magic of Archives as Experience

In introducing the latest issue of her project’s digital magazine, historian Kelly O’Neill pries open the treasure trove of stories brought out of archives by the humans who enter them, including our brilliant students.

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Swirls of color brighten the deep blue waters of the Black Sea

DeCode Brings the Black Sea to Your Doorstep

Explore this strange sea’s waters, lands, and the pipelines, artwork, and scholarship criss-crossing them—all in the Winter 2026 issue of our Imperiia Project’s digital magazine.

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basket of candy and Davis Center stickers

Davis Center at ASEEES in Washington, Nov. 20-23

If you're attending this year's conference, come hear our scholars speak on Ukrainian refugees and Belarusian partisans, Russian imperial history, authoritarian rule in Georgia and Central Asia, and much more.

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Related Events

Kelly AI workshop teaching
Past Event

DataBasics: Summer 2026 Edition

Have you ever wondered whether you would see your sources differently if you organized them differently?

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historical photograph of mining town
Past Event

Spatial Data Studio: Mining a Coal Map

Come learn to think spatially as we study—and extract data from—an incredible 19th-century map of the Donets region!

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old photograph of buildings and streets
Past Event

Digitized Violence: A Spatial Approach to Anti-Jewish Violence in Russian Poland

Join us as historians Artur Markowski and Joachim Popek discuss their work mapping anti-Jewish violence in the Kingdom of Poland at the turn of the 20th century.

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