Have you ever wondered whether you would understand the past differently if you could see it on a map?
So have we.
It is a tall order. The past is enormous and history is made every day. Thankfully, the humans that make history leave all sorts of things in their wake. Texts. Graphics. Everything from the mundane to the sublime.
The inhabitants of the Russian Empire left a wide wake indeed.
Like other historians, we are obsessed with all of it: with archives, the context, the meaning. Unlike other historians, we are obsessed with maps. Unique maps. Common maps. Intriguing maps. Infuriating maps. We study them and we make them. Sometimes we pull them apart in order to extract information. Sometimes we put them together in order to analyze historical phenomena. We are turning the archives themselves into geographic information systems because we believe space holds the key to new understandings of the past.
Think of this as a collaborative, slightly rebellious, attempt to explain why where matters.
Our job is not only to answer our own questions, but to make it possible for you to answer yours. We are building a research platform and developing practices and solutions useful (we hope) to anyone interested in asking and answering spatial questions. Whether you happen to be in a classroom or a library, at a kitchen table or a busy cafe, if you find yourself poring over maps or pondering places or spaces, we are working with you in mind.
Explore our growing collection of mapstories and interactive resources. Use the links below to explore our catalog of openly-accessible historical spatial data (yes, that is a mouthful).
Our work is made possible in part by a major grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities. Check out the great work of the Digital Humanities Advancement Grant Program.
