Dear Colleagues,
We are Carolyn Swope, Wright Kennedy, and Gergely Baics, co-chairs of the Historical Geography & GIS network of the Social Science History Association (ssha.org).
We are writing in an effort to start an online spatial history seminar to build and expand our community of spatial history scholars and to create an inclusive and sustainable venue for regular conversations. There are many new and exciting historical GIS research projects around the world. However, as we participate in different academic circles, conferences, and networks, it is often difficult to learn about them, leaving our efforts and impact fragmented. An online seminar series could be a welcoming and sustainable platform to learn about ongoing HGIS projects and new data (in particular, across more diverse geographic regions); stay in touch more regularly and make new connections; and possibly start new collaborations.
- Offer more regular opportunities for member engagement: Annual conference meetings allow us limited opportunity to reconnect and meet new colleagues, especially since financial constraints do not allow all members to attend every year.
- Build a global community of HGIS scholars: In-person regional conferences can be challenging for scholars working in different regions to attend together.
- Allow members to workshop projects in a different way than conferences allow: Instead of the time pressure of a typical conference panel with 3-4 papers, here we could devote an entire seminar to one or two related project(s). The nature of HGIS projects often means they cannot easily be discussed thoroughly in 15 minutes. Members can therefore spend more time discussing details of their data sources and infrastructure, showing how different pieces of a project connect, etc. Or we might do a deep dive workshop into a particular HGIS project to demonstrate how members can use it in their research and teaching.
- Function as an informal clearing-house for sharing data projects: Through more regular sharing of projects in progress, we may become more aware of existing resources to support members' future research. For example, members sometimes invest substantial time in building data infrastructure that has already been created in other projects. We hope to eventually build a regularly updated list of HGIS projects which breaks out of geographic siloes.
- Serve as an incubator for new collaborations: Members will become aware of new projects that may be a good fit for their interests and expertise, while members already working on a project can share gaps they are hoping to fill with additional collaborators.
We imagine meeting once a month for an hour-and-a-half in an informal online seminar setting, where people can share new projects, papers, website, data, etc. We will work out the specifics as we better probe interest. For now, we would like to know if you are interested in participating. If yes, please fill out this Google Form at your earliest convenience, also indicating if you might be interested in presenting. Feel free to share this form with other HGIS scholars who you think might be interested.
We hope to see you join our seminar.
Our best,
